by Ginger Scott
Our lawn is small—most of our front yard made of small plants, wood bark, and bricked walkway. The rest is just a long driveway—Owen’s basketball court.
The air is growing frostier, and my breath comes out in a thick fog as I drag the heavy bag of trash to our can near the street. I flip the lid over and hoist the bag up, stopping it right on the edge, pausing to look at the large metal ring weighing down everything inside. The paint is worn from most of it, and at least two of the bolts look to be stripped. It’s trash, and it has no business hanging on my house. No one in our family will ever throw a ball through it.
But Owen will. He did. And he will again.
Only, now he won’t.
“Damn it!” I yell, my voice echoing in the emptiness of our quiet neighborhood street. I kick the bottom of the large, black, plastic canister, then I pull the bag from the edge and drop it to the ground. I have to stand on one of the can wheels to reach the hoop inside, and its brackets make it heavy and hard to bring back over the edge, but I manage to. I slide it down the side of the can, leaning it against the can while I throw my trash inside and shut the lid.
Holding my breath, I take a few steps closer to my house, looking to see if my father is still inside, still talking to my mom on the phone, but the lights are all off. It’s quiet, and I’m pretty sure he’s gone to bed. The metal is heavy, but I’m able to loop my arms inside the hoop and carry it to the garage that my father left open. I put his tools away first, knowing he probably won’t need them again for quite some time, if ever. He isn’t really handy; he’s more the type of man who likes to be prepared. Then, I slide the hoop behind the stack of boxes to keep it safe.
I’m saving it. I just saved Owen Harper’s basketball hoop. No…I saved my hoop, at my new home—the hoop Owen Harper uses, at my new home. And I have no idea why he uses it, why he steps foot night after night on my driveway, below my window. I have no clue why he pushes my buttons, or why I let him.
I saved his hoop, and I don’t really know why I did it. But I had to.
Goddamn it. I had to.
Chapter 6
I spend the rest of my weekend practicing until my mom gets home, going into quiet mode when she needs to catch up on sleep. When she wakes on Sunday, we find the box labeled BLANKETS and make a large bowl of popcorn, settling in for a binge on home improvement shows. My mom has these fantasies of home construction…not necessarily building a home from scratch, but taking a sledgehammer to something—something like a wall.
She would be good at it. I could even see her having her own show—Home Surgery with Karen Worth. She did a lot of painting in our row home in the city. She’d change entire rooms on her week off, even if they didn’t need new paint. She always said she was addicted to change, but I kind of think change terrifies her, and making those small changes, the superficial kinds, was her way of being brave.
“We should make a fire,” my mom says. “Your dad said he got some wood during the week. Go check on the side of the house.”
I haven’t been outside once this weekend, not since the clean up. Owen’s truck came home sometime after I fell asleep Saturday morning, and it hasn’t moved from its spot. I would have heard him.
Slipping my feet into my warm boots, I wrap my scarf around my neck twice and push through the front door, letting the screen slam behind me. I follow the small woodchip path along the side of the house, along the driveway, noting Owen’s tires still at rest at the end of their skid marks.
My neck is still craned to the side when I hear the sound. He’s standing right in front of my mom’s car, his ball dropping every few seconds to the pavement, then bouncing back up into his hands. I could run, but he’d hear me, so I keep my eyes down at my feet as I walk past him to the wood stacked in the corner.
“You really had to take the fucking hoop down?” he asks. He bounces the ball two more times while I look at the pile of wood, deciding I can carry two logs at once.
“It didn’t do it,” I say, not lying. My inside voice begging my outside voice to tell him I saved it. I saved your hoop. It’s here. I promise. I don’t know why I care so much.
“Right,” he says, throwing the ball against our garage door, making it ring out loudly. “Like hell you didn’t.”
Grunting to myself, I shift the wood in my arms so I can hold it tightly to my chest, and I walk back around the corner of the house until I can see him. His eyes are different now. They’re…sad. But they’re angry, too. And it’s the shades of angry that won’t let me trust him.
“Really,” I say, coming to a stop a few feet away from him. “Like hell I didn’t. It was my dad. You kind of left a mess, and my dad doesn’t put up with bullshit.”
There’s stillness in the air after I tell him this, and I’m caught in it, my eyes unable to move away from his. He’s chewing at the inside of his cheek. His brow falls a little, and there’s a shift in his eyes, the sadness making room for the danger that usually lives there.
Willing myself to walk away, I let my weight shift, and I bring my lips into a tight smile and begin to turn on my heels.
“So who does your dad talk to late at night, out here in the driveway?” he asks, suddenly interested in my family.
“Uh…my mom. She works a lot of overnights. And my dad gets home late,” I say, realizing I have yet to see Owen’s mom—or anyone else in the Harper house.
“Right, that’s what I thought,” he says, and I turn with a shrug, really missing the warmth and easiness from just a few minutes ago inside. “But I meant the other times.”
Something about what he says—the way he says it—slams into my chest, and I halt, hugging the heavy wood even tighter, bits of the bark cutting into the palms of my hand.
“You know…” he continues, my back still to him. “Who does he talk to out here while your mom is asleep in bed? Those times.”
