The Middle, a short story (Out of the Bassline prequel) Part 1

WARNING: This story contains strong and at times offensive language. I tried my best to capture how kids at my middle school actually talked :)

"Hey, don't write yourself off yet

It's only in your head you feel left out

Or looked down on."

--- The Middle, Jimmy Eat World

What hurt Dexter Byrd the most wasn’t getting cut from the Burton Middle School Bats basketball team for the second consecutive year. What hurt him the most was how it happened.

“Donny, I’m open!” Dexter cried to the point guard with the ball at the top of the key. It was nearing the end of the tryout, and the boys were playing a five-on-five scrimmage, shirts versus skins. Of course Dexter had been chosen as a skin, showing off his pale, bony physique to the world. Everyone was falling over themselves to show off their skills to the coaches as much as possible. The problem for Dexter was, he didn’t have nearly enough of those skills.

“No, you’re not!” Donny Damon replied. He was right. The kid guarding Dexter was short and built like a refrigerator, but he had Dexter fully clamped down and unable to get open, not that it was all that difficult to clamp Dexter down.

Donny passed the ball to their teammate Vinny Bosa on the wing. Vinny drove into the paint, but soon found himself locked up as well, a set of arms waving in his face. Dexter had always had a hard time getting open and getting anyone to pass him the ball, but this time he scampered around the refrigerator kid and found a clear path between himself and Vinny. Amazingly, Vinny passed him the ball and he caught it. This didn’t happen often, and he was determined to do something with the opportunity.

Not picking up the basket properly with his eyes, Dexter thought he was closer than he was. He threw up what he thought would be an easy layup, but it swished through nothing but the air. He lurched forward and somehow, the ball was tipped back to him. Now he was actually in range for an easy layup.

He put the ball up. It bounced off the back rim and back to him. He put it up again. This time it was too far, bouncing to the other side of the hoop. He managed to grab another one of his own rebounds. Desperate to get the layup, he tried to dribble a little closer. The ball bounced off his left foot and straight to a guy on the other team, Mason Ambrosio, who picked it up with a smirk. 

“Goddammit!” Donny cried in frustration, not aiming it directly at Dexter but making it clear what he was upset about. Dexter didn’t have much time to pout before someone shoved him from behind and he stumbled to the hardwood floor, narrowly avoiding a faceplant but not avoiding a major blow to his adolescent ego.

Dexter’s tryout had been a disaster from the start, with a flurry of nerves bubbling through his stomach that amplified his already mediocre skills at the sport. When he’d had to dribble through a series of cones on the gym floor, the ball had bounded in seemingly every direction imaginable, except where he needed it to go. His passing skills weren’t a whole lot better, and the shooting drills resulted mostly in air ball after air ball, only a few shots mercifully coming close enough to graze the backboard or rim. The catastrophic scrimmage then followed. At the end of the exhausting hour, the boys were forced to prove their physical fitness by running suicides across the gym floor: sprinting to the first foul line and back, half-court and back, the other foul line and back, then all the way across the gym. Despite being one of the skinniest kids on the court, Dexter was left in the dust by the other thirty-five hopefuls for the 2017-18 season, and his would-be teammates barely pretended to cheer for him when he finished. When the torture was over, his body gave him no choice but to puke up his embarrassment into a trash can. Little did he know, the torture was just beginning.

Dexter was undersized for an eighth-grader, 5’2” and 100 pounds with short brown hair and unstylish horn-rimmed glasses. Physically, he was about as average as it got, which he knew wasn’t good enough for Burton basketball. He’d had some success in his rec baseball league, a sport he was more passionate about and one that was more friendly to athletes of all shapes and sizes. Sadly for him, Burton didn’t have a baseball team, and he needed to play a school sport to fit in. There was nothing worse for popularity than being a nonathlete. It would be social suicide. He had a good idea what to expect when the head basketball coach, Julian Butters, called him into his office after the tryout.

“Dexter, I just want you to know that you put in a great effort,” Coach Butters said, clasping his hands on his desk as he looked solemnly at Dexter. Butters was a nice guy, a stern but likeable geometry teacher who was widely beloved by his students and players. As soon as the words “great effort” came out of his mouth, Dexter could sense the ignominious fate that lay before him.

“Unfortunately, you’re still just not quite at the level we need you to be at right now to find a place for you on the roster,” Coach Butters said. “I appreciate you coming out here and giving it 110 percent these last two years, and I wish you the best of luck going forward. Maybe not with high school basketball, but with whichever route you do choose to pursue.”

