Read Online Darla's Story by Mike Mullin - Free Book Online

like, “Sounds nice, honey.” I said I
would not be going, sparking an argument that continued right up
until they left without me on that Friday afternoon.
    The last thing Mom said to me was, “Alex, why
do you have to fight me on absolutely everything?” She looked worn
and tired standing beside the minivan door, but then she smiled a
little and held out her arms like she wanted a hug. If I’d known I
might never get to argue with her again, maybe I would have
replied. Maybe I would have hugged her instead of turning away.
    Cedar Falls, Iowa, wasn’t much, but it might
as well have been New York City compared to Warren. Besides, I had
my computer, my bike, and my friends in Cedar Falls. My uncle’s
farm just had goats. Stinky goats. The males smell as bad as
anything short of a skunk, and I’ll take skunk at a distance over
goat up close any day.
    So I was happy to wave goodbye to Mom, Dad,
and the brat, but a bit surprised I’d won the argument. I’d been
home alone before—I was almost sixteen, after all. But a whole
weekend, that was new. It was a little disappointing to be left
without some kind of warning, an admonition against wild parties
and booze. Mom knew my social life too well, I guess. A couple of
geeks and a board game I might manage; a great party with hot girls
and beer would have been sadly beyond me.
    After I watched my family drive off, I went
upstairs. The afternoon sun blazed through my bedroom window, so I
yanked the curtains shut. Aside from the bed and dresser, my
bedroom held a huge maple bookcase and desk that my dad had built a
few years ago. I didn’t have a television, which was another
subject Mom and I fought about, but at least I had a good computer.
The bookcase was filled with computer games, history books, and
sci-fi novels in about equal proportions. Odd reading choices
maybe, but I just thought of it as past and future history.
    I’d decorated my floor with dirty clothes and
my walls with posters, but only one thing in the room really
mattered to me. In a wood-and-glass case above my desk, I displayed
all my taekwondo belts: a rainbow of ten of them starting with
white, yellow, and orange and ending in brown, red, and black. I’d
been taking classes off and on since I was five. I didn’t work at
it until sixth grade, which I remember as the year of the bully.
I’m not sure if it was my growth spurt, which stopped at a
depressingly average size, or finally getting serious about martial
arts, but nobody hassles me anymore. I suppose by now those belts
are burnt or buried in ash—most likely both.
    Anyway, I turned on my computer and stared at
the cover of my trigonometry textbook while I waited for the
computer to boot up. I used to think that teachers who gave
homework on weekends should be forced to grade papers for an
eternity in hell. Now that I have a sense of what hell might be
like, I don’t think grading papers forever would be that bad. As
soon as Windows started, I pushed the trig book aside and loaded
up   World of Warcraft . I
figured there’d be enough time to do my homework Sunday night.
    None of my friends were online, so I flew my
character to the Storm Peaks to work on daily quests and farm some
gold. WoW used to hold my interest the way little else could. The
daily quests were just challenging enough to keep my mind occupied,
despite the fact that I’d done them dozens of times. Even gold
farming, by far the most boring activity, brought the satisfaction
of earning coin, making my character more powerful, achieving
something. Every now and then I had to remind myself that it was
all only ones and zeros in a computer in Los Angeles, or I might
have gotten truly addicted. I wonder if anyone will ever
play   World of Warcraft again.
    Three hours later and over 1,000 gold richer,
I got the first hint that this would not be a normal Friday
evening. There was a rumble, almost too low to hear, and the house
shook a little. An earthquake, maybe, although we