Rhinelander

Chapter 1
Prologue

Chapter Description: In which a young man pushes his luck too far.

A third-grader stands at the bay window fronting his house and watches as a gusty snowfall blankets Rhinelander, Wisconsin. His ears are pricked up in reception of a yellow 1990s weather radio. The WHDG deejay has listed several closed schools, but thus far, the boy’s hasn’t been one of them.

He had just assumed he would get used to his new life. He had been wrong.

Tomás Díaz crunched up what was left of his cigarette into the dashboard ashtray and massaged his temples with his fingertips. He knew what was coming. He had seen Jenna at the window, briefly, before she had turned away in marvelous spite and allowed the drapes to fall shut.

“Pretty pissed,” Tomás said to nobody. “Pretty pissed.”

The 17-year-old disembarked from his car and shoved the top halves of his hands into his blue jeans before approaching the house. A light rain had begun to fall. Chilly-- an October rain, its droplets feeling like needles against the skin Tomás had failed to cover with his jeans or leather jacket.

When he got to the door, Jenna had already absolved him of the need to ring the bell.

“Fancy you finally showing up,” she spat.

“Jenna, can I come in?” whined Tomás. “It’s kind of goddamned freezing out here.”

Tomás pushed his way into the foyer as soon as Jenna had stepped aside. He frantically scrambled to brush the raindrops from his jacket, figuring he could probably salvage it.

“What’s the matter?” asked Jenna. “Power went out? Alarm clock broken?”

“Look, babe, I tried to--”

“First off, don’t call me that,” Jenna said, staring daggers. “I hate it when you call me that. Second off, you do understand how cinemas work, don’t you? They don’t just decide to not play the movie until you get your butt in--”

“I’m sorry!” Tomás shouted, several decibels more loudly than he had intended. He gulped his voice back down to a rational level. “There was this huge Call of Duty game where--”

“Did you win?” asked Jenna, her expression unchanging.

Tomás smiled. “Well, actually, I kind of did do one epic thing, when I--”

“Oh, shut up. This is, like, the fortieth time you’ve shown up so late we can’t do what we meant to.”

“Just chillax, bab--Jenna. We can have plenty of fun without the movie.”

“I’ll tell you what might be fun,” Jenna said as she walked towards Tomás. “If you showed me any respect at all.” She was beginning to tear up, though she had resolved not to.

Tomás shirked off his jacket, pressings its collar against Jenna’s chest. “You can hang this up, can’t you?”

And, with those words, a wildly dysfunctional relationship came to an end.

to be continued