Barely squeaking out a “thanks” from his seemingly cotton-filled mouth, Dexter trudged out of Coach Butters’ office, forlorn. He had hoped to at least have the dignity of making the first cut this year, at least come close to making the team. Those guys got a little more respect in the hallways than the first-round cuts. The coaches had seen something in them. Sadly, though, all Coach Butters had seen in Dexter was heart and effort, no real tangible athletic skill. What was the point of guts and scrappiness anyway if there was no actual talent to back it up?

Dexter feared hearing a chorus of laughs and jeers as he slinked back out into the hallway, texting his mother that he was ready to be picked up. All he heard, however, was an awkward, unsettling silence. Among the classmates waiting with him in the hall, who had already learned their basketball fates, were Mason Ambrosio, Vinny Bosa, and Donny Damon. 

“How'd it go in there, Casper?” inquired Mason, a gawky kid with short hair and glasses who had no more muscle to his credit than Dexter, but enjoyed the advantage of far greater height. “Casper” was the nickname that had been bestowed upon Dexter for his ghostly white skin, which would never tan no matter how much time he spent in the sun. “Let me guess, you're going to the NBA draft next year?”

Vinny, Donny, and a couple other kids looked at each other and guffawed, doing a very poor job of hiding their laughter in their shirt sleeves.

“No, I didn't make it,” Dexter admitted. He wasn't very quick or clever with spoken words, and he struggled to come up with witty replies to the barbs that constantly flew his way.

“No shit, you puked in a fucking trash can,” Vinny said under his breath, seemingly talking to the others but not Dexter. Another round of thinly veiled chortles ensued. An average-height but muscular black kid with a buzz cut, Vinny had a penchant for passive-aggressive humor.

“Yeah, we figured it didn't work out for you, buddy,” Donny put in, clapping a “friendly” arm around Dexter’s shoulder. Tall, tan, blonde, and muscular, Donny had it all going on. He was the ladies’ pet and the men's regret of Burton Middle School. “But hey man, keep your head up. You stay grinding, and maybe someday you'll be able to make the JV team in high school.”

This time they didn't even try to hide their laughter. Dexter felt his breath turning shallow, his face turning beet red, and his throat starting to choke up. Don't you cry, he thought. Don't you DARE fucking cry, asshole. He desperately racked his frazzled brain for a comeback.

        “What, like you guys played so great out there?”

        “Actually, I did,” Donny calmly boasted. “I cooked as I always do on those dribbling drills, and my jumper was on point. I made the cut. What about you guys?”

        “Fuck yeah, I got a little gassed on the suicides at the end, but I pulled through pretty good,” Vinny said. “I'll be moving on, too. Mason?”

        Mason looked down at the floor for a split second, then looked back up.

        “Well, Butters told me my ball handling is where it needs to be, and my suicides were impressive,” Mason said. “But my jumper was just a little off today, and he said I need to keep working on it. Said it was close, but there’s just not a place for me at the moment.”   “Oh, bullshit, man!” Vinny cried. “I’ve seen your J, you be drainin’ that shit. Butters still around? I’ma go talk to that dude.”

He started to head back toward the coach’s office, but Donny restrained him.

        “No, no, no, don’t do it, man,” Donny advised him. “You don’t wanna fuck things up for yourself. But I agree, Mason, that is a load of bullcrap. Butters knows you’re good enough to be on that team. Just go out for the freshman team next year at Strickland, and you’ll be there.”

        “Yes sir, that is the plan,” Mason said. “I'm gonna be cookin’ with you guys next year for sure.”

        Dexter had taken a seat on the floor and buried his head in his phone, trying to escape the conversation, but what he was hearing now infuriated him too much to ignore. Why did Mason get encouragement from the other guys, but not him? It lit that fire in his ego, and he had to say something.

“I’m gonna go out for the freshman team next year, too,” Dexter lied. “See how that goes.”

He had already decided that if he didn’t make it this season, it was the end of his basketball career and he would focus on baseball going forward. He just had to save face somehow. Instead of validation, however, all he got in response was more derisive laughter.

“It’s not gonna go well,” Vinny scoffed bluntly.

        “Yeah, I would try to stick to what you’re good at,” Donny said. “Which, I don’t even know what that is. Schoolwork, maybe? You get good grades, right? Stick with studying.”

