The Miscalculation
2012
One
THEY FIRST DISCOVERED TAYLOR Hanson upon their return from Berta's third husband's funeral.
No one had been particularly shocked or moved by the death, as they had all been waiting around for it to happen. It had been a typically raucous funeral, Berta had been typically drunk, and the family was, typically, not speaking on the ride home. The drive was an unnecessarily long one that took them down a winding, abandoned highway. They were all used to this drive – the forty-five minutes it took to get anywhere and sleepy, lonely little house that waited at the end. Nine Old Highway 86 was the site of an old family plantation – a little house by the big front yard – just behind a half-mile long driveway. None of them wanted to live there anymore, but they had nowhere else to go.
When they reached the house, they were overwhelmingly horrified to see him standing on the roof of the garage.
"What in the name of our Lord Almighty is that?" Diana leaned forward from the backseat and pointed in her son's direction.
He'd gone to the trouble of stripping himself to his modest pink briefs and he stood quite defiantly on the edge near the gutters. He may have been more appropriately accessorized with a beer or cigarette, but he left those behind with his pants, which were nowhere to be seen.
Walker, though only somewhat horrified, found his son's behavior to be a perfectly rational response to waking up halfway sober in Providence, North Carolina. "Well, dear," he explained, "It seems our son has finally come home."
"Taylor?" Zac asked, leaning forward. The tightly wound knock-off Burberry scarf he'd been wearing all morning kept his neck from craning naturally, so his body hung awkwardly over the dashboard as he looked. "That son of a bitch."
"Well, look at that," Berta chimed in, rotating to get a better view.
"You deal with this," Diana snapped as she slammed the car door.
Zac patted his father on the shoulder. "Have fun with that. I'm going to grab some lunch. Grandma, shall we?"
After a few moments alone in the car, wherein it was decided there was no "best way" to approach the matter, Walker reluctantly confronted his half-naked son. "What the hell are you doing?" was the first thing that came out of his mouth, followed immediately by, "Your mother is going to kill you."
"Defying mortality." Taylor scratched his balls and flatly added, "Nice to see you too, Dad."
"In your skivvies?"
"If a man's going to go," the boy announced, removing his hand from his crotch and lifting it towards the sky in an over-dramatic, Cesarean manner, "He may as well be naked as the day he came."
Walker rubbed the back of his neck where he felt the cramp coming. "Yeah, but you're not naked, son."
"Close enough."
A staunch never-nude, Taylor would never have stripped down even in the warmest of weather. The flashing of his briefs was the penultimate protest. He was not bothered by the chill in the late December air or by the bluish veins that had begun to appear beneath his bare skin.
"So, what? You're just going to…stand there?"
Taylor broke his stare with the horizon and to look down at his father. "No, I mean, I'll jump eventually."
"Not much of a drop. Ten feet at best. The most that's going to do is bruise something."
Many had labeled Walker as a lackluster father – from his own father to his brother to his wife. His style of parenting had been laissez-faire at best, and aside from his son's current position on the rooftop, Walker thought Taylor had turned out normal enough.
"Am I supposed to talk you down?" he asked frankly. "I'm not going to try because you won't listen anyway, but for the sake of your mother's temper, I'm just going to put it out there. And how did you get up there in the first place? I don't see a ladder anywhere."
"Crawled up the drain pipe," Taylor answered matter-of-factly. "That structure is a lot flimsier than I remember. Kind of wobbled a bit when I got onto it, and look, Dad, I'll be fine." Taylor tossed his head and glanced back up to the tree line. His hair had grown much longer, and Taylor's silhouette could have easily been mistaken for one of a very flat-chested woman.
"All right. You just look like an ass up there, I want you to know."
"I know." Taylor shifted his weight. "Hey, what's for lunch?"
"Whatever they brought for the funeral. The fridge will be stocked for weeks."
"Eh, really? Another funeral?" Taylor grabbed himself again. "That didn't take long."
It was a valid response. Edgar had lasted only ten months after marrying Berta, and that alone was an accomplishment. Natural death or not, no man should have to meet his end in goulash.
Walker dug his hands back into his pockets. "I'll just tell your mother—"
"Diana," Taylor corrected.
"I'll just tell Diana that you're…?"
Taylor clenched his jaw. "Don't tell her anything," he instructed. "Just say I'm preoccupied. Pondering the universe. Defying mortality."
