Wild Child: A Novel

by Molly O'Keefe

  “So perhaps it’s best that I’m not left to my own choices anymore.” Jackson tapped the table, then picked up his dishes to clear them himself because he was that kind of guy. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

  She didn’t stop him. She let him walk away even though part of her wanted to pull him back. To make him tell her more about his sister, and part of her … part of her wanted to tell him about Jenna. But in the end she watched him walk away. She put her headphones back on and opened up her computer and stared, unseeing, at a blank page.

  “What’s with you?” Gwen muttered Tuesday morning, giving Jackson the hairy eyeball over her cereal bowl. Apparently his whistling was an affront to her teenage grumpiness. She sat, slouched at the counter, her body a long curve. Her long blond hair hung across half her face. It was as if she were always hiding. From him.

  I’m not Dad, I know that, he thought but couldn’t say. But we used to be friends.

  “Optimism, Gwen. Optimism is what’s with me.” He didn’t wait for the coffee to finish brewing before pouring himself a cup and toasting his sister with it. If he were the singing type, he would have sung in the shower. He would have sung making breakfast. “Today is the first day of Bishop’s second life.”

  “As a Podunk town in the middle of nowhere?”

  “No,” he said carefully, refusing to let her kill his buzz. “That was its first life. Its second life is as a wholesome, forward-thinking community with opportunities for adults and children alike.”

  When he’d memorized those words from America Today, he wasn’t sure. But they were running through his head like marathoners.

  Gwen blinked her heavily made-up eyes at him. The day was hot already, hazy with humidity, the sky outside nearly gray. He doubted anyone wanted to experience the 100-percent-humidity part of the Bishop story.

  “You really think we’re going to win this contest?” she asked, before tipping her cereal bowl to drain the milk into her mouth.

  “Yep,” he replied, leaning against the old butcher-block counters.

  Gwen shook the hair from her face.

  There you are, he thought with a piercing fondness.

  Her face was changing, slowly being carved out by maturity. Womanhood. The chipmunk cheeks were melting away, her jawline losing its little-girl roundness. Her blue eyes were so big even with that dark crap she wore around them. She was lovely, and if she would just smile more …

  “I forgot to ask, how did that thing go with Monica Appleby?” she asked.

  “What …?” The kiss. That was all he could think about at the mention of her name. The touch of her tongue against his.

  Nice, Jackson. So grown up. So fully adult.

  “At our house? The notes? Remember?”

  “Right.” He pushed aside thoughts of that kiss, reminding himself that it had been a mistake for both of them. “Actually, the notes were for Dean Jennings and the America Today producers.”

  “You … you just said someone not from around here.” She was so quick to be defensive. So quick to snap at him.

  “I know, Gwen, it’s no big deal. Don’t worry.”

  “So … did she come over?”

  “She did.”

  “And?”

  And I insulted her and then kissed her and then insulted her again. “She had some lemonade.”

  “Lemonade? Jackson … that’s so lame.”

  “She wanted it!” he cried in his own defense. “What was I supposed to give her? Heroin?”

  “So, is she like … coming over again?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “What did you do?”

  Jackson blinked, surprised by the viciousness of her tone. She’d been aloof, she’d been moderately disrespectful, but never mean. A thousand words, just as mean, just as vicious, came roaring up from his gut, but he swallowed them.

  “I didn’t do anything, Gwen. She came over, had lemonade, and left. What did—” He stopped, realizing what this was. The eye makeup, the book. Her sister had a little hero-worship happening.

  For the Wild Child.

  Part of him, faulty and human, wanted to bundle his little sister up and avert her eyes from the wreck that Monica had made of her early life. Don’t be like her, he thought. Don’t idolize her mistakes, cast her heartbreak in heroic lights.

  Careful here, Jackson, he thought, all too aware of the high wire he stood on.

  “If you want to talk to her—”

  “Forget it,” she sighed and moved to stand.

