I don’t look or act like I’m disabled. I work hard on my writing; my 60th published work since March 2009 will release on June 21, just in time for my birthday. I raise my kids (though they might argue about how well I do with that), I try to keep my house clean, and I have a part-time job outside my home. I can walk. I can think.

Except for the times when I can’t. I have fibromyalgia, a condition where sometimes I am in pain all over my body for no apparent reason. When it flares up, it can be a struggle just to get from my bedroom to my kitchen, and it sometimes hurts so much it keeps me awake at night. I get migraine headaches, which may be related to the fibro and which sometimes cause me to have trouble seeing, speaking, or thinking clearly.

I have post-traumatic stress disorder from things that happened to me or were done to me during my life from age two to age thirty-six. If someone speaks to me in a loud or angry voice, or if they touch me unexpectedly, or if they’re standing behind me and I can’t see them, it can trigger panic attacks or even flashbacks. The part-time job I mentioned is working for my father-in-law; he and my husband, who also works there, warn everyone they hire to be careful how they speak to or approach me, and they never leave me alone with any of the other employees unless I’ve said I’m comfortable.

I’m not posting this to whine or look for sympathy. I am a strong woman, and I have learned to manage these things and live my life. I’m just posting it to remind people that disabilities are not always visible, and you can’t always tell much about someone just from their appearances. And to remind everyone, myself included, that your disabilities and diagnoses and life experiences do not have to define YOU.

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As promised, here’s an excerpt–and blurb–from my novel Strong Spirit, (Reality Shift 6), which released April 22 from Featherweight Press.

Jonah Leighton’s part-time job isn’t going well, and he has come to the conclusion that retail work isn’t for him. After all, he plans to make a living channeling and doing energy healing, so he doesn’t really need a job. Unfortunately, his parents disagree. Fortunately, he’s able to get a new job at the town’s New Age bookstore, where he’ll be respected and will still be able to make time to spend with his best friend Shanna Bailey.

At the New Age store with Shanna one day, Jonah encounters a girl who is definitely experiencing some problems. The girl has been playing around with a spirit board, and has brought through a dead spirit. Jonah and Shanna learn that the spirit is intentionally draining the girl’s energy to try to rebuild his own life. If Shanna and Jonah aren’t able to separate the girl from the spirit, she will be the next potential portal for the entity that could destroy our universe.

EXCERPT:

I gaped at her. She wouldn’t look at me. I had to turn away. After the conversation she and I’d had, I would have thought she’d value herself more. She had been standing up for herself. Part of me was sure Ken had only said those words to manipulate her, and she was letting him do it.

With effort, I raised my vibration and quieted my temper. I knew how important being loved was to Shanna. And even when someone treated her in a way I found inappropriate, she forgave easily if they asked. She had a big heart, and I couldn’t see it as a negative, even when it led her to negative courses of action. I wouldn’t judge her, even if I didn’t agree with her choice.

This time, she allowed Ken to put his arms around her, but her energy field clenched and her body was stiff. She still hadn’t excused him for how he’d acted. That made me worry a little less. She would be on her guard with him, which would help her recognize when he wasn’t treating her well. It also might make her less willing to forgive the next time.

I didn’t want them to break up if Shanna was happy. But she wasn’t, as far as I could tell.

“For two people who supposedly love each other, you guys fight too much,” Mark said.

“Who’s fighting?” Ken demanded.

“We were earlier.” Shanna pulled away from him. “Mark’s right. We fight a lot. How many times since we started going out have we ended up in arguments about Jonah, or about phone calls, or about me not being where you think I should be, or about whatever else you feel like arguing about?”

“I don’t start the arguments,” he protested.

“Then who does?” Her voice rose. “Me? I don’t even know what we’re arguing about half the time! I don’t belong to you, Ken. I love you, and I am your girlfriend but I don’t belong to you. You don’t get that for some reason. You keep acting like I do, and I hate it.”

I turned away again, this time only for a second to hide my smile. Maybe she had accepted his apology too easily, but she wasn’t going to let him forget what he’d done. I hadn’t given her enough credit, and I was glad to be proven wrong.

“I know you don’t belong to me,” he said. “You’ve said so before. I haven’t forgotten.”