“Baseball,” Dexter said indignantly.

“Oh, I’m Casper and I can play baseball,” Vinny said mockingly. “No one cares. Baseball is gay, and it’s boring to watch anyway.”

         Dexter’s blood boiled. Despite being in the same boat as Dexter — or relatively close to it — Mason was cackling right along with the other guys. Something inside Dexter snapped, and he got up into Mason’s face.

        “What are you laughing at, Mason?” Dexter choked out, trying to eke every ounce of toughness he could out of his pubescent voice. “You didn’t make it either.”

        “Oohhhh,” Vinny and Donny swooned, and for a second Dexter felt proud.

        “You just gonna take that, man?” Donny asked his buddy.

         Mason looked shocked for a second, then recollected himself. He got back up in Dexter’s face, towering over his undersized adversary with an unhinged look in his eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, Dexter saw his mother’s Toyota Corolla pull up just outside the door. She had to pick him up on tryout days, as it was too late for him to catch the school bus.

        “Listen, Casper, you and I are not in the same league. Not even close,” Mason said calmly, shoving a long, skinny finger into Dexter’s chest. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Mason’s sycophants oohed and ahhed again, and Dexter felt a wave of shock and panic wash over his entire body, giving him raging stomach butterflies as he went into fight-or-flight mode. The only response he could think of was to bolt out the door to his mother’s car, and the second he did this, he knew full well it made him look like an absolute bitch.

“I’m sorry you didn’t make the team, sweetie,” said Dexter’s mom, Barbara Byrd, in her thick New York accent as she drove him home. “There’s always next year. What was that boy saying to you when I arrived, though? That was weird.”

“I don’t know, he’s just a jerk or whatever,” Dexter muttered, staring out the window as the suburban houses passed them by. “Said he was gonna kill me or something.”

Barbara nearly had an aneurysm, and they were lucky she didn’t crash the car into the grassy median. Dexter wished he could put the words right back into his mouth. 

“WHAT?!” she cried. “Said he was gonna KILL you? My baby?! Oh hell no, I am turning this car around!”

She swerved the Corolla to the left, making an illegal U-turn through a gap in the median.

“Mom, no!” Dexter yelled. “What the heck are you doing? You can’t go into my school! That's my place!”

“Oh honey, I just don’t understand why you’re so embarrassed by me,” Barbara said. “I promise you, everybody else in that school has a mother.”

“Probably not everybody,” Dexter pointed out. “And trust me, it doesn’t make me look good. Plus, we can’t even go back to school now. It’s after hours. You need to calm down.”

“All right, all right, fine,” Barbara agreed. “But we’re going into that school first thing tomorrow, before class, and getting to the bottom of this.”

Dexter groaned and buried his face in his hands.

“So this boy who you’re alleging threatened to kill you, what was his name?” asked Principal Lionel O’Shaughnessy, who sat across from Dexter and his mother in his office. “Mason, you said?”

“Yes,” Dexter grunted. There was no place in the world he wanted to be less than right here, right now.

“And what was Mason’s last name?”

“Shoot, I don’t remember.” 

Dexter knew he had heard Mason’s last name before. It was on the tip of his tongue, but it just wasn’t quite coming to him when he needed it the most.

“Something that starts with an A, maybe? Anderson, Andrews, something like that?”

“Well, let me see,” the principal said, punching in some words as he searched the school database on his computer. He turned the monitor around so Dexter and Barbara could see it. On the screen were a few different students’ yearbook photos.

“We do have both a Mason Anderson and a Mason Andrews. Do either of these young men look familiar to you?”

Dexter scoured the pictures closely. Neither kid looked familiar at all, but it had to be one of them, right? 

“No, I don’t think it’s either of them.”

“Okay, it looks like we have one other Mason here at Burton. Mason Ambrosio. Is this him?”

Dexter squinted at the guy in the picture, who had shaggy brown hair and no glasses. It sure didn’t look like the right kid, and he didn’t want to throw the wrong person under the bus.

“Uh … no. I don’t think so.”

“All right, then,” O’Shaughnessy said. “It looks like that’s about all we can do for you at the moment, but we’ll keep an eye out for anything that sounds like a … homicide threat.” He rolled his eyes slightly.

“Really, that’s it?!” Barbara said indignantly. “That’s all you can do for my son? You can’t find the right picture? This boy needs to get in trouble yesterday!”