  “Wait,” he said, putting out his hand, barely brushing her arm before she recoiled. He sighed. The bubble, he’d forgotten about the bubble. “What … what’s your plan for the day?”

  “I have a shift at the Peabody, and then Shelby’s comic-book camp started on Monday; she asked if I could help out with that because she was going to be busy with the film crew and stuff.”

  “We should grab dinner tonight,” he said. “Fried chicken at Cora’s.”

  “I have pageant rehearsal.”

  “Really? Seems early to be getting ready for the pageant.”

  “You’re the one who wanted me to be in this stupid thing, now you’re angry about the time?”

  “No … no.” He should be used to the fact that he just couldn’t win with her. Ever. “Go to pageant rehearsal. This is your year, isn’t it?” As the oldest girl in the competition, she was a shoo-in. Perhaps as his sister, too. And even with this goth-chick phase, she was by far the prettiest girl in town.

  “Whatever,” she sighed. “It’s lame.”

  Yep, Pick Your Battles was going to make a stunner of a tattoo, along his rib cage maybe, in fancy script.

  “I have to go meet the film crew at the office,” he said, changing the subject. “Check in with me around noon, okay?”

  “I’m not a kid.”

  “You’re my kid sister.”

  “What are you going to do when I go away to school, Jackson?”

  For a second he had that sickening feeling of being caught in a lie and blood roared up behind his eyes. She didn’t know about his plans to leave when she left and he realized there was a very good chance that she wouldn’t care. But still, somehow he hadn’t been able to tell her.

  There was also the chance she would freak out, and he couldn’t handle her freaking out any more than she currently was—not with the Maybream situation.

  All of which was a cop-out. He knew that.

  He was scared to tell his sister he was leaving. Scared to hurt her. Scared to tell her and hear that she didn’t care. That she’d never cared.

  But maybe it was time to face up to all that fear.

  “What do you mean?”

  She smirked at him, a dagger at his heart. “I mean, I won’t be calling you when I’m at school.”

  He braced himself against the counter, his knees weak.

  Or he could face up to it all later.

  “You haven’t left yet. Check in with me,” he said and was out the door.

  When Jackson stepped through City Hall’s wide granite arches, built by Bishop’s founding fathers in a delusion of grandeur a hundred years ago, he was both comforted and made to feel insignificant. A dot on the time line of this town.

  That was the nice thing about city halls, no matter what size the town: they were built with a little pomp and circumstance. With one eye to the future, the other to the past and the unbroken road between the two.

  It was to be respected, that was for sure.

  “Morning, Ms. Watson,” he said to his secretary.

  “You have some visitors, those television folks,” she said, standing up behind her desk, wearing the pink cardigan she always wore when the air conditioner was turned up too high. “I … I didn’t … I didn’t know what to do. I made them some coffee, I had some graham crackers in the kitchen, but that … that was all. I didn’t …”

  “It’s great. Perfect. I should have told you, but I didn’t think they’d be this early,” he said, glancing at
his watch; it was barely eight a.m. He’d take their early arrival as enthusiasm. Good. That had to bode well, didn’t it? He stepped into his office, and Dean, accompanied by another man and a woman, stood to face him. A plate of graham crackers sat untouched on the side of his desk.

  “Hello,” Jackson said.

  “Hi, Jackson, sorry we’re early,” Dean said.

  “No, no problem. I see you got coffee.” Jackson circled his desk. “Is there anything else I can get you?”

  “Three more hours of sleep?” the woman asked.

  “Sorry, Vanessa and Matt here spent the night traveling,” Dean said.

  “Alaska, right?” Jackson asked. “Long trip.”

  “Tell me about it,” Vanessa said. Introductions were made and they shook hands. Matt was the sound guy, a large man with too-small glasses and sweaty hands. Vanessa, the producer, had purple hair and a bit of a snarl. Something about her reminded him of Monica and his sister.

