Thanksgiving had been an unmitigated disaster.
Quetzalez drove me home and waited in the car while I staggered to the front door and made my way inside. No one else was home: Goose and Mary May were the only ones there. Everybody else had someplace to be. I left them in the living room, both picking over leftovers from the fridge in front of the television and retreated to my bedroom to where I could wallow in self-pity in private.
December came to Illinois as a flat faceless gray, reminding me of all the reasons I hated the Midwest. Frost formed on the windows at night, and the furnace smelled like burning hair whenever the heat kicked on. The wild, unstoppable energy that had sent me tearing through the night-lit streets had burned itself out for good now, leaving only a dull lethargy
