by Ginger Scott
I haven’t made any friends in this class yet. Willow and Jess are a year younger, and Elise is only in science with me. It seems academically, I’m destined to be paired with Owen.
“Wow, so it’s true what they say about you,” I say, pushing at the sole of his right shoe with the tip of my finger. It slides a few inches to the right along my desktop, but he quickly flexes and puts up resistance.
“Your little band geek friends been telling you stories, Ken Doll?” he says, and his voice has that same edge it did last night. It’s raspy, and tired—as if he doesn’t sleep at all. But it’s also deep, and I’ll admit, it’s a little tempting, like something you know you shouldn’t like, but crave hearing again.
“It’s Kensington, because you and I…we aren’t friends. And yes, they’ve shared a few important facts with me,” I say, catching the teacher walking in from the corner of my eye. I give Owen’s foot a hard shove, and his weight is finally knocked off balance.
I do my best to ignore him throughout the rest of the class, focusing on the reading questions and discussion points for Death of a Salesman. But I feel him behind me the entire time, the small hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention, anticipating his breath—his breath that never comes.
When the bell finally rings, I drop my pen flat on my paper and note how white my knuckles are from my grip. I shove my things back in my bag and close my eyes before standing to leave, every bit of me expecting Owen to be waiting right behind me to continue our face-off.
But he’s gone—the only trace is the trailing fabric of his black hoodie wrapped around his waist as the door swings closed behind him.
The pattern repeats in math, Owen’s feet back on the only open desk in the room, my desk. And like a fool, I do the same thing and expect a different result.
“Excuse me,” I say, like an echo from an hour before.
“You’re excused,” he smirks, clicking the top of his pen and chewing on the clip part while his eyes dance over me slowly.
The math teacher is less punctual, the bell ringing without much fanfare as students continue to talk to one another, text their friends, and keep their headphones pushed in their ears. Owen continues to stare.
“Whatever,” I say, shoving my back hard into his feet as I sit down in my desk.
After two or three minutes, he finally gives in, letting his feet slide away until they’re finally under his desk behind me. I catch the tips of his shoes with my glance downward for confirmation.
The principal walks in a minute or two after, and everyone finally slides into their seats, the chatter subsiding.
“Okay, ladies and gentlemen. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for today. Mrs. Carrol had an emergency, and she’s not going to make it in today. So pull out your last assignment and turn to the next set of problems in your book,” he says. We all obey, even Owen, who I notice has a full page of math problems noted on his pad.
“Eyes forward there, Kensington. No cheating,” he says, careful to say my full name slowly—condescendingly. It pisses me off.
“Oh, don’t you know? You and I have different assignments. You see, I work out of the calculus book, not the book with pictures of apples asking you how many nickels Peggy spent at the grocery store,” I say back quickly, some strange sensation also working down my arm. I think…I think I actually want to punch someone.
A deep chuckle vibrates in Owen’s chest, and I force my glance away from him, back in my lap and at my paper on my desk. I force my focus on the next twenty problems, completing them with time to spare, so I continue to the next set until the bell rings.
Just as before, Owen is gone when I turn around. And just like the day before, he’s making out with the same dark-haired girl outside the window when I slide my lunch tray on the table.
Today, though, I ignore him. Or at least, I pretend to. I won’t give him the satisfaction. Owen Harper may get his way with everything in this school and town and life. But he won’t get his way with me.
“Looks like he’s sticking with Kiera this week, huh?” Elise says to Willow as she drops her tray down to join us at our table.
“Yeah, it’s rare for the flavor of the week to last an actual week,” Willow responds. I assume they’re talking about Owen, so I don’t even ask.
Jess takes over the conversation when he joins us, talking about some concert coming to Chicago in a few weeks, some band they all seem excited about. I’ve never heard of Phantom Ant, but when Elise urges me to go with them, I shrug and nod yes. I’ve been to concerts in the city before. Granted, most of them have been classical, but I don’t think my parents will have a problem with me going.
