IV

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IV

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             Raymond ran outside through the double-paned French doors, kicking at the mini sculpture of David as he lumbered to his treehouse. His mom loved the statue. She had bought it at the civic expocenter during one of their "cultural and world awareness" events and she had dragged Ray along with her. He hated her for it. All he had wanted to do was spend the afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese's and eat pizza and play ski ball. And today she was trying to force feed him cooked spinach for lunch. She was obviously trying to kill him.

             After he closed the trap door behind him, Ray sat on the seam making sure nobody else could get into the treehouse, not that anybody would follow him there. He pulled up a loose floorboard and retrieved the small, fireproof box he had stolen from his dad. His eyes were shining as he twisted the small key and opened the box, revealing a cache of hard candy, suckers and blowpops. Once he had kept taffy and chocolate in this box, but sometime last week he had eaten what he thought was some melted saltwater taffy that had fallen out of the case as he placed it back in his secret stash. He spent the rest of the day with stomach cramps, vomitting occasionally, and his taste for taffy vanished completely.

             He sat in the treehouse, munching on a strawberry sucker and looking out the small window that faced the houses on the other side of the street. The barking dog drew his attention to the blue house, where he saw a lady he'd seen at church tossing a ball around her back yard, the dog sprinting after it. Ray had always wanted a dog, but his mom wouldn't let him have one. He snapped open a pack of sweet tarts and emptied the compacted sugar bites into his mouth, chewing them into a gritty mash. How great would it be to have a dog, he thought.