Monroe Street

Thursday, September 3rd, 1987 Stephanie’s arrival at Assumption hadn’t been marked by fanfare or a grand entrance. Instead, she had quietly slipped into seventh grade at the start of the school year. Blending into the scenery and finding where lines were drawn and where they blurred. But unlike most new kids, Stephanie wasn’t looking to fit in, she was looking for friction. The first person she befriended was a fellow seventh grader named Andrea. Andrea was as simple as she was wild. Copper hair. Loud laugh. A body ahead of its time and a face that could shame a horse. She crossed lines without noticing and flirted with trouble like it was a cute boy. Stephanie recognized in Andrea the same feral energy that fueled her own untamed heart and the two bonded instantly. Andrea told Stephanie she thought I was hot and it was that casual comment that had allowed Stephanie to step into my life. At first, she played matchmaker. Got my number. Called after school. Asked if I liked Andrea...

Monday , August 31st , 19 87 My two younger brothers and I are in the basement of the only home any of us have ever known. In Kansas, the basement is where you go when the sky turns mean. We’d done this drill countless times before. Tornado sirens screaming, the house creaking like it might peel apart. Our mom calmly herding us down the steps while our dad heads outside , as if violent storms were something to witness not fear. And tonight, like so many other nights, there was a storm overhead but it had nothing to do with the weather. Upstairs, our parents who had been married fifteen years, were tearing into each other with words sharp enough to rattle the foundation. The anger in their voices traveled through the floorboards, through the walls and through us. We weren’t just hearing their rage, we were absorbing it. Families fight. I understood that. Parents argue. Totally normal. What wasn’t normal was this . Our parents had never raised their voices at each other. Not o...

  In the heart of downtown Topeka, across from the State Capitol, stands Assumption Catholic Church. It’s a Mission-and-Renaissance-Revival brick monolith from the 1920s that was built to survive tornadoes, scandals, and the weekly parade of restless kids shoved inside to worship a God they weren’t entirely sold on. Next to it sits Assumption Grade School, a mid-century, no-frills building where the hallways reek of industrial cleaner and the K-8 classrooms smell like pencil shavings and boredom.   Outside, an asphalt playground waits like a killing field where kids bleed for kickball glory and learn the hard way that falling on blacktop means a trip to the ER for stitches, casts, or a new pair of teeth. Between the church, the school, and the homeless who drift in for free bologna sandwiches from the church’s rectory, the whole block feels like its own ecosystem: strange, isolated and self-policing. I had been part of this ecosystem my entire scholastic life. Raised by i...

Saturday, November 7th, 1987 Def Leppard’s Hysteria is breaking the airwaves. Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again is breaking MTV. And my girlfriend and I are breaking the Catholic Church’s cardinal rule of no sex before marriage. I’m fourteen. She’s thirteen. Her name is Stephanie Allen.  She’s pretty with long, wavy blonde hair, piercing green eyes, and a million and one emotional scars. We’re at her place: a two-car garage turned into a tiny, two-bedroom hovel in the part of town where couches are on porches and residents are on parole. She lives with her mom and fifteen-year-old sister, neither of whom are home. Her mom probably out drinking and drugging. Her sister probably out breaking and entering. The room we’re in is a cramped space she shares with her sister. Girl clutter everywhere and a stolen license plate that says CUDDLES , swiped off a car by her mom’s boyfriend during a blackout bender. The room is barely bigger than a coffin, so the girls sleep in a bunk bed....