Taking Chances (Tales from Foster High) by Goode John

Author:Goode, John [Goode, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2013-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

Matt

I SPENT most of the night cleaning up broken glass and trying to assure my mom we were not the victims of a hate crime.

Some kids threw a rock through the window of what used to be my brother’s old room close to 3:00 a.m. and all hell broke loose. My mom started screaming while my dad came charging out of his room with a shotgun in his slippers.

And nothing else.

Recovering from the shock of learning that my dad either slept nude or had gotten lucky that night, I was barely able to keep him from storming out of the house like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. Only the threat that the people across the street loved to video everything slowed him down. He revved back up again, and I asked him if he wanted to be on an episode of Grandpas Gone Wild. Snarling threats, he retreated to the bedroom to put on some clothes.

My mother would only come out of her room after I assured her that, one, there were not armed people in the house and, two, I was going to clean up the broken glass myself.

Nothing dispels Mom-fears faster than the threat of one of their sons cutting themselves on broken glass.

She took the broom away from me and began systematically cleaning the glass up faster than I could have ever done. Once my dad put the shotgun away, and put on pants, we got a board from the garage and put it up over the hole. By that time, there was no way any of us were going back to sleep. So my dad made some coffee while my mom made us breakfast. They hovered around the TV, thinking the local news would surely lead with the “Wallace house gets window broken” story and were mildly disappointed when the anchor said nothing.

Around seven thirty, my dad looked at me and said very seriously, “Do not blame what happened on yourself, son.”

Which was, to date, the strangest thing ever said to me. I had been blaming the rock, so Dad’s pronouncement caught me off guard.

“Say what?” I asked after a few seconds of stunned silence.

“If those people have a problem with your life and feel the need to break our windows, that is not your fault.” He said it so grimly that I almost burst out laughing. I stopped myself before a giggle could escape my mouth. Dad was serious, and so was Mom. The hair on the back of my neck rose a little as I thought through what had really happened, at least as Dad and Mom saw it.

“Um, okay, Dad. Thank you for being there. I won’t blame myself.” The energy it would take to convince my dad that the broken window was just stupid kids and not a protest against my sexuality was too much for me to scrape together after being jolted awake at the ass-side of the night. I got up and put my plate in the sink. “I’m going to go take a run and see if Mr.

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