I’m doing my best to remember the names of songs they’re saying so I can look them up later when the tapping on the window behind me becomes impossible to ignore.
“Uh, Kens?” Willow says, gesturing over my shoulder.
I know I shouldn’t, but I turn around anyway, and I give Owen my full, undivided attention. His friends have already left, and he’s slowly walking backward, showing me his middle finger and smiling with that faint half-grin I’ve seen far too often over the last three days.
I don’t know what makes me do it. In fact, I don’t know why I am the way I am with Owen. I’ve been careful and timid and obedient my entire life, my only mission to please everyone—please my father, Chen, my mother, my friends, my teachers. Please, please, please, please, please. That’s all I do. And all it’s done for me is land me in Woodstock, away from my friends and the senior year I was expecting to have. I’m not pleasing Owen Harper, too. So I stand with my tray and raise my arm slowly by my side, my eyes zeroed in on his until I’m pointing at him. I close one eye and cock my head slightly to the right, like I’m making sure I have him in my sights—and then I pull the trigger.
“Jesus H Christ, Kensi! What’s wrong with you?” Willow asks. She pulls my arm back down, but I keep my eyes on Owen, staring into his gray-blue eyes—eyes that look like a wolf’s. “What are you doing?”
“I’m starting a war, Willow,” I say, my heart speeding up and my breath growing more ragged as reality catches up with me.
I’m starting a war with a guy who doesn’t lose—a guy who doesn’t play by the rules.
A guy who scares me, and who knows where I sleep at night.
Chapter 5
Each day happens exactly the same. Owen sits behind me, lounging his feet on my desk until I make him move. He makes out with the dark-haired girl named Kiera—practically putting on a show for me at lunch—then he taps on the window and sends me off with a message. One day it was a kiss to the glass, the other, he threw a dollar on the ground. I went outside when he walked away and put it in my pocket, and when I got home, I pinned it to my wall.
Despite the stories and rumors, Owen Harper didn’t scare me. Everything he did was predictable; all show with no real threat, and nothing I couldn’t easily ignore. I had my circle of friends, and I wasn’t interested in winning a popularity contest, so I was fine not being a part of Owen Harper’s cool crowd.
I’d endured bigger threats than he could offer—threats my father dealt out any time I talked about the idea of maybe not going to college at all, maybe studying jazz or just performing on the road, period. He was quick to poison those dreams, stopping short of disowning me. I was more than welcome to walk my own path in life; I’d just have to pay for it all myself, and not expect to live under his roof ever again.
What hurts more is how my mom always supports him. I’m not the same naïve girl I was a few years ago. I understand the economic dynamics of my family now, and I know my mom earns at least twice my father’s salary. But he has this hold on her, and she puts him on a pedestal. My father, Dean Worth, is a talented musician, and when he commands the orchestra, it’s impossible not to feel prideful watching him work. But my mother has let that pride take all of the power—and somehow, power over me, and my life, was bargained away with it.
The first football game
was at a school only a town or two over, so the bus trip was just long enough to be an adventure. Our team lost, but the band sounded good, so I celebrated with Willow, Elise, and Jess afterward at the ice cream parlor in the old part of town.
Normal teenagers would want to keep the party going, to stay out with their friends until the sun threatens to rise. But I know there’s an empty house waiting for me at home, and I’m desperate to touch my piano. What I want and reality, though, are two very different dimensions. I know something is off the second we turn the corner to my street.
There are cars packed in both my and Owen’s driveway, many with lights on, pointed directly at the hoop anchored to my garage. There are about a dozen guys all playing ball and crushing beer cans right below my bedroom window, my bedroom window that I can see plainly through the thin veil of curtains thanks to the flooding lights.
“You wanted war,” Willow says, shaking her head at the scene.
“Yeah…” I say, grabbing my heavy bag and pulling it over my shoulder as I step out of her car. “I guess I did.”
“You want me to stay? Come in for a while?” She’s asking to be nice, but I can tell she doesn’t really want to be a part of whatever the hell this is that I started.
