Chapter 9Rocco lay on his bed in his pitch black room listening to punk rock music on his headphones, Nirvana and Blink 182.
His door was closed and locked. But in the last half hour he noticed the steady movement of shadows under the gap of his door. His parents, most likely his mother, had been patrolling his bedroom since he returned home from his friend Jay’s.
His mother had questioned his whereabouts. “You’re ten minutes late,” she scolded him when he had come walking through the front doors. She was crocheting a new afghan for fall, sitting across from her husband in the recliner, both of them watching a New England Patriot’s game.
Rocco looked up at his mother. “Out with a friend,” he had answered. “What’s the big deal?”
“Don’t talk back to your mother,” his father, Rex, said, s