  “Well, let’s get started,” Vanessa said after everyone sat down. “I talked to Cora already. Today she’s going to show us how to make two of her specialties. We were hoping to get some information on the windmill technology you’ve started.”

  “That’s on my property, no problem.”

  “So what can you tell us about the Okra Festival?”

  “Well, tonight we have a Miss Okra pageant rehearsal.”

  Vanessa laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nothing funny about the Miss Okra pageant. The community takes it very seriously.”

  “Well then,” Vanessa said as she made a few notes, “so will we. Now, the Peabody is lovely, the last antebellum mansion left in the state? That’s quite a bragging feature.”

  “Well, we’re proud of it. I’m not sure if that’s bragging.”

  “Jackson.” Vanessa smiled at him, indulgently, as if Jackson were a child behaving in a way that was adorable but wrong. “Please don’t tell me you plan to be modest with me now. I need you to brag. That’s how the show works.”

  Right. Time to switch gears.

  “Our summer art camps set up by Shelby Monroe are becoming internationally recognized.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Vanessa nodded encouragingly. “Tell me more.”

  “This is our fifth year, and Shelby has secured renowned artists to teach classes in glassblowing and sculpture. We have classes for adults and children, including a camp for kids with special needs. This year the artist in residence for the month of August is a street artist from New York; he’s going to teach classes on graffiti. The New York Public Library is partnering with us in that class, sending down inner-city kids for a week.”

  “Very impressive,” Vanessa said without any sarcasm. She turned her attention to Dean. “You have to go to some of these tapings, Dean. I’m not kidding,” she said when he groaned. “I need you at the tapings and I need you to talk to these people. And not just about engineering factories.”

  Ah, Jackson thought with real fondness, there’s nothing like a no-nonsense woman.

  There was more discussion about the taping schedules and everyone scribbled in their notebooks while Jackson sat back, feeling pretty damn pleased with himself.

  “So?” Vanessa asked, glancing up at Jackson. “What else?”

  “That’s not enough?” Jackson asked.

  “Not to beat Alaska,” Matt muttered.

  “True.” She leaned over her notes toward Jackson. “Why are people going to pick up the phone to vote for Bishop over Alaska? Alaska is memorable, a town of bachelors who created a dating website to attract single women.”

  “And they have a very modern but defunct salmon-canning factory. And the state tax breaks are amazing,” Dean interjected.

  Fucking Alaska, Jackson thought for no reason.

  “But,” Dean said, looking pointedly at Jackson, “you guys have something Alaska doesn’t have.” Jackson knew in a heartbeat who the guy was talking about.

  Monica.

  The silence created by his indecision seemed like acquiescence. Maybe it was.

  He needed people to pick up the phone and vote.

  “Monica Appleby is in town,” Dean said.

  Vanessa’s eyebrows hit the purple tips of her bangs, and Matt whistled low under his breath.

  “Does she live here?” Vanessa asked.

  “For the moment,” Jackson said, knowing he should weigh in.

  “She’s working on a book about her father, but was very clear that she won’t discuss the book. At. All,” Dean supplied.

  Jackson felt a rush of gratitude toward Monica.

  “So?” Vanessa asked. “What do we do with her? Doesn’t sound like she has any part in Bishop’s story. Which is too bad—she’d be a powerful addition.”

  Vanessa sighed the deep belly sigh of disappointment. And the silence in Jackson’s office after that sigh smelled like failure. Tasted like a bunch of people giving up, and he couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t let it happen. Not when they were so close.

  “Monica teaches at the art camps.” The words fell out of his mouth attached to a half-formed idea. A really stupid half-formed idea. Really. One of his stupidest.

  Three heads swiveled to stare at him.

  “She does?” Dean asked with the kind of familiarity that put Jackson’s teeth on edge.

  “We … we’re still working out the details.”

  “What does she teach?”

  “Writing. Of course.” He fought the wince as he lied. Shut up, Jackson. Shut up. Just stop talking. “We’re very excited about it.”

