Life was good.

I shook myself out of my pleased recall and focused back on Miserable John.

John looked slightly down at me from his six feet four plus and said, "I love her, jackass. And I wasn't there. I could've helped." I nodded, any normal guy could have tipped the scales. Those jerks had been lying in wait for her like predators. Hell... that's what they were. Now Carson was doin' a nice stint in Juvy. Yeah.

"He'll still get to graduate though. Daddy saw to that happening," John said in a morose tone.

I paused, thinking. I didn't know if I had anything helpful to say. "She's seeing someone John..."

"I know, Caleb. She's seeing some shrink that doesn't know her." John's voice had gone low in uncharacteristic anger, his hands clenching, bony and large, I got a glimpse of the body that would grow into that frame.

Suddenly he turned to me and asked the question I was dreading.

"Just tell me Caleb... I know Jade knows. Did that fucker rape her?"

What was rape, exactly? Rape was violation, brought on by violence. Did Carson have to penetrate Tiff with his dick for it to be rape? It wasn't a fine line for me. It didn't matter if he put his dick in her or not.

He touched her without permission; that it was sexual made it doubly worse. That it had been driven by violence and stemmed from revenge... well, it was about the lowest a dude could go.

But it wasn't mine to tell, and pillow talk with Jade wasn't fair to repeat.

I thought about how many tearful conversations we'd had about what Jade had seen... what she'd narrowly avoided because I'd luckily gotten there before Diego had done anything to her.

Yeah, I kinda knew. It made my heart try to escape my ribcage with the near miss it'd been. Thinking about another guy doing what Jade and I shared in love... in hate.

No, I couldn't think about it. So I answered John the best I could.

"It's her story to tell man. She'll talk when she's ready."

His shoulders slumped and he glanced again at the spot where she'd been walking.

The bell chimed its one minute warning for class, discordant and raw, making us both flinch.

"Yeah," he said softly. Then his next words I'll always remember, "I want him dead."

I pretended not to hear that.

Sometimes it was better to say nothing when you completely agreed.

Silence was acceptance.

*

Bry never missed a day picking up his sister. His wary eyes would scan the short distance from the sidewalk to the large doors of Kent Paranormal High.

He was a tiger waiting for prey.

When he caught sight of Diego a couple of weeks after what happened to Tiff he ran after him. The anger and pain were still fresh wounds for Bry.

"Weller!" I bellowed.

Not that it mattered, he was a bull with a target.

"Alex?" I begged and the Body ran, giving a running tackle at Bry.

"Why? Let me go, dipshit!" Bry roared, fighting without success against a male who was five times stronger than the strongest guy alive.

"Look at his face, man!" I yelled at Bry, while a silent and gumless Tiff stood watching as her brother lost it in front of a hundred students.

Students who wouldn't say jack about another Diego beating. Yeah, he was Mr. Popularity here at KPH.

Finally Bry calmed down long enough to look at Diego who was sporting dual bruises underneath eyes as a result of what Gramps affectionately called pancake nose.

Translation, someone had done a stomp-o-matic on his face.

I wonder who.

I was pleased as hell at the result though: he didn't even look at Jade.

It suited me fine.

Bry looked at the ruin of Diego's face, his sullen glare going from Diego to myself.

"Huh," Bry gave a sad laugh. "Looks like someone already worked you over, ya loser."

Diego flicked his eyes to mine and then away, remaining wisely silent.

Weller looked at me with an understanding that was beyond words, a silent Guy Communion if you will.

Yeah, he knew what I'd done. And it had passed muster as Gramps would also say.

"Let me go, I won't bust his chops," Bry said. Alex's hands fell away and I exhaled hard.

Shit that was close.

"Oh! Too bad..." Jonesy muttered and winked at Bry. He laughed and Tiff came to him quietly and Bry put his arm around her shoulders.

She accepted it with reluctance as he led her away.

Tiff didn't look back at us.

*

winter

senior year

An uneasy rhythm had developed within the group. Tiff's melancholy reserve had changed the dynamic and we were set adrift, the easy camaraderie that had been in place had shifted to guilt.

Randi was guilty because she knew the truth about the bruise from the locker beating and hadn't realized how serious it was. All the guys would've. It's like girls' self-preservation alarms were busted. I couldn't get over that. They needed protecting, period. Why most didn't see that was beyond my understanding. It was as natural to most guys as breathing.

Except the Carsons of the world. He was broken in a different way.

John was guilty because he had feelings for Tiff. She was wounded from an attack that he felt he should have been able to prevent. He reasoned that if he had laid his claim on her before the event then somehow he would have been with her.

John was the most rational person I knew but somehow there was a Bermuda Triangle where Tiff was concerned. His logic got sucked into whatever nothingness was there. He wouldn't have been able to do dick. Tiff had been using a bathroom pass from a class they didn't share in the middle of the period.

It didn't have to be rational for John to feel the guilt though. After all, humanity wasn't rational. And love sure as shit wasn't.

Jade felt bad because she was shy about going to a teacher first and saying the words: one of my friend's might be in trouble in the hall.

Horrible trouble.

But Jade hadn't trusted her own Empath skills. She thought she'd Check. It. Out. First.

Yeah, that worked out so well.

*

spring

School was... well schooly. I hit the house running, slinging my gearpack on the hook, giving a slight smile to the ginormous backpacks of the past that my parents had been forced to use. What a first class hassle that would've been. But with Brain Impulse Technology everything had changed. Our gear was a pulsereader and maybe a lunch. Because I brown bagged it, Mom gave me the credits for the ten milks a day I liked to drink.

