Zach had taken place at the kitchen table, going over the ads his father had circled in the hope that Mr Brooks’s expert eye had found some steals. One that particularly stood out was an ad for a ‘65 Mustang, which would have been great. Had it not been just a bodywork with no engine, interior or anything that made a car, well...a car.

“Put that away and set the table,” his mother said, going over the last steps of making their meal, which somehow managed to smell like nothing at all.

“It’s Tara’s turn,” Zach sighed, trying to find another ad.

“But you’re here anyway, so it’ll be done in five instead of fifty minutes from now. That goes double if I have to get her back from whatever book she’s stuck in. Come on, chop chop.”

“You already…” Zach started.

“Chopped the vegetables,” Mrs Brooks finished for him, familiar enough with the common enough response to her request for hustle.

Zach put the papers away, which meant neatly sweeping them onto the floor and under his dad’s seat, then got up to do as told.

“Tara,” Mrs Brooks shouted, not looking up from her work, “Tara! Dinner!”

Had anyone been paying attention to the noises coming from the second floor, they would’ve noticed the telltale sound of Tara’s door opening and closing, noticeable by the fact the hinge had squeaked pretty much as they could remember. It was followed by another common noise. The door to Sawyer’s room opening and, due to a faulty hinge, slamming back in place.

Nobody paid this a second thought, as that sound was familiar too, none of them realizing that Sawyer was at his job.

Tara appeared a few moments after the slam, having taken the stairs two steps at a time.

“You lied,” she said to her mother, frowning as she saw her brother setting the table.

“Oh good,” Zach said, placing the plates and cutlery down on the table, “It’s your turn, so be glad I already did half.”

“I’m not talking to you,” she said shortly, which was Mrs Brooks signal to cast her an inquisitive look, though she was immediately distracted by her pans when they seemed to boil over.

“Oh dear,” she said to herself, “Zach help me with this… Stir this pot. Come on.”

Zach nodded, taking over for his mother who rushed to empty the pots.

Ten cuss-filled minutes later, Mrs Brooks had dinner on the table.

Zach poked a fork at his dinner. The carrot he tried to impale resisted the first attempt, then finally gave way to the prodding silver. He had to force the cutlery down to finally get his food on his fork.

“Not a success, huh?” Mrs Brooks asked, crunching a half raw carrot between her teeth, “At least they ain’t raw…”

“Raw might’ve been better,” Tara complained, “Wish we had a dog I could give this too.”

“Now, Tara…” Mister Brooks chided, “Your mother worked hard on this. Give it a chance.”

“Didn’t work hard enough,” Tara muttered, sliding her carrots to the side of the plate so she could start on mashed potatoes which somehow managed to taste like cardboard.

“She’d prefer to have a medieval roast,” Zach joked.

Tara put her cutlery down and left the table.

“...You may be excused,” Mister Brooks mumbled and turned to Zach, “What’s with her?”

Zach shrugged, “Wouldn’t let her get a movie, she’s kinda cheesed about it.”

“What movie?”

“I don’t know, dad. Something with a bunch of half naked women on the cover, pretty much porn.”

“Got it for yourself?” Mr Brooks teased his son.

“No, dad. Didn’t seem like my thing. I got some karate movie…”

“Karate huh? More importantly, did you find a car?”

“Nah. Kevin got all the goof stuff shipped out this morning.”

Michael took another bite of his food, then, in an attempt to not continue the bland meal, he kept talking.

“You know you’re too picky though?”

“Dad?”

“That’s why you’re still single…”

“Dad…?”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“Leave the boy alone,” Cheryl shushed her husband, “She just moved to California.”

“We're just friends, mom,” Zach sighed.

“You would’ve been cute together,” she mused.

Mister Brooks saw his son slump towards his plate and, not wanting a repeat of that morning’s cereal incident, he immediately changed the subject, “Honey, I’m sorry but…”

“Pizza?” Cheryl responded, not waiting for him to finish the thought.

Zach and Michael nodded in unison.

“Oh, thank god,” Cheryl laughed, “Mom said this’d be good. Got it from a health mag or some such. …I’ll tell her it was no good.”

“...Doesn’t Grandma normally cook with three kinds of cheese?” Zach asked, “Maybe this’d be improved with that.”

Mrs Brooks left the table, clearing the scraps from the plates before answering, “Grandma has a new gentleman caller, who’s all about the health food.”

“Poor grandma,” Zach laughed.

Mrs Brooks didn’t respond, picking up the phone instead.

“You’re not going to ask us what we want?” Michael asked.

“I know what you want,” she smiled, “You guys always get the same thing anyway, but do you know what I want…?”

“For Zach to do the dishes?” Mister Brooks suggested.

“Man,” Zach sighed, getting up to do the chore, “We could’ve had a dishwasher..>”

“We could have,” Michael agreed, “If you weren’t spending my money on a car.”

“No, listen,” Zach said, “We found one along the road…”

When Zach finished his story, interrupted only by his mother ordering the pizzas, his father looked thoughtfully at the clock, then shook his head.

“Somebody should get rid of them if there’s hobos there.”

“They’re not hurting anybody,” Cheryl, who had taken to a cup of tea at the dinner table, added, “They probably just want a place to stay.”

