The walk back from the GAT house was nothing short of painful even if it wasn’t that far. Honestly it was like three blocks from the GAT house to the dorm, so I don’t know what I was complaining about. I walked to the elevator, remembered that it was broken and began my long trudge up the stairs. Finally clearing the 4th floor landing, I reached into my pocket to retrieve my dorm key and walked down the exposed balcony deep in thought.

Webster’s dictionary defines Speed as the fallowing: the rate of change of position along a straight line with respect to time over a set distance. In other words, the quicker you can get from one place to another. The question is what do you, when your family has spent the last two generations in search of ways to accomplish this goal faster and faster. Would do you do when the family business is the search for more Speed. For Robert ‘Robby’ McGuire the answer is easy. You grab your sister and strap on a pair of Formula One racecars then go for broke.

First up, the backstory of Tink, AKA Tabatha. One of the first few people to call the ranch a home. Born in Boston, Raised between the Midwest and New England This is the short story of how she ended up in California.

1996

“You took your sweet time getting here,” Aleah said to me sharply as I walked through the front door of the GAT house. There were about twenty girls sitting in the living room all of them with varying levels of annoyance written on their faces. Why were we here? What was going on?

“I walked as slowly as I could,” I snapped back. She rolled her eyes and pointed to an empty chair across from Tiffany.

“Okay, now that EVERYONE is here,” She said, glaring in my direction. “Let’s get to work on our little problem.”

More talking heads, I'm afraid. This novel will have a slow build to action.

Part Two

Melody looked up as Aaron approached her open door, seeing him even before he knocked on the frame. She rose, smiling, to welcome him.

"I am very glad to see you. I've tried to keep up with what's happening to you and your town and clinic, but you people are all pretty quiet."

I took a deep breath and pushed out through the door of my dorm, it was the day I’d been dreading for weeks, at least since I’d had time to think about life after the initial GAT house incident. My parents were in town, actually they were waiting for me in the quad. I checked my phone, it was 10:15 in the morning, I had seventy-five missed messages from the GAT chat, and one missed message from Sakiya. She really liked checking up on me.

I had signed up for the “Vicksburg’s First Annual Womenless Beauty Pageant” because it was being held to provided relief for the Yazoo Delta, a diamonded shaped region of land that started in Greenville, Ms and ended in my own town The region was known for three things, dockside gambling, cotton, and the Blues. It was also covered in seven feet of water from point to point. The money raised from the pageant was to be used to provided relief from the flood water and help the people of that region recover.

“Todd Remeika?” The therapist called, poking her head out the door just enough to see into the waiting room.

“Uh, yeah, that’s…me,” I nodded, not moving from my chair. I could hear the muscles in the necks of every other patient creaking as they turned to look at me. Oh, right, yeah, I was supposed to get up. I stood up from the chair, straight as a shot and dropped my phone on the floor. Picking it up, I jetted across the floor and nearly slammed into the therapist who was now holding the door open just enough for me to get through.