“I’m going to keep saying it until you get it through your head.” She folded her arms. “I don’t care if you don’t like hearing it. You need to understand.”

“I do understand. I’m just—” He glanced at me, then turned back to Shanna. “I don’t know why I act that way. I just don’t want anything to happen to you, and I don’t want to lose you. It took too long for us to get together.”

Mark opened his mouth to speak, and I held up my hand to stop him. Shanna needed to handle this herself. It wouldn’t benefit her if Mark and I jumped in.

“You don’t want to lose me, so you keep yelling at me and making accusations?” Shanna demanded. “How does that make sense? You know how my mother treated me. You heard some of the things she said and did, and I’ve told you some. You’re doing the same thing.”

“I’m not like your mother! I’ve never hit you.” He said it as if it made his behavior better.

“No, but I keep being afraid you might, because you get so angry and yell so much I don’t know what you’re going to do.” Shanna’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper.

Her words clearly hit Ken like a bucket of cold water. He stared at Shanna in shock. “Shanna, I didn’t know I scared you so much.” He took her hands. “I would never hurt you. Please believe me. I would never lay a hand on you, I swear. I’m so sorry you’ve been afraid I might.”

“Well, what am I supposed to think when you yell so much? Yelling means someone’s angry, and when someone’s angry, I get hurt.” She said it so matter-of-factly my heart broke. She should never have become used to that chain of events.

“I’ll try not to anymore,” he vowed, still holding her hands. “I really don’t want to break up. Give me another chance, please?”

She stared at him in silence for several seconds before answering, “I will if you promise to stop flipping out about Jonah, and actually keep the promise this time. He’s my best friend, and if you try to make me choose between you and him, you won’t like my choice.”

I wanted to give Shanna an ovation. To me, it would have been better if she’d broken up with him, but at least she hadn’t let him completely off the hook. She rarely stood up for herself to anyone, and after what she’d said on the way to the bus stop, I definitely wouldn’t have expected her to stand up against Ken. Maybe she had developed a better sense of herself, had realized how she deserved to be treated. She definitely deserved better than she received from Ken.

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In April, my novel Strong Spirit (Reality Shift book 6) was released by Featherweight Press. I’ve been looking forward for quite a while for this book, since the last Reality Shift book came out in November 2011. Hopefully readers will like this one and be glad to see the continuation of Jonah and Shanna’s story.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into, Strong Spirit at this time is likely to be the last Reality Shift book published. It isn’t the last in the series; I wrote ten Reality Shift books and was hoping all would be published at some point. But circumstances happen. Sometime in the future I might decide to self-publish the remaining four books, but given that my experiment in self-publishing an adult romance story didn’t work out so well, I’m not sure whether self-publishing Reality Shift would be a good idea.

So for the time being, the Reality Shift series is ending with a lot of questions unanswered, including the big one of whether Jonah and Shanna ever manage to permanently stop the entity that wants to enter our universe and would thereby destroy it. I won’t give the answer here just now. I’m going to explore some options for the rest of the series and see what happens. In the meantime, here’s the cover of the book, and I’ll share an excerpt on Teaser Thursday.

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And the final part of my YA contemporary short story “Some Nights.” Previous parts were posted on April 25 and May 2. 

That night, while Sam was at his computer reading through the emailed list of assignments he had to do during his suspension and messing around on Facebook, Elliot messaged him. Thanks.

You’re welcome. Sam hadn’t even realized Elliot knew his Facebook account.

Sterling kicked me out for good. He says I’m too disruptive. I won’t be coming back, so I just wanted to say thanks.

Wait, what? He read Elliot’s message again. The guy hadn’t even done anything. He hadn’t even stuck up for himself. How could Sterling throw him out of school?

I don’t care. I hate it there anyway.

That isn’t right. He wanted to strangle Sterling and all the other teachers who’d just stood around while Elliot got beaten on. They were blaming Elliot. Talk about stupid.

He said if I can’t be normal, I shouldn’t be there. He doesn’t understand I AM normal. I’m transgender. I don’t dress like a girl. I AM a girl.

Sam was still trying to process that when Elliot added, My parents didn’t want anyone to know. So don’t say anything.

