A/N: Hello populace, and welcome to the first installment of Sloan Mill, by BlacknEvans. This is Evans, here to speedily dish out some background information in case you didn’t pick it up in the bio. This is a story written by Black and myself, in first person but with restriction on the word “I” with the exception of its use in direct dialogue. The chapters are segregated by their leading character, and the character by the chapters…if that makes sense…and in this chapter one you will meet my character, one Damien Grant. We hope you enjoy.

One: "I shouldn't have to—the water heater's friggin' economy sized!"

Damien

Some days, you just shouldn't get out of bed.
The stark reality hits as the water sputters and then goes cold half-way through my shower, forcing me out of the tiny bathroom with bubbles of shampoo still crackling in my hair, and worse—my ears.

My teeth won't stop banging together while my eyes sweep the attic-turned-bedroom-loft, searching among the ragged pieces of shrapnel and debris for another day's wardrobe. The newly installed light and ceiling fan are off, rendered useless to the cold and the grey shafts of light that spiral through the large opaque window at the back of my room. Glancing at it, there are little beams of movement; the rain as it drips down off the rooftop.

With my jeans on, my shirt has somehow ended up strewn several yards away, flung over a rickety folding chair that sits in front of my desk, laden with textbooks and crinkled sheets of notebook paper—Spring break, no matter how dismal and rainy, will never find me doing homework.

Downstairs it smells like cheap, black coffee and burning leaves, the scent belching from the kitchen, reeking from its outdated linoleum floor, yellowed wallpaper, and unpleasant lilac cabinets and countertops. With space pressing throughout the corridor-style kitchen, the table is shoved into the very back corner of the room, and has only three mismatched wooden chairs; the other is my desk chair's twin, separated at birth, and it's where my older brother is sitting now, banging silverware against glass as he absently stirs something that looks like orange Kool-Aid together.

"Jason." My voice is sharp. "You used up all the hot water."

Jason looks up at me, his eyes narrowing. It's a bit early for accusations, but so be it.

"Did not," he retorts, and stops trying to break the glass from the inside with his careless stirring.

"Oh, while we're using that brilliant logic…I must have imagined the warm water vanishing. Better yet, if we just have to deny things, looks like one of us didn't even take a shower this morning."

"Shut up," Jason grumbles. He picks up his glass of maybe RC and takes a swig, leaving me to watch in muted fury as his pronounced Adam's apple bobbles up and down his thick neck. The drink's halfway gone when he finally resurfaces to breathe, jabbing the spoon in my direction. "You know," he says, "if you would get up earlier…"

"I shouldn't have to—the water heater's friggin' economy sized!"

There's a sudden pop to my left, where the toaster is perched on its lilac throne. The burnt smell intensifies, and my nose wrinkles in response.

"Dad put that in for you," Jason tells me, smirking.

"Toast up!"

Suddenly, because the kitchen is part of the looped floor plan of the house, my dad is standing by the kitchen table. He stretches across the counter, plucks the toast from the incinerator slot, and wings it at me. My hands fumble to tear out of my pockets in time, but thankfully the toast is grasped—crisped, black edges and all.

"Thanks."

Taking a bite, it's only a burnt shadow of the former Wonder Bread slice it was before cruelty subjected it to my dad's culinary disabilities. It's actually difficult to chew.

"Pablo called earlier…" Jason announces, and then pauses to finish his drink, which is probably more of an energy formula than Kool-Aid mix. He's over six feet tall, takes three gym classes for fun, and an instant fan of any label advertising better health or bigger muscles. "…asked if we wanted to meet up at the Denny's for lunch."

My eyes roll automatically. In my mom's town—my town—people that go out go to the mall, the movies, or the dance clubs. Here, two and a half hours away and buffered by soy fields like satellite nations, the mall is a K-Mart, the movies is a dilapidated cinema with four pictures to choose from—yeah, they call them pictures—and the closest thing to a club atmosphere occurs when somebody drops a nickel into some jukebox in the back of a smoked-out bar and grill. Denny's is where the masses conjugate.

"He's bringing Lucy," Jason goes on. "I'm looking forward to meeting her."

Of course Jason is coming too. Any invitation Pablo extends to me Jason further extends to himself; he keeps his friends back at mom's, but manages to slip into someone else's conversation everywhere we go.

"What time?" Dad asks, trying to round up the facts like a good parent.

"Said he was coming over here to walk with us," Jason explains. It's a long walk, but everybody walks. "Pretty soon."