"That you're standing half-naked on the roof, face-to-face with God? Good. I'll see you tonight then. You might want to put the pants back on before too long; it's supposed to get frosty."
"Yup."
"Great. Welcome home."
Before entering the house, Walker held his breath for good luck. His son stubbornly folded his arms across his scruffy chest. When Taylor was younger, much younger, he would have protested like this when they punished him. Only then, of course, his stubbornness would have been endearing, and he would have been wearing pants.
TAYLOR HANSON'S ARRIVAL in Providence was by no means a miscalculation, as his brother had insisted. The drive from New York to North Carolina was, without a doubt, an arduous one. Twelve hours without traffic down I-95, several stops to refill the gas tank, and a bag of tomatoes swimming in Italian dressing demanded far too much planning for a mere wrong turn down the interstate. No, Taylor was far too meticulous for that.
You see, he'd lived more than half of his life, a paltry thirteen years of it at least, by one simple philosophy: instant gratification. He was meant to live by far nobler pursuits, but one single incident in his childhood ultimately changed the trajectory of his future. We'll get to that in a moment.
For now, let's focus on the brief history of Taylor's appearance on the roof.
On December 22, 2012, Taylor lay sprawled across the stairs of his brownstone. His extremities stretched out at unthinkable angles. Despite the chill in the morning air and the frost that had gathered on the plot of dirt next to his gate, he was clad only in a brown t-shirt and jeans, modern staples that cost him the same as last month's rent. The fly of his designer jeans was halfway down, the button undone. To a passerby it would have appeared that he had intended to remove the pants entirely, but exhaustion and, for that matter, intoxication, had taken over. The elastic band of his magenta-colored briefs was prominently displayed. He was asleep, no doubt, and had been for just over an hour; a puddle of saliva collected at the corner of his mouth and soaked through his longer hair. One of his shoes, it should be noted, dangled helplessly from the end of his foot.
Hours earlier, he had arrived at Sullivan's apartment in Chinatown with a bag full of weed and a handle of whiskey. For a Buddhist neighborhood, the Christmas décor was uncomfortably conspicuous, so as he passed by a display of wreaths and light bulbs, he casually tore them down and stuffed them, too, into his bag of tricks.
There was a lot to accomplish in a short matter of time, and at the top of his list, directly above consuming the entire bottle of Jack Daniels, was Julia.
Taylor's fondness for Julia was as powerful as it was embarrassing. If one were to crunch the numbers, they could, with confidence, say that too much of his time had been devoted to winning Julia's affection. His efforts were, of course, entirely futile, yet his misguided and ill-informed childhood had led him to be somewhat of a hopeless romantic as well as a bit of brass who just couldn't take a hint. He was flattered by the simplest smile, the most innocent acknowledgment, and always read far too much into her monosyllabic text messages.
His friends, Sullivan especially, had no interest in dissuading the pursuit as it always proved entertaining to watch Taylor make a complete ass out of himself in front of her.
Just before his arrival in New York, there had been the necessary Breaking Up episode with a wide-eyed brunette from his hometown. It had ended rather melodramatically, and since then it had been meaningless sex and morning-after scrambled eggs he made as a parting concession. Whomever his latest lay had been usually liked his eggs, often commented on how fluffy they were, and then she'd take a rather long walk of shame back downtown. He usually showered immediately thereafter.
It wasn't so much that Taylor had given up falling in love; he'd just never believed in the concept. That sort of pursuit had never really been a goal of his, to be honest, and you should know beforehand that this sort of love is an insignificant element to the story. Taylor only had the capacity for one belief, and that was finality.
Julia had meant nothing much to him – just a girl, a conquest, a goal to accomplish before running out of time. His interest had been heightened, undoubtedly, by the competition he shared with the clock. He'd fallen for her quickly, instantly it seemed, and had since clung to every moment with her fully knowing there would only be a few left. The finality of it all had gripped him and turned him into an inconsolable neurotic. It had also led to the making of several bad decisions, but one could argue the two were mutually exclusive.
Sullivan's slanted, pre-war apartment was already crowded by the time he arrived, and he had to push his way through a sea of sweaters and scarves to find the kitchen. A large, ostentatiously colored banner greeted him. "Apocalypse Now – Drink Til the End," it read in glitter paint. Someone had gone to the trouble of gluing a condom over the "o"s. They'd hired a DJ they had no intention of paying, and in the center of the living room was an inflatable pool whose chocolaty contents were already staining the hardwood floor beneath it. Bodies, techno, garland, a bottle of organic cucumber vodka were being paraded through the crowd. A group of people Taylor had never before seen was jumping on a mattress that had been pulled into the living room. More noticeably, the defenestration of furniture had already begun – the coffee table, a desk chair, and the wine rack already lay in splintered pieces on the sidewalk below.