I won’t. If people knew Elliot was transgender, it would probably make things even worse for him. But you shouldn’t be kicked out of school for it. If Sterling and the teachers knew you were transgender they’d have to let you stay, wouldn’t they?

They do know. We met with Sterling and guidance and the nurse before school started. Sterling said my records say I’m a boy, so I had to be a boy.

If it wouldn’t have broken the computer, Sam would have punched it. If Elliot was a girl, he—she—was a girl. It shouldn’t have mattered what a stupid piece of paper said. He didn’t know much about transgender people, but he knew the school had been wrong.

Again.

That’s f-ing ridiculous! he typed furiously. You and your parents could fight it.

I told you, I don’t care. Sorry you got suspended.

It isn’t your fault. He paused to think for a second, then added, I wonder what they’d do if a bunch of us guys showed up in dresses.

Elliot didn’t answer for a minute. Maybe he’d signed off. Sam thought about what he’d just said. He was entertained by the idea of organizing a bunch of guys to wear dresses to school just to show the school they were wrong. It shouldn’t have mattered what Elliot wore. It wasn’t his fault other people at school were jerks.

Finally another message from Elliot showed up. I don’t know about them. I’d be insulted. I didn’t dress that way to play or prove something. I did it because I’m a girl. You’d be doing it just because you felt like it.

Sam’s heart sank. The last thing he’d wanted was to upset Elliot. Sorry. I didn’t mean it as an insult. Just you were kicked out for the way you dress, and that shouldn’t have happened.

Doesn’t mean you should do the same thing. You aren’t trans.

Okay. Was just a thought. He felt like he should apologize again, but he didn’t. He hadn’t been trying to tick Elliot off, just to think of a way to protest what had happened.

I know. Just trying to make you understand. I know you aren’t trying to mock me. I wanted to tell you you’re the only one who stuck up for me. Pretty cool of you.

Thanks. Sam didn’t know what else to say.

See you around. Or probably not. My aunt lives in New York City and she says there’s a school there for kids like me. I don’t really want to be put in a “special” school, but at least there I can be who I am. Good luck.

Thanks. You too.

Thanks.

He signed off, and Sam sat back and stared at the monitor. There was no way Elliot should have been kicked out of school for being himself. Herself. Sam wasn’t sure which pronoun to use now. He’d always known Elliot was different. Everyone knew. It had never occurred to him there might be a reason for it.

The school had known the reason. They just hadn’t cared.

And probably no one else would have either. Warren and those guys definitely wouldn’t have. They would have still bullied Elliot. Everyone else probably would have still just stood around and watched.

Sam shut down the computer and turned off his light. Some nights he had nightmares about being bullied, but even in elementary school the real bullying hadn’t been too bad. And now it didn’t happen at all. Elliot had dealt with being put down and shoved and even hit every single day. Elliot was brave, and Sam had never even realized it because he’d never bothered talking to the guy. Girl.

It was too late to do anything about that. Elliot was moving to New York. Hopefully she’d be happy there.

Sam lay staring up at the ceiling. Some nights he worried about school or his family. Some nights he wondered if he could make things better. Change things in his life or for others. Some nights he just slept.

Tonight he made up his mind he wouldn’t let anyone else go through what Elliot had. He didn’t know what he could do about it, but he knew other kids who were bullied. The school didn’t do much for them either.

He couldn’t take on the whole school, but maybe being a friend to those kids would be enough.

He could hope, anyway.

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For the past couple weeks, I’ve been posting my short story “Some Nights.” (The third and final part will be posted on Thursday.) In this story, Sam learns that his classmate Elliott is a male to female transgender. Although he defends Elliott from bullies, Sam isn’t really sure how to treat his classmate, or what to do for her to show his support.

Being an ally to someone who is “different”, whether that difference is how they look or their sexuality or being transgender, or having a mental illness, or any of the many other ways people can differ from each other, to me just means showing them respect and support. I don’t know what it’s like to be a gay teenage boy, because I’m neither gay nor male, though I’m pretty sure I was a teenager once. That doesn’t mean I can’t let someone know I’m here for him as he’s dealing with recognizing his sexuality and coming out to others.

