christmas presents for disadvantaged kids in lincoln illinois, they gave us fifty bucks and let us pick something in walmart, mom handed me over to the charity worker, i liked his face, he had a beard. i ran around walmart and the colours and lights gave me a headache. i got a batmobile and alot of candy, then grandma took me to cody's house, he lived four blocks away from my grandma's house, his mom sat around laughing and getting drunk on a drink she called the white russian and she scared the hell out of me, her hair stuck out and she always smoked and her teeth looked like broken wood. and cody used to draw shit on his arms and legs, like skulls and swords and cuss words and try and convince everybody he got his dad to give him a tattoo, but he was really afraid of his dad, we used to stay in his room all night after his dad got home and try not to make any noise, in case he got angry.

further up the street from cody the concrete began to crack and a large peice of plain mud yard spread out behind one of the worst houses in the whole town, there was trash all over the porch and front yard and a big black car always parked in the drive way except at night. the kids who lived in that house got caught in school pissing in everybodies book bags and they were thrown out. and there was this girl who lived farther up in a two story house, it looked really nice from the outside, but two story houses impressed me when i was a kid, the girl had a tumor and stopped coming to class but before she did she started turning up with a bandage on her head that had a weird orange stain on it sometimes and she started to tell everybody her name again, even though we all knew her, so they made her go home and i don't remember seeing her again.