Eddie's mouth twisted bitterly and he looked squarely into Carl's sympathetic face. "It's my father I'm running away from," he said. "That… that son of a bitch!"

"That's pretty strong language, Eddie."

"Not in this case, it isn't," the handsome teenager flared. "That's exactly what he is – a son of a bitch! He treated me like dirt, not like a son. I had to be his Goddamn slave, practically, and live by all these prison rules like being home at eight o'clock every night, even on the weekends, and not having dates with girls because he said I'm too young and not being allowed to hang out with my friends because he didn't like them… Boy, he was just ridiculous. He was always saying it wasn't right to touch a girl until you were married and stupid stuff like that."

Carl and Cindy looked at each other with just the slightest suggestion of a smirk on their lips.

"Well, he sounds pretty uptight," Cindy said.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. But what else could I do. He had custody of me even though I always liked my Mom better. She and I have been writing to each other every week, you know, and my dad never knew about that or he would have tried to stop it; she was sending out her letters to a friend's house so my father wouldn't find out. Anyway, she said I should stay with him until I was eighteen and of a legal age to go out on my own; that it was no use in asking for trouble by running away or anything like that."

"From what you say," Carl observed, "your father appears to hate your mother. Why is that?"

"Well, Mom's always been a kind of free spirit and Dad said she was unstable and… and," he looked down at his feet and blushed slightly, but was determined to continue, "they had a problem with sex, too."