When I was a senior in high school, the boy I’d been crushing on for weeks asked me to be his girlfriend. I was thrilled! We got along great, and we had a lot in common.

But the following day, he asked to speak with me privately. In a quiet corner of the auditorium, he told me, “I’m sorry. I can’t go out with you. I’m homosexual.”

I was the first person he had told. And I wasn’t sure what to do. So I just went with my instincts. I told him that was okay, that I understood and that if he needed anything to tell me. I reassured him that we were still friends and that I didn’t think of him any differently.

What followed for him was horrible. His parents threw him out of the house. The church he and I belonged to also kicked him out. He ended up living at the YMCA for a while, until a friend took him in.

There wasn’t much I could do to change those events. My parents offered to let him stay with us, but he was afraid his parents would find him at my house, so he turned us down. I left the church and made it clear to the pastor that I was doing so because of how they had treated my friend. (The pastor said he would pray for me. I said, “Likewise.”) I made sure my friend didn’t need anything, and was there when he needed to talk.

That’s what being an ally is to me. Just being there for someone, supporting them when they need it, and doing what you can and what they ask of you to the best of your ability. It doesn’t mean pushing your assumptions onto them, or being in their face with offers of help. It means being there for what they tell you they need.

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This is the second part of the short story I began sharing last week. 

Sam went to school early the next morning, hoping to catch Mr. Tucker before homeroom. Mr. Tucker was already in his classroom, setting out specimen trays on the lab tables. He looked up and smiled at Sam. “What can I do for you this morning? You really need to try to avoid detention. I see you every time I’m in there.”

“My locker’s at the other end of school from my history class, and there isn’t time to get there.” Sam leaned against one of the tables. “How come no one does anything about Elliot?”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s always getting pushed around. Last week during gym, Jackson punched him in the stomach, and Mrs. Morin didn’t even say anything.” Sam paused as he realized how loud he was getting. He didn’t need to yell at Mr. Tucker. “Sorry. Like yesterday, you broke up the fight, then Elliot got detention for wearing high heels and being late for class. Even though he was late because of Warren.”

“And even though I gave him a late pass,” Mr. Tucker said. “I agree it isn’t fair.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” If he didn’t agree with what was happening, he should do something. He was a teacher. He could do a lot more than Sam.

“All I can do is keep breaking up the fights and reporting things to Mr. Sterling.” Mr. Tucker shrugged. “Maybe if some of you kids stood up for him, the bullying would stop. I don’t know. As I said, I agree it isn’t fair.”

“You agreeing with me isn’t enough.” Sam straightened. “Thanks anyway. I thought you might help. I guess I was wrong.”

“I’m sorry, Sam.”

“Sure.”

He left the room and headed for the office. If Mr. Tucker wanted to blame Mr. Sterling, Sam would just have to talk to Sterling.

He didn’t get there. The hallway was blocked by a group of students chanting something. Sam shoved through the crowd. In the middle of the group, Warren was holding Elliot by the dress.

Dress? Sam blinked. Yeah, Elliot was wearing a dress. A green one with a black sweater over it.

Warren punched Elliot in the face. “Get out of our school, queer!”

Sam didn’t even think, just yelled, “Get Mr. Tucker!” and plunged into the middle of the fight.

****

By the time his mother showed up, Sam’s nose had pretty much stopped bleeding. Warren hadn’t been too impressed about Sam stopping him from beating the crap out of Elliot. Sam didn’t care. He was pretty sure he’d given Warren a black eye, though he hadn’t seen Warren since all three of them had been hauled into the office.

His mother didn’t say anything to him until after she checked in with the secretary. She sat next to him and took a deep breath. “I’m trying not to be angry, Sam.”

“I was sticking up for someone else.” Sam looked at her. “No one else would. They just stood there cheering the other guy on.”

“You should have just told a teacher,” his mother said.

“Teachers don’t do anything around here.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. He should have figured she would say something like that. She bought into the whole safe school thing. She didn’t know how things really were.

Mr. Sterling walked out of his office with Warren and a guy who looked too much like Warren not to be his father. Warren glared at Sam as they passed him. Sam pretended not to notice.

Once Warren and his father were gone, Sterling beckoned Sam and his mom to follow him. He closed his office door behind them and sat at his desk. “Fighting is an automatic five-day suspension for the first offense.”