"Have you done everything?" Sullivan squeezed in next to him. Unfortunately short by genetic fault, Sullivan came only to Taylor's shoulders.
"For the most part." Out of years of habit, Taylor felt his back pocket. "Is Julia here?"
"Seriously? That still hasn't happened?" Though Taylor hovered over his friend, he was instantly dwarfed by Sullivan's judgmental gaze.
"I'm working on it," he said unconvincingly as he removed his shoes.
Nathan, whom Taylor had only just met one week earlier, snatched up the shoes before asking, "You need these?"
"Doubt it." He looked down at his feet, the blue argyle socks that were stretched over his toes. He wished he'd made better footwear decisions for the occasion. "Have you seen Julia?"
Shoes in hand, Nathan shrugged. "Have you checked the bathroom? Girls are always in the bathroom."
Taylor blankly stared back at Nathan. He resented people who answered questions with other questions. "That's it? That's the best you can come up with?"
Nathan paused for a moment. "No need to be a dick about it, she's probably here somewhere. Christ."
"Sorry, I just…I just really need to find her."
But Nathan had already disappeared into the crowd, no doubt chucking Taylor's shoes out the window along with Sullivan's collection of porn.
He winced, only once, at the unfortunately appropriate yet unoriginal music selected for the party, an array of Prince's "1999" and R.E.M.'s "End of the World as We Know It." Sullivan had never been terribly original, and given the circumstances, it would almost be disrespectful not to play the songs.
Taylor carried the bottle of Jack to the group he knew best, squatting in a corner where the couch once was. An elegant hookah stood in the middle of the circle, and a very potent scent of marijuana floated up to greet him.
"Guys," he saluted, taking a seat next to Elizabeth whose lips were wrapped around the hookah pipe. She waved with her free hand.
"For the record," Chandler said, "No one here has seen Julia."
"Fuck you, Chandler." Taylor couldn't stop the red that flushed into his cheeks.
"Sit down, shut the fuck up, and pass the whiskey this way," Chandler instructed.
Taylor unscrewed the bottle and handed it off to his left. "What are we toasting to?"
"Do you even have to ask?" Elizabeth coughed, waving the hookah pipe in Taylor's direction.
Bottle in hand, Chandler stood up from his spot on the floor. "Ladies and gentleman," he began, waving the bottle temptingly at his captive audience, "I'd like to make a toast."
Taylor took a hit from the hookah and instantly felt dizzier. The floor beneath was littered with pockmarks from years of misplaced hookah coals that had burned through the hardwood. They'd left behind seared, blackened spheres that had been covered up with various pieces of furniture and rugs. Now that the apartment was slowly being emptied, he could see the traces of their college weekends, their lazy Sundays. He basked in the memory, in the pot that was laced with God only knew what.
"To the years that brought us here, and the nights we never remembered," Chandler began. "To the nights we never wanted to remember, and the days that were always too short. To the destruction of Sullivan's personal property—" this prompted a few cheers from the group — "and that asshole on the turn tables we'll never have to pay. To Taylor never getting fucked, and to Elizabeth's really terrible poetry –"
"Fuck you, Chandler."
He winked at Elizabeth and continued. "To emptying our bank accounts and never having to regret it. To the final night. To the end, my friends."
Taylor exhaled. "To the end."
IT WAS POMPOUS of them to have thrown together this End of the World party. Intoxicated as he was by only 10 o'clock that evening, Taylor was already feeling somewhat cynical and insurmountably disappointed that the party had not spiraled out of control, and, to his knowledge, there had been no orgies, overdoses, or otherwise character-smearing, pre-apocalyptic chaos. Though several bodies lay prostrate on the ground surrounded by discarded Solo cups and a sticky residue, the mood was rather somber.
The cluster around the hookah had grown silent, only occasionally offering up a childhood memory or a political argument. As the evening had progressed, Elizabeth's clothes became scarcer; her shirt was now tangled around his clumsy feet. He had smoked several times before, but resigned to the fact that This Was It, he suddenly found himself sentimental for the things he'd never experienced,.