“Yes, ma’am, without your son being able to identify the correct student, that’s all we can do. I don’t have time to sit here with you and go through every student in the directory. Now, respectfully, I’m going to have to ask you to leave my office.”

As Dexter and Barbara exited the office in shame, the bell rang and a gaggle of students flooded the hallway in the between-classes rush. There were no obvious insults hurled in their direction — the kids were a little too afraid to be rude to someone’s mother — but Dexter heard the subtle snickers ringing out of the corners of his ears. He noticed every funny look he got, especially from attractive girls. He saw Mason standing with Vinny by his locker, looking at him as the two whispered and laughed. After Barbara left, he realized that Mason’s face did look like the one in the last picture. Ambrosio, that does sound familiar, he thought. Fuck, he must have cut his hair and gotten glasses. Oh, well. His mother was gone. He wasn’t about to go squealing back to the principal now.

A few short months later, it was April, and spring was in the air. Dexter stood alone in an aisle of lockers, an island unto himself as he changed into his gym clothes as quickly as humanly possible. He was too self-conscious about being seen in his underwear to be social during this activity like the other boys. His first-period gym class featured many of the kids Dexter spent most of his day with, as well as the girl he spent way too much time thinking about.

He stood awkwardly in a cluster with Aidan Plainview, Nick Narvaez, Chandler Reddy, and Mike Lefebvre, trying to look like he fit in but never really being a part of the conversation. In fact, he couldn’t even tell what they were talking about most of the time as they chattered and laughed in their hushed whispers, rarely making an effort to include him.

Like Dexter, Aidan, Nick, Chandler, and Mike were high-achieving students who took mostly advanced classes. It was just a stroke of bad luck that they had gym together too. Dexter had known a lot of these guys since elementary school, even been really good friends with some of them at certain points. But in middle school, something changed. As everyone’s brains and bodies started to develop, they realized that some people were stronger than others in the areas that mattered most in middle school: looks, athleticism, and coolness. When Aidan, Nick, and Chandler realized that Dexter wasn’t up to snuff in these areas, they realized they couldn’t be friends with him anymore. It wasn't the right look for them. Escaping from him, however, wasn’t so simple — they still had classes together all day. Mike, on the other hand, was a kinder soul and a bit more sympathetic to Dexter’s plight.

“What are you guys talking about over there?” Dexter asked, trying lamely to be included.

The four of them stopped talking dead in their tracks, looked at each other, and laughed.

        “Why are you over here, Casper?” snarled Aidan, a tall, freckle-faced ginger. “Stop following us around. Go put on a sheet and haunt people or some shit.”

“I haunted your mom last night,” Dexter instinctively shot back. Silently, he patted himself on the back, but the blow didn’t land the way he had hoped.

Chandler, a shorter and slighter boy of Indian descent, fake laughed to highlight the weakness of Dexter’s insult. 

“Ha, ha, ha. So original. At least his mom isn’t busy protecting him from bullies,” Chandler snapped.

“Ohhhhhh,” everyone swooned.

         "Got ‘eem!” cried Nick, a tan and muscular kid who always wore tank tops — or wife beaters, as he liked to call them.

         “Oh, you guys leave him alone,” said Mike, a humble guy who sported a do-rag and spoke with a bit of a blaccent despite being white. “It probably wasn’t your idea, right, Dexter? It was your mom's.”

         “Yes, exactly,” Dexter jumped in.

         “Well, why didn’t he stop her then?” Nick asked. “He’s a big boy. Hell, he’s probably gonna go run to the principal and tell on us if we’re not careful. Hey everyone, Casper is a rat!”

         “You know you're gonna get whacked if you keep this up, rat,” Chandler added.

Dexter rolled his eyes. He didn’t even know what they were referencing, and it felt like he could never win these verbal sparring matches with a three-against-one mismatch. 

“You guys get your permission slips for D.C. yet?” Mike asked, changing the subject. The eighth-grade class trip to Washington D.C. was coming up, and Dexter was looking forward to seeing some cool history and traveling without his parents for the first time ever. He used the thought of D.C. to give him some hope as he wandered away from the new conversation and gazed toward the girls in the class, who were off on their own island, completely separate from the boys. His eyes locked in on Cassandra Norris, a tall, slender brunette who had captured his attention a while back. Cassandra was his first real crush, a prominent member of the cheerleading squad and seemingly the center of every social happening at Burton. Dexter had spent many days and nights with Cassandra in the back of his mind, picturing her in her white T-shirt and short blue gym shorts, cowering in the back of the gym with her girlfriends as the boys hurled dodgeballs around. If only I could be the big, strong man to protect you, he thought. The only problem was, he had never actually spoken to Cassandra in his life, and the mere thought of it sent shivers down his spine.