“That isn’t fair!” Sam shook and didn’t bother trying not to yell at Sterling. If the guy had been doing his job, Sam wouldn’t have been in the fight in the first place. “I was sticking up for Elliot, because you and most everyone else here doesn’t do a damn thing for him.”

“Watch your language,” Sterling said.

“Screw my language.”

“Sam.” His mother put her hand on his arm. “Calm down and just tell Mr. Sterling what happened.”

Sam took a deep breath. It wouldn’t matter what he said. He could already tell Sterling had no intention of listening to him, especially since he’d just yelled. Sterling didn’t appreciate having students yell at him.

“Warren was beating on Elliot again,” he said when he figured he could talk without exploding. “Everyone was just standing around cheering. Elliot wasn’t fighting back, so I did it for him.”

“Warren said Elliot started it,” Sterling said.

Sam shrugged. “I didn’t see the start, but I’ve never seen Elliot fight anyone, so I really doubt he started this one. Yesterday Warren pushed Elliot around just because he could. Because no one here does anything about fights.”

“I am doing something.” Sterling leaned forward. “If you have a problem with the way this school is run—”

“I have a problem with the way you don’t handle bullying.” Sam looked straight at the principal. He wasn’t even close to intimidating, and Sam wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “You hear the same news I do, I bet. All the kids who kill themselves because they’re bullied. And you just let it keep happening to Elliot. I did the same thing. So does everyone else around here. It’s like Elliot deserves it or something, except he doesn’t. So I did something about it.”

“Elliot has been disrupting this school since last year, and we’re dealing with it,” Sterling said. “Meanwhile, we’re here to talk about you. Fighting is five days. Automatic, no exceptions. I’ll take you to get your books out of your locker, and I’ll have your teachers email your assignments to you.”

He stood. “Next time, take care of yourself, Sam. Get a teacher to take care of other people. That’s their job, not yours.”

“If they actually did their job, I wouldn’t have had to.” Sam stood too. “Screw my books, and screw you.”

He walked out of the office. He’d probably end up in even more trouble now, but it was worth it.

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Yep, back on this topic again.

The whole “let’s keep this place looking decent” project is definitely a work in progress! But some progress has been made. Older daughter is trying harder to keep her clothing out of the living room (she has a habit of taking off sweaters or over-shirts in the living room and leaving them on the couch or the floor), and younger one is trying harder to remember that her boots belong in the front hall, not in front of the couch.

Their school papers and backpacks and stuff are still a big problem. Fortunately, older one will be graduating high school in June, so she won’t have quite as much to cart around and clutter up the house with. Younger one will be returning her textbooks for the summer and I’ve already told her all the papers and folders and such are not going to spend the summer in the living room. She either finds a place in her room or the basement, or she throws it away.

It’s interesting how having a cluttered house can make everything feel cluttered. When the house isn’t neat and tidy, I feel irritable and my mind races all over the place, and then I shut down because I’m so overwhelmed by how much of a mess the place is. And, to be fair, I shouldn’t be the only one worrying about the mess, because I’m not the only one here. I think all four of us shut down, because none of us can see an easy way to take care of it, but if we all worked together it would be taken care of pretty quickly.

Hopefully the last few weeks of spring cleaning and decluttering will have a lasting effect on our house and our outlooks.

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I’ve posted this story in other places online, but I don’t recall whether I’ve posted it here on my own blog. So I’m posting it. This is a short story I wrote based on a song and on something my daughter told me. 

Elliot Jenkins was just plain weird. Sam Thompson had known Elliot since third grade, seven years now, and in all that time he’d never seen Elliot act like a normal kid. Most people just ignored him, but it was hard to ignore a guy walking up the science wing hall wearing women’s boots with high heels clunking so loud against the floor that they echoed. Other kids glared but didn’t say anything. Elliot didn’t even look at them.

“He’s going to get it.” Sam opened his locker to take out his fifty-pound history book. “He’s never worn anything like that before.”

“Elliot always gets it.” His friend June turned to watch Elliot. “He walks better in heels than I do.”

“Hey, queer!” Down the hall, a tall guy shoved Elliot against the wall. “Why don’t you walk like a real man?”

