Max didn't say anything, and Daisy got out of the car and got in front. Max crawled over the back of the front seat and got under the wheel. He started the car and drove over the speed limit while taking her home. They didn't exchange any words until she told him to let her out a block from her home.

He pulled to the curb. "When can we have another date, Daisy? Maybe if I talked to your father…"

"He doesn't want me to go with boys. I'll see you at school Monday. I have a baby-sitting job tomorrow afternoon and in the evening. Pa doesn't mind if I… Oh, hell, I don't want to bore you with my problems!"

It was dark by then. Daisy got out of the car and hurried along the sidewalk. It was a rough, crummy neighborhood, and Daisy knew Max would sit there in his father's car until she got to her house. Then he'd go to his own lovely home in a nice so section of the town and maybe go out that evening with a girl from a family like his. He was a nice guy, and she enjoyed being with him for other than sexual reasons, but she might as well face the fact he was out of her class socially.

Nearing the small, run-down dwelling, Daisy hoped her father wouldn't be mean drunk. She should've been there to fix his supper. And Troy's. Her brother was fifteen, but he was as helpless in his own way as their father.

Troy was half-demented. He'd been accidentally hit in the head with a baseball bat two years before, shortly after their mother's death. Their mother had died suddenly, with a stroke, and their father had swiftly gone downhill. They'd had a fairly nice home then; he'd had a good job as a carpenter, but within six months he'd lost everything because of drinking. They'd moved into the shack, her father managed to sober up enough to do odd jobs now and then, and she'd tried to keep the family together-as she felt her mother would've wanted her to do.

Some family! She hoped there was no way for her mother to know what had happened. Her pa had turned from a kind, gentle father into a drunken beast. He was always patting her on the ass, leering at her, making cracks about how she was probably fucking anything with pants, trying to see her when she was dressing or undressing. She didn't like to admit it, because it seemed so wrong, but she was getting to hate him more and more.