The tear surprises me, and my hands are full, so there’s no way I can stop it, so I let it slide down my face into the threads of yarn in my scarf.
“I bet it’s whoever drives that blue BMW I see parked here when I come home for lunch. I bet that’s who it is. Whoever…she is,” he says, every word purposely hurtful. I hear his feet shuffle toward his ball, and soon, it hits the ground again, only this time it’s dropped and discarded, rolling by my feet until it stops at the tire of my mother’s car. He’s casting one more stone, just to let me know who’s in charge. And for the first time since I’ve met Owen Harper, I’m willing to relent—he’s in charge. And his words just broke my tiny shred of happiness like a thin sheet of glass.
My arms ache from flexing with the weight of the wood, so I force my feet to climb the steps inside, and I busy myself with the fire, sparing a quick trip to the restroom to wash my hands, and wash my face of any trace of that one solitary tear.
By the time I come out of the bathroom, my mom has the fire roaring, and she’s holding out a mug for me, her smile innocent.
She doesn’t know. She can’t know.
Owen’s words—his hurtful, despicable, mean, purposeful words—are all I can hear through the next two hours of pointless television. I sit there next to my mom and feign our world is fine. If I could only shut off the sounds echoing in my head, I could maybe find a way to forget, to chalk this up to just some cruel prank.
But I can’t.
When my mom busies herself with housework, I turn to my piano, pulling out the books of sheet music I’m supposed to be memorizing—only now, it’s not just a thing I’m not interested in. Now it’s a thing I want to fight against doing with all I have. I open those pages and I see his face—my father’s face. I play those notes and I hear his voice, his expectations and condemnations for the music I like.
Playing from these books has quickly become a thing that represents something ugly. Something I realize I haven’t felt love for in a year, maybe more. Something disappointing. My father.
With a smooth stroke, I take my finger and push the loose sheets of music and
the book behind them from the ledge to the floor, leaning to the side to see them slide in various directions. A mess—a beautiful, classical, fake mess.
My hands do as they wish, sliding into place, running smoothly over keys until notes blend into one another, sliding from one note to the next sloppily, while sad-sounding blues chords fill the giant dining room and foyer of my house.
My house. This fake house. This place he made me move.
I pound harder, playing runs, pausing to breathe and look out the window. Owen’s truck is framed perfectly by the picture window in our living room, the taillight like that of a lighthouse, guiding me to truth.
I play what I want to play, even when my mother warns me that my father will be home soon. I keep going, the sounds only those I want to hear, and when his car idles to a stop in our driveway—I play louder.
I play him right through the front door, and I hold my head up high, daring him while he walks closer to me, the stern look on his face no longer holding the value it once did. There’s no threat here any more. And I couldn’t give a shit if he’s disappointed in me now.
“You know I don’t like that crap,” he says, pushing the lid forward, threatening to close it on my fingers. But I anticipate this, and I stop it as I stand to my feet, letting my fingers tap out one last faint pattern that I know my father will hate.
“Have you practiced your showcase? Or did you just spend the entire day wasting time?” he asks, walking back to the front door to kick off his shoes, loosen his tie, and drop his briefcase full of music—full of his music. Probably full of his lies, too.
“Who is she?” I ask, my voice loud enough that my mom hears. I hear her hear, the sounds in the kitchen coming to an abrupt stop.
“Who is she, Dad?” I ask again, my voice wavering with the tears I’m fighting to keep inside. I won’t be weak for this. He won’t face me, and the longer it takes him to speak, the more I start to feel everything.
“Who is she!” I yell, grabbing the last music book lying on my piano and throwing it at him.
My father turns to face me slowly, and the more his face comes into view, the more I see just how broken everything is—my life, my mom’s life, our family—we’re broken.
“Dean?” my mom’s voice questions from behind me. She walks up to him slowly, her hands clutching a towel from the kitchen. With each step she gets closer, the more honest my father’s face becomes, the more the puzzle comes into view.
This house, the move—all of it—it’s because of him, because he was unfaithful. Because he did something my mom couldn’t live with, at least, not in our old house, in my old life. She couldn’t live with the memories from where we were.
My mom slaps my father so hard that his face jerks harshly to the side, and the bruise is almost immediate. Then she hits him again. And again. My father stands perfectly still, taking every hit.
“You son of a bitch!” she yells. “You promised. You promised that it was done. We’d move here, away from the school, away from her. It was over, and we’d start over. I would try to forget, and you would never see her again.”
School.
Her.
Blue BMW.
Her!
There are key words that ring through my anger. I think I knew the moment Owen opened this wound. But I just couldn’t believe my nightmare was that horrifying. I didn’t want to believe it.
“Dad?” I whisper behind my mother, everything coming into focus, everything hurting me from all sides all at once. My mother turns to me slowly, her hand covering her mouth, her entire body shaking when she realizes what I’ve put together.
“Ohhhhhh….” I start to cry hard when I see her, when my nightmare is confirmed. Shaking my head, I rush around them both up the stairs to my room, slamming the door behind me, and logging into my computer to sift through my Facebook posts until I get to it—and it’s all right there, staring me in the face.