“No, it’s all right. I’m just going to put some music on and go to bed. Really, let them do whatever out here. I don’t care,” I lie.
I wait at the front door until Willow pulls away, then push my key in and quickly shut the door behind me.
“What are you doing?” I whisper to myself, letting my bag, coat, scarf and sweatshirt all fall into one pile by the front door. I pull my boots from my feet and slide along the wood floor in my socks toward the kitchen, stroking my hand along the smoothness of the piano top as I pass it. I could still play, but for some reason, playing while there’s practically a party happening on the other side of the wall is far less appealing. It’s not so much their disruption and the noise as it is my fear of them hearing me—of them stopping and listening. Maybe a fear of them mocking me and taking away something that’s mine.
I grab a Coke from the fridge and climb the steps, careful not to turn on my light. I don’t need to give them a reason to look up. On all fours, I crawl to the window and lean my back against the side of my bed, cracking the tab on my soda.
Someone’s radio is blaring rap music. Not the radio-edited version, but the kind with full swearwords and demeaning lyrics. Kiera is out there, sitting on the hood of Owen’s truck, and she’s taking long drags from a joint, her head swaying side-to-side, not even remotely in sync with the beat. She’s ridiculous, and watching her gives me a thrill for about five minutes.
Owen doesn’t seem to be aware of her at all, which she doesn’t seem to care about because I’m pretty sure she’s high off her ass. He’s busy playing basketball. It’s barely in the fifties outside, but he’s not wearing a shirt. There’s a white T-shirt tucked into the back of his black jeans, hanging from the waistband like a rag, and his chest is dripping with sweat. They must have been playing all night.
Sliding against the wall, I let my head come to rest on the frame of the window, my hand tucked under my chin, and I watch. Owen is so focused out there playing this game of pick-up ball—this game that doesn’t matter anywhere but in his head. At one point, he’s arguing a call, shoving his friend in the chest and threatening him. They’re both tall, but Owen’s more muscular, his frame that of someone who looks as if he’s been in a street fight or two.
Their language gets more vulgar as the hour goes on, as more beer cans get crushed into a pile in my driveway. I wouldn’t be able to sleep through this even if I wanted to. I know if my father were home, he’d have the police here to haul everyone away. No one is older than eighteen out there, and I’ve seen at least three cases of beer go down, as well as two or three joints.
It’s one in the morning, and I hear one of the guys call out for the last game. Everyone pulls money from their wallets, handing it to Kiera, who stuffs it in her bra, and they pass the ball to Owen for the final game. He’s dribbling it, each bounce slower than the first as he points to guys and splits them up on a team, then he throws the ball to someone and jogs over to his truck, pulling a ringing phone from inside the cab.
There’s something about the way he’s pacing—the way his hand is on his neck and his eyes are down at his feet—something is wrong. For him to be agitated, it must be really wrong, like as in a kind of wrong I can’t even fathom.
“Yo, O! We doin’ this or what?” one of the guys yells out at him. Owen raises a hand, crouching down and pushing the phone more tightly to his ear. “O! Come on, man. Are you pussying out because you’re out two hunny?”
Two hunny…as in two hundred dollars? Owen stands up from his crouch, the phone still pressed to his ear, and he stares long and hard at the guy giving him a hard time. He doesn’t say anything to his friend—if that guy is even a friend—but something is communicated between them just from one look.
“Yeah, whatever man. We gotta go anyhow. Hey, Chris, grab my shit and let’s get out of here,” the guy yells over his shoulder.
Within minutes, Owen’s driveway is empty, and soon he’s racing down his front porch, dressed in a dark button-down shirt and a pair of gray jeans. His hair is wet; he must have raced through a shower. His keys jingle in his hands as he jogs to his truck and climbs inside, his engine roaring and his tires squealing from their rest.
