[ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ]	“You decent?” Rob called before coming in. “You know your mom is passed out on the couch.” “Good. Maybe sleep will knock some sense into her.” He crawled into bed, really just a mattress on the floor, and curled up next to me. “So you don’t want to talk about it?” “I don’t know,” I replied, closing my eyes. “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.” “Well if my old man died, I’d be nothing but relieved.” “Yeah, but I bet if he dropped dead tonight, you’d feel hella guilty about saying that shit.” I felt Rob roll over onto his back and heard his breathing grow heavy. In the distance, I could hear the clank of the train tracks, the urban lullaby that often rocked me to sleep. I turned and stared at the ceiling as if the answers would show themselves if I stated at the blank white long enough. My mother’s words echoed in my ear with the far off clacking, “He’s your father. You should feel something.” I knew she was right. I should feel sad or upset that the man who helped bring me into this world, is no longer in it. But to me, he was just a faceless name on a check that arrived every month, court ordered child support. I didn’t even remember what color his hair was. I wasn’t upset that he died, I knew that much. How could I miss someone that I didn’t even know? But for some reason, the white ceiling began to blur as my eyes filled with tears. . . . . Mrs. Malarkey walked into her classroom a half hour before school was scheduled to start. The fluorescent overhead lights burned her blue eyes as she unloaded her bag onto the old wooden desk.