There I am, standing next to my best friend, Gaby, in front of her 18th birthday present—a brand new, blue BMW. It’s this picture, the one my father took, and it’s the way Gaby is looking back at him, through the lens.
How could I have been so blind to it all?
I hear Owen’s tailgate slam, and I rush to my window to watch him round his truck, his keys in his hand, his step quick and determined. I don’t have much time.
I grab my wallet from my nightstand, and push it and my phone into my back pockets before stuffing my feet into my wool boots and throwing a white hoodie over my body. My parents are screaming at each other as I come down the stairs, and I realize my mom has broken a few dishes at my father’s feet.
“I’m going out,” I say, but really only for her benefit.
“Like hell you are, young lady!” my father yells, his step gaining ground on me as I head down the porch steps.
“You can go to fucking hell!” I scream over my shoulder, my legs picking up into a run as I hear Owen’s engine turn over. He’s slowly rolling from the driveway when I slam my fist on his hood, positioning myself in his path. My dad is still undeterred, walking right at me, and I’m so ruined that I don’t care if Owen runs me over.
“Kensington, you don’t understand. And it’s a Sunday night. You need to get your ass back in this house,” my dad yells. Powerless. He has become powerless. And when I look at him, and he looks back at me, he knows I know it. He knows I know it all.
And he knows I’m not coming back inside that house—not while he’s in it.
“Get your hand off of my fucking truck!” Owen yells, his head leaning out his window and his arm heavy on his horn.
I rush to the side and pull his passenger door open, climbing in and buckling up, locking the door to keep the other side out.
“Oh, fuck no! Ass out of my car! You heard your dad. Get back in your own goddamned house,” he seethes.
My breathing is hard from anger, and I don’t know if my body needs to cry or scream. “This is your fault. You started this. You pushed over the first goddamned domino! So you get to take me out of here. I don’t care where, but I swear to God, Owen, if you don’t make those tires squeal in about four seconds—I’m going to shove you out of the way and drive away from this place myself!”
Owen spends the first three seconds trying to decide how serious I am, and when I pound my fist on his dashboard, he decides his life is easier if I stay in the truck. “Fuck!” he yells, shifting into gear and pealing away, his back tires fishtailing in the street and the smell of burnt rubber filling the cab. “I don’t need this…this…this family-drama shit, all right? We’re driving around the block a few times, and then you’re going home.”
“No,” I say, my jaw tight, my teeth clenched.
“Ooooohhhhh yes we are,” he chuckles, and I pound his dashboard again.
“No!” I say forcefully, the tears starting to fill the bottom of my eyes now. “No, no, no, no, no!”
I keep repeating the word, keep pounding my palm against Owen’s dash, until his hand finally catches mine, holding it down flat while we sit at a stoplight near the outskirts of the historic downtown.
“All right, I got it. No. Just…easy on the truck,” he says, his palms rough against my skin. I stare at his hand touching mine, my mind trying to make sense of the way it looks. My perfect fingers, my skilled, trained, long and powerful fingers look like weak flowers, wilting flowers, underneath the weight of his large hands.
“I hate you,” I let go from my lips in a whisper.
“Yeah, well…you and everybody else,” he says, pressing his foot back on the gas as the light turns green.
Owen drives through the heart of town, then turns down a two-lane highway where we drive for minutes in silence. My passenger window feels cold against my cheek, and the regular in-and-out reflection of the streetlights on the window glass keep me from drifting into crying. I just wait for the next reflection to come, counting in my head to see how long it takes. I count, until we run out of streetlights, and then I hold my
breath and try not to think about my best friend sleeping with my father—and ruining my life.
“Where are we going,” I say, my voice hoarse. Owen remains silent, and I start to ask again, but then realize I don’t care where we’re going. I’m just glad we’re gone.
There’s a rustling sound as he reaches into a pocket on the front of the bench seat, then he tosses two strips of licorice on my lap.
“Hungry? Chicks eat when they’re upset, right? Isn’t that like a thing?” he says, glancing at me and ripping a bite from the red licorice. I hate red licorice.
“I don’t think that’s a thing,” I say quietly, setting my strips of candy on the dashboard closer to him.
It’s quiet for several more minutes until we hit a small convenience store parking lot. There are a few other cars parked out here, and I recognize most of the other people from school. I’m suddenly wishing I jumped into a stranger’s car to run away.
“Stay in the car. I don’t need anyone asking questions,” he says, his voice practically an order.
Owen parks next to another old pick-up truck, and I notice Kiera sitting in it. I wonder if they’re still together, or whatever it is they are. Kiera’s eyes are on Owen as he steps in front of the truck to talk to another guy, the both of them leaning against the front of his truck. This guy looks a lot like Owen, only his face isn’t as handsome. He’s hard looking, and he doesn’t seem to smile. Not that Owen smiles. The only time I’ve seen Owen smile was when he was teasing me—and when he delivered the news that ruined my world.
I notice the other guy pull out a pack of cigarettes and offer one to Owen, but he shakes his head. I’m glad he doesn’t take it, and I wonder if that means he doesn’t smoke. I hope he doesn’t smoke.
I don’t know why I hope he doesn’t smoke.
