After the visit to the studio, with his frustration mounting, Ryan retreats to one of his old vices. While the obsession with video games had seemingly doomed Mark and Devon, a greater danger looms just outside his window.
Excerpt:
A skipping rope slapped gently against the asphalt, each jump and each giggle caused candy-coated claws to dig into my mind, the claws digging deeper and deeper as my desire to join the girls grew.
“Wow! You did three skips that time! I wanna be good like that!”
I looked out the window and saw a skipping rope tied to a telephone pole. Two girls, one of them Kaylee’s age and one Ashley’s, were taking turns holding the rope. Each time they failed to jump the rope, they switched places. The whiney, nattering voice of the younger girl should have been a massive turnoff, like a beautiful girl with a mannish voice, but instead, it planted a powerful need, an alien yearning to reach out to these girls- to play with them, but it also caused a resurgence of doubt.
“Would they even want to play with me?”
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