His head lolled around on his neck in a classic wet noodle fashion. No one had warned him that extreme quantities of alcohol, when mixed with marijuana, resulted in a belligerently disoriented high so confounding the only thing he could do was think about vomiting. He had expected to feel something when the high hit – some sense of greater purpose or hilarity or hidden truths. But everything just smelled like pot. His hands smelled like pot. The stereo smelled like pot. Thoughts smelled like pot.
"Are we on the Oregon Trail?" he asked no one in particular. "I want to be in a cart."
Most of the party had made its way onto the roof, where undoubtedly there was talk of finality and sex and new friendships. Someone will have run into that person that shared a bus with them once. They'd never had a reason to talk before, but now that they had this in common – this night, this roof, this end – suddenly they shared everything.
Taylor had lost sensation in his face, an impressive eight shots of Jack Daniels pumped through his veins as he felt helplessly around his nose and mouth. Had he not found the entire situation hilarious, he may have been concerned, but the sensation that the face he was touching did not belong to him delighted and distracted him.
"Julia?" He'd thought the sound of his voice would have been drowned out by the music, though it had not. "I just want to be with Julia, you know?"
"Shut the fuck up, Taylor," someone said.
Taylor gave a thumbs up and leaned against the wall behind him. The room was effectively spinning, and he was okay with that. In the corner, the DJ, a set of headphones balanced on his head.
"Remember that time Chandler got trashed out of his mind," Sullivan recalled. "And he tried to fight his reflection in the bathroom mirror?"
Elizabeth snorted a laugh. "Oh, God, I remember that! ‘Who the fuck are you looking at? You think you're prettier than me?!'"
"Twat."
"Jackass."
And so forth.
He was certain now, as more feeling drained from his extremities, that he'd never felt attraction like this before. Every part of his body was buzzing – though it very well could have been the alcohol – and at that moment he knew that everyone, yes everyone needed to know of the feelings he was feeling because there would be no other moments to seize.
"Julia!!!' he yelled, "Where did, where is JULIA!?"
Taylor became mobile, crawling across the floor, digging his nails into the filth of the hardwood. Dark residue lodged underneath his fingernails as he felt around for what looked like Julia's feet. He wished he'd paid more attention to her footwear before he started drinking, but this, he decided in that moment, this intoxicated search and rescue mission was much more fun.
"Taylor?"
It sounded like Julia, smelled like Julia, was wearing something furry and green like Julia.
"Julia!" he proclaimed, triumphant. "That was so, so much easier than it was supposed to be."
Reaching with one hand, Taylor crawled up her body. Too heavy to balance, Taylor leaned all of his weight into her as he slithered upward.
"Do you need some help?"
"Got it!" he yelled again, unable to control the volume of his voice. "I have, I was, I mean I've found but I was looking—I was looking for you all NIGHT. You're on my list!"
"So I heard." She laughed, and it was beautiful.
Though her face was only a blur to him at that point, he imagined she looked at him with sympathy and longing. Excitement and conquest quickly gave way to hopelessness and temporary lucidity. "It's the last night, Julia. There's nothing else."
He could never decide how it was supposed to happen. A lifetime of inundation, of crossed wires between scripture and speculation, science fiction and academic projection had left him confused, curious. Would it be one blinding flash of light and then nothing? Would there be cinematic explosions and quakes that would rip through the binding of the earth? Or would it be a progressive destruction – one that took place over days, weeks, decades. Perhaps it had simply been happening all along, undetected.
It was in imaging his own mortality that the whiskey really sank in, really stewed with the contents of the hookah.
He stopped remembering.
At that crucial moment where he no longer feared what was out of his control, he launched his body at Julia – an act of passion he would gladly not remember should the morning have come. The lips landed somewhere, though amidst a tangle of substances and sweat and Christmas sweaters it was impossible to differentiate one material from the next. As his face slid down some clothed area of Julia's body – decidedly not an area he had aimed for – he withered to the floor in a fit of ecstasy and intoxication. Taylor had finally completed everything he had set out to.
There was nothing lacking in this moment.
He was, at once, fulfilled. Entirely unaware of his surroundings, he turned face up to the ceiling—satisfied, complacent, ready.
MERRIAM-WEBSTER DEFINES "DEVASTATION" as the act of bringing to ruin or desolation, to reduce to chaos, disorder, or helplessness. This, in no way, began to touch on the utter sense of disorientation and failure Taylor was, at that very second, choking down. That he awoke, that he was alive, that his stoop and his city and his world still existed, that only one of his shoes had made it back with him could only be summed up with one sentiment.
