Futureproof by N Frank Daniels

can’t concentrate if my TV’s on.”
    â€œSit in the kitchen, then.” His voice is gruff and more contemptuous than usual. I remind myself that at least he’s not making a big deal about last night, then collapse in a chair at the kitchen table, attempting to work out the subtleties of Richard Wright’s Black Boy.
    Jonas comes in the kitchen and opens the fridge. He sits down with two glasses of Coke and pushes one toward me.
    â€œWhere did you go last night?” he whispers.
    I tell him about the previous night’s adventures, without the drug or sex parts. Jonas is my biggest fan. I’m always reminding him of how the world is outside of Victor’s command, that it won’t always be like this. He says he wanted to leave with me that first day we moved here, the day I got my ass kicked and stole the car. I don’t say anything, but secretly I wish I’d thought of that then.
    Mother comes into the kitchen. I tell her there’s no way I’m ever going to read this book in time for class if I can’t have a minute alone. “Can you please get your husband out of my room?” I say.
    She says I shouldn’t call him that.
    â€œBut isn’t that what he is? Would any of us even know him if you hadn’t married him?” I say.

TRANSMISSION 06:
enlightenment occurs on multiple levels
    May
    Tabitha calls me a few weeks before school lets out. We don’t talk much anymore. She says she’s moving out of state with her mom and she’d like to see me before they go.
    She’s sitting on her stoop smoking a cigarette when I walk up. She looks tired, but more in a sleepy way than a worn-out one. She’s still beautiful.
    She stands, leans over to give me a hug, one of those hugs you know is supposed to be a good-bye hug because it’s prolonged. It feels somehow uncomfortable.
    She kisses me on the cheek. Then I do the next logical thing and try to kiss her for real . I dare her to leave without kissing me just this once, before she’s gone forever.
    Tabitha pushes me off the porch steps and I land in the bushes.She stands there looking down at me and says, without the slightest hint of irony, “I thought you were different.”
    Before I can respond, she goes inside, slamming the door behind her. I lie there in the bushes trying to think and then go to the door, which is locked. I pound on it and yell that I had been different at one point and she changed all of that.
    â€œIt was you who did this, Tab! You are the one who made it like this.”
    The next week she is gone. She leaves her phone number and forwarding address taped to her front door. I put the page in my pocket and walk back down the hill to my parents’ house.
    Dragon*Con is coming up. There’s a slight amount of consolation in that. And there’s always Trizden, my best friend from the Rocky crowd. He keeps things straight when nobody else seems capable.
    Â 
    Dragon*Con is an annual summer event that, for most of the attendees, is a way to meet all the B-movie and Sci-Fi/Horror actors they’ve adored for years and could only have wet dreams about actually breathing the same air as. But for Trizden and me it’s an excuse to wander around on a three-day drinking and drug binge looking for ass. I mean, I’m not looking for ass , per se, but it’s still nice to look at some ass, even if I won’t be indulging in any besides Michelle’s. Ironically enough, there is also a Young Republicans convention on one of the lower levels of the hotel. I can see the hilarious possibilities already.
    Now, while there are more than this city’s fair share of gimpy, introverted nerds at Dragon*Con, there are many others like us, who are cool and only here to get wasted (and the Young Republicans, who are here to learn how to become more snottily self-assured of their moral rectitude). Michelle and Trizden do have a certain affinity for Star Trek ,