“What are you staring at, Byrd?” Aidan scoffed. “Go talk to her.”

“No,” Dexter choked out.

“Why not, man?” Chandler asked. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Dexter could think of a lot of bad things that could happen, and their encouragement didn’t seem genuine. They just wanted to see him make a fool of himself.

“Yeah, go shoot your shot, bro,” Nick said. “Go spit some game, show her that Casper charm. Her panties will be soaking wet.”

“‘Oh Casper, babe, you’re so hot,’” Aidan moaned in a high-pitched voice, doing his best Cassandra impression. “‘Fuck me with your little one-inch cock.’”

The three goobers fell all over themselves laughing, dying to see Dexter go for it. Dexter looked at Mike, who shook his head.

“Nah, man,” Mike mouthed to him. “Don’t do it.”

Dexter gave Mike a thumbs-up and strolled further away from the group.

A sweaty hour later, Dexter was sitting in history class, scrutinizing his performance in that day’s dodgeball game. He’d had a couple of good chances to get Nick out and hadn’t been able to, later being eliminated by a ball to the stomach from Aidan. Damn, that would have been a great chance to show ‘em what I’m made of. The quality of his gym class determined the quality of his day just a little bit too much. 

He sat in his spot next to Donny Damon and observed his playful banter with Cassandra, who sat in the aisle across from them. Dexter would try to join in the conversation when he could, but his contributions were rarely acknowledged. He did his best to at least laugh and make eye contact with Cassandra. After all, that was the next best thing to words, right? Words were too hard. She was a girl. Still, Cassandra only seemed to have eyes for Donny’s effortless charm.

When the school day mercifully ended, Dexter stared out the window of the school bus on his way home, looking forward to the start of his baseball season coming up that weekend. He was still a rec-leaguer and not a stuck-up travel ball kid, and he was okay with that, still confident in his ability to make the high-school team next year. He excelled as both an infielder and a contact hitter, and most importantly, he felt at home on the baseball field, not just playing it to try and fit in. The guys on his team were laid-back and actually nice to him, not like the assholes at school. It was one of the few places that brought him peace.

Another thing that brought Dexter peace was listening to music. Not being very in touch with pop culture, he usually enjoyed the pop songs that played on the bus radio. They gave him a glimpse of what was in, what the kids were listening to these days. It gave him an idea of what would be needed to someday become cool enough to fit in. The cookie-cutter Hot 100 pop music on the radio, however, wasn’t exactly Dexter’s cup of tea. Songs like “Hey-Oh-Oh” by The Skinny Jeans and “Strawberry Summer Shine” by Kaylee Katz were catchy to listen to, but they didn’t make Dexter think and feel many things beyond those few minutes on the bus. The music that did make him think and feel, however, was the pop punk he listened to in his ear buds. Emo bands like Red Knight, Your Natural Friendship, Tranquility? Away from the Rave, and especially his favorite, Rise In Girl, created music that felt like it was made specifically for Dexter, songs about emotional turmoil and a feeling of not belonging. Although many of their lyrics centered around messy relationships, an experience he had yet to have, it made him feel a little less alone to know that not everyone else’s life was sunshine and rainbows. Even these handsome, stylish guys with their skater clothes and eyeliner, who had no shortage of success, money, women, and coolness, still seemed to have trouble staying happy, and it was this feeling of relatability and kinship that made Dexter feel like everything would be all right. The emo movement had been out of style for nearly a decade now, but Dexter knew it would never go out of style for him.

As he wandered off the bus at the stop a few blocks from his house, dreaming of what it would be like to someday be in a band, he heard a familiar voice call his name.

“Yo, Dex!” Mike called out as he stepped off the bus. Mike got off at the same stop and lived a few houses down from Dexter, but they had still never hung out outside of school before.

“Yes, Mike?”

“Wanna come play some ball at my place for a bit?”

Dexter didn’t get invited to classmates’ houses very often, and this wasn’t an opportunity he could pass up.