It’s almost two, and my father will be pulling into the driveway any moment. He said he’d be home tonight, and I’m not so sure I want him to see the mess our neighbor left behind. I walk down the stairs to the kitchen and grab a large trash bag, pausing at the back door to gaze out at the shadows cast over my driveway by the bright floodlight. The ground is strewn with trash, piles of lazily crushed beer cans, and cigarette and pot butts. I can’t let my dad see this, and not because I care about Owen Harper getting in trouble, but because I don’t want to hear my father’s lecture about drugs, drinking, being out late—being a real teenager in general.
When I finally push through the back door, I’m too late, though, the headlights are sending new shadows over the drive as my dad pulls in. I’m already standing in the middle of the mess, so I bend down and start putting cans in the bag, my brain working fast at answers for the questions I know will come.
“Kensington?” So very many of our conversations begin with my name. And it’s never Kensi or Kens. It hasn’t been anything less than formal since the day I started playing the piano.
“Hey, how was the show?” I ask, buying myself time.
“Performance. Concert. Not show. This isn’t Broadway,” my dad says.
“Sorry, I meant concert,” I say, careful not to roll my eyes.
“It was good. We’re still having some trouble with the cellos. The replacements aren’t nearly as good,” he says, his voice growing fainter as he paces out into the middle of the mess. I’m done distracting now. “Kensington, what…is this?”
The funny thing is I know my father knows that this mess isn’t my fault. I don’t do anything wrong, and I’ve never been in any real trouble. I’ve been scolded, chastised for dreaming, for playing jazz during a practice session, for skipping a lesson, for not getting a scale just right, but serious trouble—like the kind you get from surmising the state of my driveway—that doesn’t mesh with me, and my father knows this.
“Yeah, well…” I say, looking over at the dark Harper house. “Our new neighbors…they kind of like to party? Well, or…at least one of them does.”
“I see that,” my dad says, kicking one of the crushed cans over into the Harper lawn. “But why am I dealing with the leftovers?”
“I don’t really know. I think it’s the basketball hoop,” I say, looking over my dad’s head at the rusted hoop and rotting wood backboard hung above our garage.
“I see,” my dad says, his hand rubbing the beard on his chin as he steps closer to the front of our garage. “This neighbor…the o
ne that likes the hoop—is it a he?”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice a little hesitant, causing my dad to turn and look at me. “I mean, girls don’t really do this.”
“No…they don’t, do they?” my father responds, turning back to face the hoop. Almost a full minute passes, and I begin cleaning up the mess until I’m distracted by the sound of our garage door opening. My father slides out a ladder, and then goes to a stack of boxes in the back of the garage, searching through three of them before finding what looks like a ratchet set.
He brings the slender toolbox out to the driveway and picks out three or four sizes, then climbs to the top of the ladder, reaching up to loosen the bolts on the basketball hoop.
He’s taking it down. I think I knew he would, and I know deep down that’s why I told him—why I said everything just as I said it. It was all a delicate game of chess that I mastered for this very moment. Only I didn’t expect to feel nervous that Owen would come home suddenly. Worried that we would be caught.
And I certainly didn’t expect to feel regret.
That’s the emotion tripping me up most. Regret—is that even an emotion? Or is it just a result? I’m not sure, but I know my stomach is sick with it as my father finds the perfect fit, his arm pulling one side of the hoop loose from the backboard while he goes to work on the last bolt, the ache in my stomach traveling to my chest when the rusted ring finally falls to the ground. My dad steps from the ladder, folds it back up and puts it in its place along the garage wall. Then he picks up the hoop, carries it to the end of our driveway and throws it on top of the morning’s trash. In the morning, the garbage truck will haul it away forever.
“Pick up the rest of this mess,” he says, not bothering to look my way, instead pulling his phone from his pocket to answer a call—probably from my mother—the back door slamming to a close behind him.
It takes me nearly an hour to gather the rest of the debris in our driveway, and I pick up the can my father kicked onto the Harper lawn, the bottoms of my sweatpants getting soaked from the frosty dew covering their long grass. It looks like it hasn’t been mowed in weeks, though it will be dead and covered in snow soon, so I suppose there’s no reason.