"But I just—"

"It's a quarter till noon, Damien," Jason sighs, looking at me and killing the words that did not escape. "People who live before afternoon hours are getting hungry."

That's when the doorbell rings.
"Damien!" my nine-year-old sister, Sydney, screams at the top of her lungs from the living room where she's watching television. "Door!"

The T.V. makes cartoon sound effects as it’s rushed past, me stepping over Sydney's strewn-out body, ignoring her huffs of protest, and squeezing past the couch to get to the front door. Pablo already has it open, and is grinning widely at me.

"Hola, Grant," he calls me by my surname. His accent is thick and rich, belonging in southern Texas or New Mexico rather than Kentucky.

"Hola." My accent is plain and flat, but the smile on my face is the first to have touched my lips in two days.

"What's that?" Pablo asks, looking the toast still in my hand, forgotten.

"Breakfast…"

Pablo laughs, one of the most riotous and enjoyable sounds there is, and it gets my smile to spread even wider.

Rivers turn black against the asphalt, running furiously downstream, taking dry boats with weary keels into the rapids before the fall of the storm drains. Still above from the grey new drops drizzle down, but the three of us hardly notice. Pablo is in the lead, and occasionally he turns to walk backwards, his coffee-colored hair flopping into his face, to see my expression at the end of his jokes. My smile is natural now. We stomp in puddles and swipe at each other with chunks of the crumbling street, my jeans soaked up to my ankles; Pablo's up to his knees.

The Denny's comes into view, stationed at the corner of what would be considered Main Street, but in this town is called Capitol Road, and a street called Brooke. Tall posts armed with circular arrays of melon-sized bulbs create a haven of white light that falls around the concrete patio, the picnic tables abandoned, and slants against the sloped roof. Pablo slows his pace, and drops his voice a fraction from its former boisterous volume. He leans in close to me, grabbing at my shoulder a handful of the soaked black fabric of my jacket.

"Lucy's excited to meet you, amigo."

"Why?"

"Really." Jason looks just as dumbfounded.

"Because," Pablo admits, "whenever I first talked to her and freaked out, I was scared to run out of things to say, so I used to talk a lot about you."

"Pablo!" My voice creaks, and my hands squirm automatically into my pockets. "What kind of stuff? Stuff to make you look good?"

Jason laughs; he likes that one. We're almost to the door, the interior glowing yellow against the perpetual grey. Suddenly my conscious picks up my absolute mess of black hair, and my eyes narrow in hostility against Pablo's.

"No es una problema," Pablo insists at my look. "You were only a topic at our first date."

Jason pulls open the glass door, releasing the tinkle of the customary bell. There's no chance of stealth in this place, and Pablo's still hauling me forward by my jacket. He's my age, seventeen, but closer to Jason's height, and built well enough to coerce me through the front entrance.

There are only five customers in the entire restaurant: an elderly couple with matching cotton-head hair—who are most likely the owners of the station wagon parked up front over two parking slots—an eccentrically dressed little girl staring up at the menu posted on the wall, a lone man dressed for an interview at a lumberjack firm, and a beautiful, dark skinned young woman waltzing toward us.

"Paige, they're here," she calls, and the eccentrically dressed girl turns her head. She's tiny, but my first conception of her age, which had been around the same as Sydney's, is instantly shattered. Her large, wide set eyes—the right one partially hidden behind a 

multicolored wisp of hair—are sent sweeping across the doorway, lingering almost a second too long on my face before both our gazes flitter back to Lucy, a safer place to look.

"About time!" She flips the dark hair that has grown down past her shoulders. Jason is staring.

"Lo siento," Pablo apologizes, and steps forward to grasp her extended hand. "Lucille, you know Jason and Grant."

"Damien, right?"

My head bobs up and down, my eyes getting accustomed to hers, which remind me of Pablo's. "Yeah."

She looks down at my feet and smiles, saying, "Cool Converse today."

Pablo is dead.

A/N: Please for the love of all things review…and look forward to meeting Black’s creation, Paige Lancaster, in the next chapter. And, although Black has done a wonderful job scouring these texts, if you happen to find a rouge “I”, which could very well take place, please let us know so we can be quick to amend the situation and keep with our set limitations on that particular vowel.

Spanish Reference:
Amigo: Friend
Hola: Hello
No es una problema: It’s not a problem
Lo siento: Sorry

Review!

—BlacknEvans