I should have my own cow.

I scanned the living room, my eyes raking over the colorful afghans all in place over the couches that were a magnet for Onyx Hair and here he came.

I braced myself for the lunge and tackle. That was code for Dog Love.

An inky blur tackled me, his paws reaching my shoulders and the long lick was the same every day.

I gave him a rough scratch under his chin in the sweet spot, now gone white with little hairs as he'd aged.

I didn't know if Onyx would die. He wasn't really all the way alive. Some interesting concepts there.

"Hey boy, how are ya? Did you find any hot female bitches?" I said, feeling clever as hell.

"Are you swearing, Caleb?" Mom asked from the corner of the kitchen.

It's like she had paranormal hearing.

I stood and gave a sheepish grin. "Technically," I raised my finger in explanation, "female dogs are actually called bitches. You wouldn't want to screw up that fundamental identifier, right Mom?"

Mom glared at me as I grinned.

"I think I must have turned a wrong corner somewhere with you. Sarcasm and splitting hairs were not in the Parent Training Manual."

"Right, do you have a copy of that?" I asked, pouring on Brat Mode, as she liked to call it, swiping a cookie off the breakfast bar and jamming the whole thing in my craw... easily.

"Hey wolf-boy, slow down. Nobody's going to steal from you!" Mom laughed at my heathen behavior.

"Ya never know!" I said with noisy conviction.

"Uh-huh, you're wasting away..." she smirked, folding her windshield arms over her chest.

I looked at myself. I was the same as I always was. Two hundred pounds and almost six feet two. I had Dad by an inch. He was still hell on the court though. There was something about being a man that seemed to have more mass or something. I'd asked him and he gave me this scientific jumbo about frontal lobe completion and full muscle mass building around twenty-five.

"So, I'm eighteen and not really grown?" I'd asked him.

Dad got that 'wheels turning' look that came before the Scientific Explanation. Shit, I was in for it. Couldn't I have the condensed version?

No. I was totally in the wrong family for that, I realized.

"Well, in your case, with your paranormal constitution it isn't certain what time line you would follow but in young males the frontal lobe is not fully realized until early to mid-twenties. One can only assume critical muscle mass completion would be in sync with that intellectual growth as well." He shrugged.

"So, I'm a he-she until then?"

Dad guffawed. How was being prepubescent even mildly amusing?

"No, Caleb. You're... a guy." Dad tried for cool and totally missed it. Forgivable... I guess.

"Consider it a fine-tuning."

Well that certainly explained Jonesy.

I came back to the moment when Mom asked a question that made my stomach clench.

"How's Tiff?" she asked quietly and Onyx's ears lifted at the mention of her name, which struck me as odd. Mom's hands deftly worked the dough for pizza and I watched, my stomach knotting further.

The Dog smelled his Boy's scent change to one of coiled anxiety and the Dog's dream of catching the small furred creatures that dared to breach the yard halted, his entire focus shifting to the Alpha female and her scent as well.

They were making words of importance and the dog would smell the nuances of the trouble.

It could be pack trouble.

The Dog knew just what to do with that.

He would signal the Dead Ones.

They would come and aid the pack.

I found something to mess with on the counter and turned it over and under in my hands.

Mom waited through my fidget of nerves.

"She's not the same, Mom," I finally said.

"Well... of course not," she said, punching the dough in the center and I raised my brows.

Seemed like that dough was getting attacked.

"She's seeing that Nightingale woman?"

I nodded. Dumb name, good woman. Those were our thoughts, the group's. Tiff wasn't herself but she wasn't so... vacant anymore.

I looked at Mom and our gazes locked, we had a moment. She waited.

"She hasn't said what went down. And Carson's in kiddie jail..."

"Caleb..."

I put my hand up. "He's not getting what he deserves, the prick."

Mom's lips pursed and she punched the dough again.

I'd never seen her do it twice. She all but threw it in the bowl and covered it with the rainbow plaid cloth.

She met my eyes. "He's getting out soon?"

I nodded. His rich dad had greased the wheels and the Weller family didn't have the financial means to fight it all.

I told Mom that and she sighed.

"I have an idea," she said after a few long moments of silence.

She told me.

"I don't know if she'll go for it." I thought it was an awesome solution but... Tiff was unpredictable now.

"It'll make her feel more in control. Beating her brothers up and surviving her chaotic household is a lot different than having self-defense skills. And," Mom said, "I never again want to be in the position I was when Mr. LeClerc paid his visit last year."

Mom had been taking self-defense classes since that Loser had hit her. That was Mom, proactive squared.

She gave a small shrug, turning on the burner for the sauce as she did. "We women cannot always count on men to protect us."

I almost laughed out loud. That's the very thing I had been thinking they needed to do.

Mom straightened saying, "After all, it was a man who hit me. It was a young man that attacked Tiff in a place where she should have been safe."

She had a point, I hated to admit it. I guess I couldn't always think everything through from my perspective. I just couldn't wrap my head around a guy hurting a girl so purposefully.

But it happened.

It did happen. To women I knew and cared about.

I nodded. "Let me handle this, Mom."

"Okay, you do it your way but if it doesn't work, I'm taking the bull by the horns."

I cringed. I was definitely motivated now.

In the end, it wasn't me that got Tiff on the right track, it was Jonesy of all people.