He seemed to have woken up a bit now; he had lost the dead expression and was staring at Victor.And ... my heart skipped a beat or two ... Lauren was ...owhere to be seen.Victor saw me at the door. "Mexican standoff, eh?" he yelled over the rushing air. He winced, and I could see that one side of his coat was coated red with what I fervently hoped was his blood. Maybe Courtney got in a shot.Lisa looked at me. "You do what you have to do," she said. "Understand me? I'm ready." Naw, he's not going. Two days since they laughed at me when I said I'dbeen thrown out of my home because I'd told my parents I wanted to be agirl.My legs were starting to cramp from crouching in the shadows of an alleywhen I finally heard two sets of footsteps coming closer. One of them wasslow and shuffling, the other sounded more like the slap slap of bare feetagainst concrete. I shoved a hand in the left pocket of my jacket andgrabbed the neck of an empty beer bottle. My fingers ached from the suddenchill of the. I could connect this to the second input on the amp I used for the Rhodes when we played at the Mirage. It would take some practice until my fingers were able to handle the steel strings, unlike the nylon ones on my other guitar.After a late breakfast it was time for the driving exam. My mother drove in to Manly with me, and I waited, nervously, until my name was called. After all of the practising, the actual exam was a bit of a letdown. Fifteen minutes driving around, turning here, pulling. She and her friends always came over at night and used to make Jon angry by doing simple pranks. They would steal all the food and drinks he got for himself on the weekends, and then upload massive amounts of things onto his computer even destroying it once. She would also go out at night and come back later and said that if he told on her that she would tell mom and dad that he has been giving alcohol to her friends. Their mother was the same, but Jon's father ran away, and Cassie's got.