A painful truth has to be revealed.
A short story for the February Music Motif Challenge.

Chapter 6

"You know your father didn't mean it," my stepmother said as I sat on the swing on their porch.

"He meant every word, Marie!" I said.

"You have to see things from his perspective, Luke," she said. "You don't know how embarrassed he was when he saw you on CNN. His friends let him have it really hard."

"No harder than me," I said. "Does he think I like to be called names? Does he think I like being picked on? Does he think I like being beat up?"

This chapter describes how Beverly argues with Judge Elizabeth about the inhumanity in the family courts and later gives Herself, Margaret and Sian the sweet delight of putting Judge Elizabeth on the receiving end of a typical Court-room style inquisition.

I didn’t feel good about what I’d done. Strike that. I felt absolutely awful about what I’d done, what Jimmy and coach Morrison had encouraged me to do even when I knew in my soul it was wrong. I‘d damn near killed that poor girl. Her punctured lung and compound fracture were entirely the result of my insanely hard hit, a hit I knew I should have pulled because I saw the kick go clean…

Another musical interlude.....

Halftime was over and we were down by 10. I gave a quick shout out to Karla who relayed it to Geoff. I had a hard time getting the guys to wait, but when they heard the opening strains of the song I’d asked for, they changed somehow. A batch of somewhat dispirited football players turned into a team of… Geee, I don’t know, but definitely something predatory and very nasty. They were stomping in unison and charged onto the field as the bleachers shook beneath the crowd.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJYN-eG1zk

Mother: Peter, why aren’t you wearing your favorite skirt?
Peter: The other boys will laugh at me!

To subvert your will to vengeance requires you to throw yourself to something with no understanding of mercy. So it will use you, take from you your very being, in the pursuit of its end. And if victory is achieved, then vengeance will toss you aside, unneeded and forgotten.

After there is something to be something avenged. Then there needs to be someone who seeks it and someone to be the tool of that vengeance

This chapter describes the run up to Christmas and a delightful Christmas present for Beverly.

Well, somebody mentioned writing a story centered a round a song. This one has always spoken powerfully to me.

We had been together since Junior High, but I was still scared. Make that terrified. It was the first time ever that any of my classmates would ever see me as I truly am, as I had always wanted to be. I knew I had the love of a good man, one who had wanted to have me on his arm for the Junior prom. And he’d made it clear he’d be crushed if I didn’t come this time and I loved him so much and… anyway, I said yes when he asked me.