Elliot mumbled something. In the noise of the hallway, Sam couldn’t hear him but guessed Elliot was begging the junior to leave him alone.

I should do something. Sam hefted his book and closed his locker.

And stopped. He didn’t want to take on Warren Morris. Warren probably wouldn’t do much to him. People just didn’t mess with Trouble, the band Sam and his friends had started in elementary school. They were too well-known. But Sam didn’t want to take the chance. He didn’t owe Elliot anything. Besides, if the guy hadn’t been walking around in high heels, Warren probably would have left him alone.

“Hey, go to class.” Mr. Tucker, the biology teacher, stomped out of his room and grabbed the bully by the arm. “Don’t start, Warren. You know better.”

“Yeah, give me a hard time. What about him? You just going to let him walk around looking like a girl?”

“Come on, Sam.” June tapped his arm. “We’re going to be late.”

The late bell rang, and Sam groaned. He was always late for history. Now he’d end up with detention. Just what he needed.

He followed June up the hall and forgot about seeing Elliot shoved into a locker. It didn’t have anything to do with him anyway.

****

In detention that afternoon, Elliot dropped his backpack on the floor and slumped into the seat beside Sam. “I shouldn’t even be here.”

“What did you do?” Sam didn’t really care. He and Elliot weren’t friends. Talking to Elliot just gave him something to do until the detention monitor showed up.

“I was late for class because some gorilla tried to pick a fight.” Elliot sighed. “Mrs. Doherty gave me detention for being late, and Mr. Sterling gave me another one for breaking the dress code.”

That didn’t even make sense. Sam didn’t see anything wrong with what Elliot was wearing, at least not anything that violated the dress code. And it hadn’t been Elliot’s fault he was late for class. “Did Sterling do anything to the kid who pushed you around?”

“Of course not. I deserved to be pushed, apparently.” Elliot picked up his backpack and put it on the chair beside him. “That’s pretty much the way it always goes. Someone gives me a hard time and I get the flak for it.”

“That sucks.” It didn’t matter if he liked Elliot or not. No one deserved to be bullied, and Elliot definitely didn’t deserve to be punished for it. “This school’s stupid sometimes.”

“Yeah.”

Mr. Tucker walked into the room. “Hello, boys. I’ll be your monitor today. You know the drill.”

He didn’t say anything else for the entire two hours, and neither did Sam and Elliot. Sam took out his MP3 player and turned on his favorite music while he worked on his homework. The only good thing about detention was it gave him a chance to do homework without having to listen to his baby sister crying or gurgling or whatever babies did.

At the end of detention, he packed up his stuff and left without saying anything to Elliot.

****

That night, Sam couldn’t fall sleep. He’d been bullied in elementary school. He didn’t know anyone who hadn’t been. But he’d never had it as bad as Elliot. The pushing in the hall had been minor compared to some of the things he’d seen and heard about. The guy was a walking target.

Of course, if he’d just dressed like a normal guy he probably would have avoided a lot of crap. It still wasn’t his fault people picked on him, though. They should have just ignored him if they didn’t like how he looked. And nothing excused the way the adults at school treated him.

“I should do something for him.” Sam looked at his alarm clock. It was almost midnight. He’d been trying to fall asleep for over an hour. In the other room, his sister whimpered. He waited, but she didn’t start to cry.

He didn’t know what he could do for Elliot. It wasn’t up to him to stand up for the kid. Teachers and administration were supposed to do that. They’d seen Elliot being bullied. If they didn’t care enough to stop it, Sam probably wouldn’t be able to.

But it wasn’t right that the adults didn’t do anything. They were supposed to make the school a safe place. At least the principal had said so during the first day assembly, just like he did every year. School was supposed to be a safe place, and if anyone felt unsafe, they should talk to a teacher or guidance counselor.

He wondered if Elliot had talked to anyone. And if he had, why nothing had been done to stop the bullying.

It wasn’t Sam’s problem, but he decided he would go to school the next day and talk to Mr. Tucker about it. Out of all the teachers, Mr. Tucker might actually do something.

Someone had to. He’d heard too many stories about people who took their own lives because they were bullied. He didn’t want to see that happen to Elliot.