“...What about the Malone girl?” Michael asked.

“Who?”

“The girl that got taken by gypsies!”

“A,” Cheryl said, “That was in the fifties and B, that was a sensation story. It didn’t happen at all.”

“I’m just saying, Cherry Pie, not all hobos are nice hippies like your parents were.”

“Oh, hush,” she laughed, “Go set up the VCR.”

“Can’t Zach do that?”

“If I’m doing the VCR,” Zach said hastily.

“I’m not doing the dishes, son.”

Zach shrugged and went back to work.

“While you do that,” Cheryl said, putting her empty cup down, “I’ll go see if I can’t calm Tara down. Good luck, boys.”

An hour or so later, Tara had indeed calmed down, but was still sulking as she ate her pizza in front of the TV, currently displaying an animated boy dressed in green tossed a pig into the moat.

Cheryl read a book and Zach sat on the floor in front of the couch messing with a Rubik's cube, barely registering the movie on the screen. It hadn’t interested him the first two times Tara had rented it either. Only Tara, who was in her pajamas and sat leaned up against her father, really paid attention to the movie, occasionally commenting on it while Michael humored as best as he could.

Zach bit his lip in annoyance when he lost another field of squares on his cube, then frowned when the doorbell rang.

“That’s odd…” Cheryl said, putting a book down and sharing a concerned glance with her husband. Both had been dreading the same thing for at least a year, a police officer offering them the horrid conclusion of Sawyer’s driving habit. Unconsciously, Michael pulled Tara closer.

Zach looked at the clock.

“His shift isn’t over,” he reassured his parents, “Probably just Mrs Summers with...oh, right.”

“Thank god and too bad,” Michael said, “Can you go get it?”

Zach put the cube down, stretched then lazily headed for the door, suppressing a yawn when the doorbell rang again.

“Oh, Christ…” he muttered when he looked through the window in the door to see who it was.

He opened the door, leaned down against the frame and folded his arms before finally greeting the caller.

“The fuck do you want, Mitchell?”

“Private Jones,” Mitchell corrected him.

Zach rolled his eyes. In a town of loonies, Jones didn’t stand out much, but he had made up for that by being extremely annoying to his peers and the general community. He wasn’t generally seen during the day, as he was busy with what he called ‘JROTC training’. … A program that wasn’t even present in the general area, so mostly he ran around the fields and bushes pretending to be Rambo.

...Cattle made a sorry excuse for Vietcong.

Until recently, Mitchell had been overweight and with the help of his father, a retired drill sergeant, he had gotten in shape, but the boy took everything too seriously and was now convinced that he was a one man army.

He arrived at the Brooks family home dressed for the occasion, wearing camouflage pants and a tank top reading ‘ARMY’ that was slightly too tight for the fat that still had to turn to muscle. To complete the look, he wore a cap to keep the sun out of his eyes.

“I’m here, citizen,” Zach’s classmate said, “To bring your attention to a pressing issue.”

This was the moment Zach noticed the clipboard in Mitchell’s hand. Another petition…

“You’re not in the army,” Zach said, not suppressing the yawn this time.

“But you’re still a citizen, citizen!” Mitchell threw back triumphantly.

“Actually,” Zach smirked, “I joined the FBI. Summer internship.”

Mitchell took a moment to register the sarcasm, then made a face, “No times for jokes, Zach. It’s pressing.”

“So you said. Let’s just get this over with then…”

Zach was, like most people in town, very familiar with Mitchell’s ‘Anti-communist’ petitions, which generally started with Mitchell learning that something was about to change, positive or negative. The most famous of these, which came once or twice a month, was a petition to have Mrs Drover removed from the school board. Her evil communist crime was changing the chocolate milk in the grade school to whole milk, which was an attack on all America held dear. … Or so Mitchell wanted the people he harassed to believe.

Zach looked expectant to find out what Mitchell had found this time.

“As you are aware, there’s a foreign,” Mitchell started, stopping in the middle of the word to make a face as if he were about to retch before completing it, “exchange student coming…”

“I’m not aware,” Zach said calmly.

“As far as I can tell,” Mitchell continued, unperturbed, “The girl is Chinese.”

“So?”

“So, she is probably a communist spy, here to sow dissent in the greatest nation on Earth.”

Zach arched a brow, “Look, Mitchell…”

“Private Jones!”

“Private Jones,” Zach sighed, “What would a Commie spy do in a high school. Paint blue lockers red?”

“Sow dissent!” Mitchell assured, “Set up the youth to disobey their parents.”

Mitchell leaned in conspiratorially, “It’s what the Nazis did, you know.”

“Nazi...communists?” Zach asked, unsure how else to respond to this.

“Hitler…”

“Hitler?”

“Hitler was a vegetarian!” Mitchell called, as if that proved his point.

“I hear my mom calling,” Zach finished the conversation, slamming the door in his classmate’s face.

There was the start of the doorbell again, which stopped a moment later and was followed by the odd flopping sound of improperly tied army boots flopping off towards the next house.

“Who was that, son?” Michael asked when Zach returned to the living room.

“Village idiot. Jones with some dumbass petition again. I’m going to take a shower in case whatever he has is contagious. Don’t start the Karate kid without me…”