“Sure … heck yeah, man. Let’s do it!”

“Did you know Mason Ambrosio said he was gonna kill me?” Dexter asked as he threw up a three-pointer on the backyard basketball hoop at Mike’s house, which nearly went in before bouncing off the back rim. “That dude is, like, psycho or something.”

Mike grabbed the rebound and popped his own three from the very back of the concrete court, which swished effortlessly through the hoop.

“Yeah, don’t listen to that shit, man. Ambrosio’s so full of shit, even his eyes are brown. But I heard you brought your mom to school. Don’t be lettin’ that happen again. Take charge.”

Dexter put his head down as Mike took his own rebound and shot him a bounce pass.

“I know. Like you said, she made me do it.”

He paused and dribbled back and forth a few times. 

“How’d tryouts go for you? I didn’t hear about it.”

“Man, I made first cut, but just barely,” Mike admitted. “They told me my ball handling and passing were a little shaky, but my jumper was so money, they had to let me through.” He smiled proudly. “Don’t know how the next round’s gonna go, though. We’ll see.”

“Hell yeah! You got this, dude,” Dexter encouraged him. It was nice to have someone he could actually root for instead of secretly praying for his downfall. He drove through the paint and threw up a one-hand layup, banking it in.

“Ay-o! Bank’s open today, baby!” Mike cheered. He got a strange, mischievous look in his eyes as Dexter passed him the ball.

“Hey, man,” Mike said suddenly in a hushed tone. “You wanna go watch some porn?”

Dexter had yet to do much exploration into the world of adult entertainment until right now, with Mike Lefebvre, on the computer in his bedroom with the door unlocked. The door was unlocked because Harold and Barbara Byrd refused to put a lock on it, not trusting their 13-year-old son to be left to his own devices.

Mike wasn’t gay, Dexter was pretty sure. He just wanted a place where he could explore his desired corners of the Internet with minimal risk of getting in trouble, at least for himself. Dexter wasn’t sure how he felt about Mike transferring the risk over to him, but with the proper precautions, they would be able to hide their exploits from Harold and Barbara’s astute parental detective work. Besides, it was fun to take a chance and live on the edge a little. As they watched two smoking hot lesbian actresses go at it, Dexter felt a rush of adrenaline, almost like he was a bad kid for once in his life. He wanted more of that thrill, that taboo sense of adult adventure and excitement. Plus, the video was giving him a better understanding of how these things really worked.

“Oh my god, that’s so hot, dude,” Mike said in wonder as he took in the action on the screen. “I gotta go use your bathroom.”

Later that night, Dexter returned home from Mike’s house after going back to play a few more games of one-on-one. He was surprisingly starting to hold his own in some of the games, although Mike mostly edged him out by close scores. His calm, confident mood, however, didn’t last long when he was greeted by a stern, disappointed-looking Harold and Barbara Byrd at the front door.

“Honey, we have to talk to you about something,” Barbara said, glaring at him with her arms crossed.

“It’s about the videos we found on your computer,” Harold said. “I think you know what we’re talking about.”

Dexter tried to play dumb and look confused. “Uh, no. I don’t.”

“Oh, Dexter, don’t be stupid!” Barbara cried, sounding half bemused and half exasperated. “We know about the little peep show you and that boy Mike were having in your bedroom today.”

“Huh? What even is that?”

“Now Dexter, don’t you worry, I think what happened is completely normal,” Harold said sympathetically. “This is what boys your age do. You’re just learning about sex, and it’s normal to want to explore the wonders of the human body. The female one, especially.”

He chuckled and shot Dexter a wink. Dexter wanted nothing more than to sink into a hole in the ground.

“Well, I’m not so convinced it was just the female body!” Barbara yelped. “What were you and Mike doing in there? And what was he doing in our bathroom for so long?” “Nothing! I don't know, I swear!”

“I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you,” Barbara said, glaring at him as she got up in his face. She squinted closely at her son, making eye contact and pursing her lips as she moved her head slowly from side to side, trying to read him. Finally, she stepped back.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. But still, no computer for a week. That content is not appropriate for viewing in my household. And don’t see Mike for a while.”

“What?! Why?”

“Unfortunately, you will have to listen to your mother, Dexter,” Harold said. “Just take a week away from the World Wide Web to think about everything. And don't go telling the boys at school about this.”

TO BE CONTINUED ...

Click here for Part 2