"Fuck."
He had made a grave miscalculation, indeed.
Taylor lay prostrate on the concrete stairs just inside the wrought iron gate, unsure of if he should move. In a blood-pounding haze, he felt for all the necessary body parts—legs, stomach, ribs, neck face—all there. Every inch of skin was throbbing, but it was there. He was there.
This inconvenience weighed upon him as he reflected on the thirteen years of tormented, neurotic childhood that had led up to this very moment, this disappointment. He had already done everything he was supposed to, except dying of course. The universe had delivered unto him an undesired second chance, a stay of execution as it were, and now what?
He stayed for another hour, juggling truth and time and depleted bank accounts and his cell phone he'd tossed out the night before and that list that he'd carried around with him for the last goddamn decade. For nothing. All of this for nothing.
One Hundred Thirtieth Street was disconcertingly normal and the sky was noticeably brilliant at whatever fucking time it was on a day that wasn't supposed to happen. A few people were on the sidewalk, but there were never too many out, and they seemed fine. East Harlem wasn't exactly the best place to just hang out, if you asked him. Not to say that there was anything wrong with the neighborhood, it was perfectly fine, perfectly affordable, and really he'd never had any trouble up there. But he wanted trouble. He wanted trouble and chaos and blood and fighting and total, primal mayhem.
Was Taylor Hanson, 25, son, brother, possible father (though not to his knowledge), southerner (though not by choice), the only one who didn't find this normalcy plausible?
He crawled into the car he'd parked on Madison. The keys were still in the glove compartment where he'd left them (honestly, East Harlem was totally harmless, you just had to give it a chance). The windshield was frosted over. His breath fogged when he exhaled and the leather seats were unbearably cold. And he just took off, a mostly-empty tank of gas, unsure of where exactly he was going, but positive that he could no longer stick around his lonely island for the fallout.
Taylor had not lived "in the moment" in thirteen years, the majority of his life having been dictated by one ragged eight and a half-inch by eleven-inch piece of notebook paper. On it was a series of bullet points that had evolved over the years – his history of successes and failures (because really, that sort of thing is quite subjective). Taylor would make no decision, take no action unless it had been thoroughly thought out and placed onto the list.
And it was preposterous that he'd let himself be limited to such a lifestyle. This New Taylor – or whatever version of himself that existed after having awoken half-drunk on his doorstep – would be utterly embarrassed to know the Past Taylor that had made such an ass out of himself.
This was the chief reason why, he decided with a firm grip to his steering wheel, Julia would never have slept with him in the first place.
Not only had his efforts been misguided, they'd been stubborn and masturbatory. And, really, he knew better than to put all of his eggs into one basket (that's what Diana would have called it – eggs in one basket. Diana and her goddamn clichés). In the back of his mind, he knew better than to so self-righteously buy into that whole end-of-the-world bit. The bitch of it all was how bad his timing truly was. Twelve year-old Taylor was primed to believe that the world was ending. Twelve year-old Taylor needed something to hone that nagging neuroticism and, by God, he'd found it. And now he was driving aimlessly down an interstate smelling like potash and whiskey and total rejection.
"You're a goddamn winner, Hanson," he told himself.
For a brief moment in the truck, he considered the possibility that he was already dead. Perhaps, yes, perhaps he was lodged in some bizarre purgatory of despair and confusion and the remainder of his consciousness would just be him driving down I-95 in this rusting red pickup truck wondering what happened to all of his friends and what the hell he was supposed to do with himself next.
He needed a plan. Granted, he had always "needed" a plan, and he had that stupid sheet of paper to prove it, but now he actually, truly needed one.
Taylor threw the wheel to the left and pulled into the closest gas station. There had to be newspapers or people or something to explain what he couldn't quite figure out. He found himself standing at the front counter staring at the clerk. His leg was bouncing wildly beneath him as he waited for the boy behind the counter to speak.
"Can I help you with something?" The kid was maybe 15 years old and cautious with his question.
Taylor didn't answer, just cocked his head a bit to the side and stared harder.
"Um, maybe you'd like some coffee? I just put a pot of triple cream caramel nut on. Not really sure if I got the measurements right or anything, this is like my second day on the job, but it can't be that hard and, hey, did you ever wonder why they put so many flavors into one flavor of coffee? Like, why can't I just have "nut"? Why does it have to be caramel nut, or cream caramel nut for that matter? It's just coffee, right? Just tastes like wet cardboard anyhow."