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Yeah, I guess it must be spring cleaning season. LOL

Last week I complained about the clutter in this apartment. And then I realized how much of it is due to my daughters. They don’t put things where they’re told to put them, even when they’re told repeatedly. They’ve taken one corner of the living room and turned it into their jacket-and-backpack dumping ground, even though they’ve been told not to leave jackets there and to put the backpacks neatly against the wall.

I’m not going to rant about my daughters, but there is a certain amount of respect for me and for the household that just isn’t happening with them.

This is life with teenagers…

So I’m laying down the law with them. Something’s left in the wrong spot, they’re given one chance to move it. If they don’t move it, it goes away. I don’t care if it’s a jacket, or my younger one’s work boots that she needs for school, or the older one’s purse that contains every one of her worldly possessions. They complain to me about the house being too messy for them to bring their friends over, but this is not my fault; I’m not the one making the mess. I’m the one who’s given up on cleaning it because it isn’t mine and because when I do clean, it takes them exactly five minutes to trash the place again.

This is your friendly neighborhood author on a Mom-tear… Tune in next week to see whether we survive.

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A few weeks ago, I shared a snippet from the book that would be The Dark Lines #7, Storm, which introduced readers to nine-year-old Jeffrey York, a boy with psychic control of the weather. Change in the Weather takes place a few years later; Jeffrey is now thirteen and is returning–no one is quite sure how–from being taken by the force of darkness. If the entire Dark Lines series were published in the order written, this would be book #28. The narrator in this scene is Blake Walker.

The darkness proved him wrong. Although he wasn’t the closest to it, he was the darkness’s first choice of victim. It came for him quickly, and had him before we could react. Faith turned away and buried her face in my chest. I couldn’t blame her. I always hated watching someone be taken, even when he was a jerk who’d threatened my girlfriend.

“Why didn’t you do anything?” the other guy screamed. “Why did you let it have him?”

“Why did you?” Matthew countered. “You’re as capable of fighting as we are. Or did you figure you wouldn’t be able to defeat it?”

“Matthew, you really need to knock it off.”

At the sound of the voice, we all turned. It wasn’t as surprising as it should have been to see Jeffrey coming toward us. Not for Faith, Matthew, and me, at least. Phil hadn’t been with us a few months earlier when Jeffrey had appeared in the darkness’s world; his eyes widened. “Jeffrey?”

“Hi, Phil.” Jeffrey gave him a quick hug. “Good to see you.”

“Are you back this time?” Matthew asked. “Or is it like before?”

Jeffrey shrugged. “Guess I’ll find out when this is over. So are we kicking this thing’s ass or not?”

Even with his aid, you will be unable to defeat me, the darkness said.

“Sure we will,” I said out loud. “Your buddies are probably sharing their strength with you. But we know how to counter that. Go ahead. Who are you going to take next?”

Without replying, the darkness struck at Faith. We should have expected it. She screamed, and the rest of us scrambled to protect her. To fight the darkness, one of us needed to drain its power while the others added their strength. We hadn’t even discussed who was going to fight it this time, and now we had no chance. Time was up.

Faith knew how to fight, though, and began draining the darkness’s power as it tried to take hers. The rest of us opened our minds to her, allowing her to use our power to increase her own. Even the remaining thug added to Faith’s strength, probably figuring it was his only chance of escaping.

“Blake, remember what you did last time?” Jeffrey said. “You have to do that again. It’s even stronger, and so are the others.”

“Got it.”

Faith had enough people helping her that I was able to switch my focus to something only I could do. If the darkness was drawing strength from the other forces of darkness, the only way to stop it was to separate it from them. Which meant blocking its mind.

I concentrated on surrounding its mind with light. That would be the most effective way to close it off from the others; none of the forces of darkness could tolerate light, of course. It wasn’t easy to block the mind of a force of darkness, but gradually I felt the block taking hold. As it did, Faith relaxed; with only one force of darkness to contend with, it was easier for her to defeat it.

The force of darkness made no sound as Faith finished the job of taking its power. It just gave up. No wonder; it had failed its fellows. I’d be surprised if this force of darkness was allowed to continue existence, but if not, it wouldn’t be us who destroyed it. It would be the others.

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