vaessavoy

Nice Cliffhanger! Not too mean and totally unexpected.

I just wanted to let you know how real this chapter felt for me. I know there are people who like Wade as a narrator, but I think Matt is my favorite because he is more emotionally engaging. I've gotten a little weepy every chapter so far. Thanks for doing a great job!

Really quick response: My brother went to Webb in the 80s and I've visited but it's been a really long time. I agree that the inland empire is a good place to hide. My family's been hiding there for seventy years and no one's found them yet! By 2001 the smog had cleared out quite a bit. I've been flying in and out since 1982 when you couldn't see the mountains from Webb, 2 miles away. They don't even have smog alerts anymore. A few details about Webb, it went coed in 1982 but the girls were only day students at that point. I don't know if that ever changed. There have always been day students and students that don't go "home" during school breaks because it was just too far away. Basically, Ethan' s social life could be just about anything you want. Claremont is also the most liberal city in the area and is in L.A. county, so is not a fair representation of the area, which is way meth-ier and trashy.

I read chapter 37 this morning and was so freaked out, it took me until now to come back to comment,and realized I was about to be freaked out again. I had tears pouring down my face as Robbie was saying goodbye to brad. Thank you for giving them that. As a footnote of sorts, I think the people survived the collapse were in the part of the WTC that was rebuilt after the earlier bombing. I think it was in the third building that collapsed after the towers. Thanks for all the hard work.

Mark, you´be done a great job so far of fictionalizing the gamut of American p.o.v.'s from that day. You know how traumatic events can cause memories and feelings to be almost relived instead of just remembered? For most of us, these days are intensely personal but 9/11 is that public day for the majority of Americans. Thanks for writing this chapter so well.

I should have read this last comment before I voted! I'm going to guess Calvert gets back first then. And Granger will be last. But Calvert will have saved the day.

Mark, I needed to respond here to your response to my review. I am thinking we likely got drunk together at some point in the eighties, perhaps unintentionally. Back in the days when we only needed student I.d.s to get served and the drinking age was 21. We spent a lot of time at Shakespeare's, the Heidelberg, the shack before it was torn down. And the Blue Note back when it was still on the business loop. I was really active in the effort to get the university to divest their investments from companies that did business in South Africa and we lived on the quad in a shanty town for months. When the university finally tore them down, it was big news. I made the cover of the post-dispatch being carried off by the cops. See, spiraling again. In any case, I like that we get to see Will in your neck of the woods. It feels right.

I'm super happy that Will gets to spend some time in MO with Tony. And it's only partly because I did my undergrad at Mizzou and lived in Columbia for 12 years. I moved to MN in 1994 so I wasn't in the state at the time, but I have some experience with many parts of the state. And I grew up in southern California. My first Pride parade was the st. Louis Pride in the early nineties and was one of the most fabulous experiences of my life. Of course, I was a lesbian in Missouri in the grunge era, so I was pretty much flannel & granola at the time and probably needed some fabulousness at the time. Without spiraling down memory lane, my two cents include that I don't think educated people in Missouri in 2001 were particularly homophobic, and Tony's friends don't seem shallow. They're just trying to use their own shorthand to figure out his background. And they're 19. Maybe Will could visit Columbia and eat at Sub Shop? I worked there for years and could tell you all the secrets....

Bravo! I didn't expect to be surprised but I totally was. Great ending and nicely done. I put a vote in for Jeff as a narrator as well. He's young, hot and slutty. Perfect for this series!

I agree that Brad isn't an academic and that it shouldn't be a controversial statement. I think the more controversial statement would be to question whether he's an intellectual. Btw, I think Sam was an academic as well.

Gosh, it seems like I didn't communicate my point well at all. What I was really trying to say had nothing to do with police involvement. I totally get why that wouldn't happen in this circumstance and many others. The aspect that didn't ring true to me in the situation is that not only did Brad and Robbie not talk to Will to see how he was doing, not just that they completely ignored a fourteen year old who may have been sexually involved with an adult caretaker, but that it occurred to no one that that taking care of Will should be a parent's first priority in this situation. I just think the total abandonment of a potentially abused child would be a horrible thing for any parent to do and Brad and Robbie aren't horrible parents. Plus, Will is certainly smart enough and manipulative enough to throw that in their faces. Something along the lines of, "You really believed something bad happened to me and totally ignored me for a week? Good thing I wasn't in real danger. I might never have seen you again! Or something else is going on entirely..." That was my point.

Okay, I acknowledge that I've never commented before, mostly because you all seem to have it covered. Or, since I'm not a guy, my two cents wouldn't add much. But I have read all of CAP and have a bit of experience finding out my fourteen year old niece might have been molested. In her case, the police were already involved and the first thing they did (within an hour of the arrest), was to go interview her. Right after they were satisfied that she hadn't been molested, my sister took her to the hospital for a sexual assault exam because my sister thought it was possible her daughter might lie to protect her dad. My sister also filed for divorce the next day the court was open. I'm not saying Brad and Robbie would have responded that way, but if either one of them really believed there was a chance that Pat and Will had any sort of sexual contact, wouldn't they have been concerned enough to want to take care of Will, instead of ignoring him? If Will made that point to Robbie or Brad, wouldn't that undercut their positions entirely? I flew from Minnesota to California within hours of hearing about the possibility and none of Will's parents spent any time with him? It doesn't ring true without more explanation.