Taylor gnawed at the side of his thumbnail, leg still bouncing. He quite liked coffee of all flavors, especially the triple cream caramel nut kind.
"Did you find it particularly bizarre that you woke up this morning?" Taylor hadn't meant to yell, but the words just tumbled out before he could slow them down.
"Or maybe not," the clerk took a small step backward. "Maybe you should just aim for the French roast."
"Do you have any newspapers; are there any goddamned newspapers around here? Or a TV? With the news or a radio or something, I mean, Jesus Christ, we're in this society totally inundated with media to the point where it's practically gouging out our eyes and affecting every moment of our lives, and I can't find a fucking paper."
The clerk took a step away from the counter. "There's a copy of the Post in the corner, man. Are you going to be okay?"
Taylor made a break for the paper rack, thumbing through the pages. Death, destruction, scandal, bankruptcy, a last-minute holiday sale at Macy's to clear out their entire stock –nothing really stood out.
"Hey, if you're going to read that much, you're going to have to pay for those, okay? I mean I get that you're going through something, but I can't in good conscience let you just—"
"I'M JUST TRYING TO WORK SOMETHING OUT, OKAY?" Taylor barked. "Just trying to figure something out."
"Sure," the kid nodded, unscrewing the cap from a four-ounce energy drink. "Wait a second, were you part of the group that set the subway car on fire?"
"Sorry, the what?"
"Page 7," he said. "Some guys tried to set a J train car on fire last night. The NYPD arrested a bunch of people, but everybody is saying it's just terrorists or something using the threat of apocalypse as their cover-up. It's been all over the news all morning, which I guess you haven't seen yet, but you seem like you're on something and I thought maybe, you know, you were all nervous and trying to figure something out and, I gotta be honest, you look extremely suspicious right now. I mean, I am all for anarchy and chaos and, you know, acting out against the man. Somebody's got to live up to the stereotype, right? But, damn, man, setting a subway car on fire takes some balls." Who the hell was this coffee-hating-caffeine-guzzling kid with his superior sense of self-awareness and observational skill? "Were you a part of it?"
Taylor's initial response was to deny, but the more he thought about it, the last thing he remembered was passing out cold on Chandler's floor. There was no telling how he got to his front door step on the opposite end of Manhattan by morning. It was entirely possible that he'd vandalized something or committed a felony during the period were he was certain the world was over and his brain was operating on a stiff cocktail of THC and booze.
Swiftly, he searched the room for witnesses and security cameras before realizing it didn't really matter anyway. Tucking the paper into his pants, grabbing a knitted sock hat from the display to his left, Taylor made a break for his truck while the clerk casually sipped his energy drink.
Were he not so mortified, he would have been quite impressed with the list of crimes he was racking up: petty theft, reckless endangerment, arson, vandalism. If he had, in fact, been part of the group that had set the subway car on fire, then chances were Chandler and Sullivan and Julia and the whole lot of them were under police custody. And for whatever reason he had escaped (It occurred to him, more than once on this trip, that he'd probably, at least, intended to set the subway car on fire and, at the moment of truth, had chickened out. Either way, he was not responsible for whatever happened in Chinatown that evening, as he was so utterly baked that nothing, not even color and scent and touch, would have made any sense to him).
When he really got down to thinking about it, there was only one thing left that he could do.
Taylor crossed the state line by 3 in the morning. He had already sung himself hoarse to the best of Queen, and by that point he was running on autopilot. When he stopped by the mailbox at the bottom of the hill of 9 Old Highway 86, he was unnerved to find that everything looked exactly as he remembered. A modest clump of frozen pine needles, some gravel, a gnarly forest hiding the house within. Diana wouldn't have changed anything, as that would have taken initiative, but some part of him had at least hoped that there had been evolution after he left.
He slept in the truck that night, windows rolled up, arms folded across his chest. The cold didn't bother him so much as his decision to end the journey where he did. The Hansons were not necessarily a forgiving brood, and in the wake of his departure, however melodramatic and sensational they chose to remember it, they had grown quite comfortable with the idea that Taylor would not be returning. He was well aware of his status and took comfort in the fact that, if nothing else, he would at least cause them a minor inconvenience. When he awoke only a few hours later, bitterly cold and stiff, he moved the car to an abandoned lot nearby, stripped himself, and crawled onto the roof of the Hanson's garage where he would be discovered by the family that hadn't been looking for him in the first place.