  “That is very cool,” Vanessa said, looking at Matt, who nodded. Dean stared at Jackson, no doubt knowing he was lying.

  “Yep,” Jackson said; now he couldn’t stop nodding. “Very cool.”

  In the brief silence that followed he scrambled to catch up with himself, imagined the conversations he was going to have to have, the begging he was going to have to do—both with Shelby, who would not appreciate Monica Appleby’s presence in her little kingdom, and Monica, who, after he’d asked her to leave, would no doubt go apeshit at his asking her to get involved.

  This could go wrong in so many ways.

  What have I done?

  “Well, having Monica Appleby, a number-one New York Times bestselling author, teaching people how to write should make you very competitive,” Vanessa said.

  Competitive. Very competitive. That had to be enough.

  Dean shut his notebook. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  The film crew filed out, discussing with excitement their morning at Cora’s. Apparently she was making her pecan pie cake and her brisket with fried green tomato relish.

  “Your life is going to change,” he told them, standing at the door as they walked through. Smiling as hard as he could while his stomach tied itself in knots.

  “When can I get a look at that factory?” Dean asked at the door.

  “This afternoon,” he said. “Let me just clear a few things off my desk.”

  Once they were gone he closed the door, bracing himself against it.

  Carefully, he lifted his head and thunked it against the intricate carving.

  What a mess!

  Nothing to do, he told himself, but fix it.

  This was going to require the big guns. He hoped Cora made fritters this morning.

  Jackson, after stopping at Cora’s, walked past downtown toward the dusty outskirts where Shelby lived. Her family owned an old farm, though no one had farmed the land for years. When Shelby and Jackson were kids, her father used the barn for a church of his own creation. Half salesman, half crackpot, her father had been a difficult burden for Shelby until he died. Probably still was, though Shelby never talked about it.

  Through her mom’s side, Shelby’s family had managed the canning factory for generations. Her mom ran that place like a family business until Del Monte finally pulled the plug, and she’d been slipping—mentally and physically—ever since.

  Though when they�
��d gone through the factory cleaning it up for the America Today application photos, she’d perked right up. Still, she’d insisted on keeping the keys again when they shut the doors that night, eyeing Jackson as if he were a vandal she’d caught sleeping in the factory.

  Across the road from Shelby’s, a white moving van sat in the dirt driveway of the Halarens’ old place. The farmhouse had been for sale for years, but with the bad economy and the housing situation it hadn’t moved. But now the sign was gone and the van was there.

  The doors were all shut and there didn’t seem to be any movement, but obviously someone had either bought or rented the Halarens’ place.

  I’m going to take that as a sign that things are looking up.

  He bypassed Shelby’s house altogether and went out toward the back, where the barns were. Five years ago Shelby got a grant from the state for the money to fix up the barns, one as a studio and the other as a dormitory. Using profits from the camps, she’d made the smokehouse into a kiln a few years ago, and now she had plans to turn the chicken coops into a woodworking workshop.

  “Hello?” he called, stepping into the barn. Long tables were set up along one half of the big room, along with small burners for the glass classes. There were pottery wheels in the corner, and easels surrounded a raised dais on the other side of the barn. In the middle were shelves and shelves and shelves of supplies. Paper, paint, turpentine. Buckets of brushes and pencils. Long, thin cases filled with watercolors and chalk.

  It smelled both sharp and soft in the barn. The paint and turpentine stung his nose, but then they were quickly followed by the sweet smell of hay that couldn’t be renovated away. Swallows still lived in the rafters, refusing to leave while work was done to the building. Occasionally one of the birds dive-bombed an artist’s head, which sent the kids into hysterics.

  Shelby affectionately named the swallows “the critics.”

  “Anyone home?” he called, and for a moment only the swallows answered.

  “Hey.” Shelby came around from the sinks and bathroom she had built into the far corner. Behind that, down a long hallway, was her office. She was drying off her hands. “If you’re looking for Gwen, she’s not here yet. Camp doesn’t start for another hour.”