I don't understand this. In any case, all following chapters will be in this thread so please specify which one you are reviewing when you do. Thanks.

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People always begin by thinking they have it all figured out. And then they take a step and fall off the cliff that they incorrectly calculated to be a hundred miles away.

Desiree didn’t understand how something as end-ish as ‘having it all figured out’ could somehow always happen at the beginning. She liked to imagine that ‘having it all figured out’ would be something like, ‘living happily ever after’. Wanting it to be the perfect ending was something like wanting a hamster to fly. A hamster will not fly because, in essence, it was never meant to. Yes, you could throw a hamster off a roof and might look like it was flying for a little while but, much too quickly, it would be a bloody mess on the pavement.

Desiree avoided this kind of presumption but avoiding something is different from downright shoving it out of the way. What if this idea marched right up to her and wanted to be friends? She imagined that could be a problem.

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The department store smelled like perfume and cobweb corpses.

‘Excuse me.’ Asleep between the toasters and a pile of discarded clearance items, was Desiree. ‘Um, hello?’ The girl stirred, peeling her cheek from the cold box labeled, ‘Toasts Like No Other!’. She blinked, trying to remember where she was and who might be talking to her. The clerk only stared, his brow furrowed; a look that spoke clearly of his absolute uncertainty as to what to say.

‘You were - er - you were asleep.’ He cleared his throat and stood straighter. ‘You here with a - a parent or something?’ He tried to sound professional but he felt stupid.

Desiree scrambled to her feet. What had she been doing sleeping in the appliance section of Macys? Had she gone to school that day? What time was it? Quickly, she tried to answer these questions but the more she focused the more confused she got. ‘I was asleep? Yeah, I was asleep. I - I - I was tired and I - I mean, my mom couldn’t pick me ‘til - um…what time is it?’

The clerk tried to keep from staring at the odd girl, but was still unsure as to what else to do. There was a pink crease on her cheek from the way she had been sleeping and her hair stuck out around her head in a halo of static. ‘It’s…um…six-thirty. Do you - are you going to be able to get home okay?’ He guessed that that wasn’t an appropriate question. But then maybe it was only what he was implying that wasn’t appropriate and there was nothing at all wrong with the question.

‘Six-thirty? Dammit! Is it dark - of course it is.’ She groaned and stopped focusing on remembering as all the memories came floating back at odd angles and for odd reasons. It had been quite a long day. ‘I did go to school today. I - I got detention for saying something out loud that I meant to say…in my head. I didn’t want to come home and tell my parents. Does that make sense? Of course it does. Anyway, I walked over here. But it was so boring I went right to sleep!’ She ran a hand through her hair, only causing it to shoot up in more crazy directions. Her speech had thrown him even farther down the crooked road of perplexion and he cleared his throat again, digging deep into his mind to find something useful to say.

‘Uh…’ It was the best he could do.

‘That’s okay - I mean, what - did I just…say something?’ She grimaced.

‘A - a lot of stuff, actually.’ He started to laugh a little but immediately stopped himself, throwing a look of concern onto his normally boring features. She found it slightly funny when she thought about it later. ‘Um you wanna to call a cab or - or maybe your parents -’

‘Oh, no. I could never spend money on a cab.’ She shook her head in earnest and picked up her backpack, slinging it over her shoulder. ‘But I’m sure my parents would be all too glad to pick me up. Not that that makes much difference…I could never call them.’

Desiree was one of those kids that had completely awkward and incongruous principles that neither she nor anyone else even tried to understand. They often found it quite amusing to throw her into crazy and even dangerous situations. She did not know enough about them to fight back.

‘Well…you can’t exactly stay here all night…’ He rubbed his neck nervously, a smile pulling up his mouth at funny angles.

‘Well, I don’t know, I suppose I could. I could just keep moving around the store as the people searched for stowaways. I’m sure they wouldn’t catch me.’ Then she paused. ‘Whoops, I said that out loud…didn’t I?’ Pursing her lips, she sighed.

‘Heh. Yeah.’ No other words came to mind.

‘They’re going to kill me and I need to - to get home.’ Abruptly, she turned around and started tramping toward the escalator.

‘Wait!’ Feeling terribly idiotic, he jumped onto the escalator right after her.

Desiree’s principles on guys were almost as ridiculous as the ones she had for homework and running away from home. But she never found them difficult to follow and how natural they came tended to confuse their victims more often than she noticed.

‘You’re right. I can’t exactly just walk away… So, what am I going to do?’ They reached the bottom of the escalator and she stopped, staring at him like he was her kind, old grandfather; he didn’t notice anything but that she was staring at him.

‘I get off in twenty minutes…so if you wait I could give you a ride home?’ He thought that making it into a question would seem less forward - it didn’t matter, for, Desiree had no compunction in jumping into the car with someone so friendly and helpful. He did remind her quite a bit of her grandfather for reasons she could not have described.

‘Okay. I’ll wait here.’

He jumped up and down for a second and then stopped. ‘Uh…okay. See you in a minute!’ Turning a corner, he disappeared past a huge orange advertisement for something entirely unnecessary. It was at this point that Desiree sat down and tried to be sensible.

There had only been one person - at least as far as she could remember - who had advised her to accept rides from strangers. Closing her eyes, she studied his face: gold and green, laughing eyes; perfectly straight, white-blonde hair and an odd, dark smile. Everything he had told her had been burned into her mind like nothing else she had been told by anyone who she loved as much. Desiree had quite an affection for her parents and her two brothers; love, I suppose she might call it. But it could only have been a very different kind of love, for nothing they ever said had as much value as anything crazy Mr. Chatrone uttered in this life. She liked to call him ‘Chat’.

Desiree didn’t seem to realize that becoming friends with your fourth grade teacher was far from normal. She also didn’t realize that being friends with him four and half years after he had been fired was reaching past 'not normal'.

‘You know how parents and teachers and other weird people tell you to be…’ He searched for the right word. ‘Wary of - of strangers?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t.’ His eyes sparkled. ‘We’re all strangers, right? Wouldn’t it be slightly…presumptuous of you to assume you truly knew me? Trust me and trust everyone.’