September Lessons (A Year in Paradise Book 9)

by Hildred Billings

  “Whoa.” Carrie almost had a minor heart attack when she saw Dillon sitting on the other end, a beer in his hand. “Since when do you party? I was wondering where you went off to tonight! What did you tell Mom and Dad, huh? That you were going to bell choir at the Baptist church?”

  Carrie rounded on her cousin, who was way too young to be drinking. Let alone driving later. Granted, he was only two years younger than Carrie, who was also underage drinking, but that was beside the point! “The hell are you doing? Do they know that this is where you are?”

  “They think I’m at Brent’s for the night. I mean, he and I are going back to his place tonight when this place gets lame, but you’re not gonna tell on us, right?”

  “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  “Good! Because I don’t think you want them knowing about your drinks and tokes with a bunch of minors, right? Especially after what happened in Alabama…”

  “Look.” Carrie got down in his pimply face, which smelled about as good as the bottom of the trash bag in the kitchen. “This is the mayor’s daughter, you hear me?” She gestured to Christina, who had closed her eyes for – hopefully – a moment. “Don’t mess with her, and make sure she doesn’t get messed with. If I hear something’s happened to her, I’m totally telling.”

  “Whoa, whoa.” Dillon held up his hands as if he had something to protect himself from. “I ain’t gonna be touching nobody, let alone some chick! Mayor’s daughter? Pfft. Like I’d mess with Christina Rath.”

  “Good. See that you don’t.”

  “Not her keeper, though!”

  “You are as long as you’re sitting on this couch with her.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Carrie marched toward the other side of the room. “I’ve gotta find a bathroom!”

  It was true. She may not have drunk as much as some of her classmates, but it was going right through her, and it was better to pee it out now before she had to drive home sometime later. At this rate, that would be sooner rather than later.

  Yet as Carrie prepared to go home half an hour later, she heard the tell-tale sounds of sirens in the distance.

  “Shit! It’s the cops!” Aiden stumbled into the center of the living room, where he motioned for someone to cut the music and someone else to shut off the TV. “Who the hell called them, huh? Our closest neighbors are a quarter mile away!”

  Apparently, the party had been loud enough for at least one neighbor to make a call and complain to the only officer on duty. Before Carrie could haul ass to the backdoor and hide out in her car, the deputy pounded on the door, demanding that Aiden open the damn door already.

  With a face as pale as the sheets someone wore as a toga, Aiden said a friendly hello to the stone-cold woman with her hands on her hips.

  “Aiden Kitzberg, we’ve talked about this before.” Oh, snap. Not only is he in trouble, but he’s been in trouble before, huh? This was almost too good. The kind of entertainment Carrie definitely signed up for with her high school drama. “You throw parties with booze and drugs, you’re gonna have the nice old lady next door calling about it because she saw her granddaughter pulling in.” She peered over Aiden’s shoulder. “Amanda! That you?”

  Amanda scurried past Carrie, slamming face-first into a closet door.

  Aiden had no choice but to step aside as the burly deputy with not much to prove sauntered into the den of teenage revelry. The shining moment for her must have been the high-out-of-his-mind sophomore wandering around in nothing but his T-shirt and tighty-whities.

  “My God. It never changes, yet it’s always pathetic. I knew some of y’all’s parents when they were your age and getting into this same kind of stupid trouble.” The deputy began pointing at individuals, as if to announce she remembered when they were in diapers. “I’m seeing at least ten rosy cheeks right in front of me, and twenty pairs of bloodshot eyes! Now, y’all are gonna march out of here and get someone sober to drive you home. I don’t care if that means sobering up in my car or calling your parents,” that was met with a round of gasps, “but I want this party cleared out right now, or else I’m gonna start bringing some of you idiots in for underaged vicin’.” She turned toward Christina, who was still nestled next to Dillon. “I gotta answer to your mama, you know that, Missy?”

  Christina snored loudly enough to make everyone laugh.

  “Although there are some here I don’t really recognize,” that was reserved for Carrie, who kept to herself on the side of the room, “that doesn’t mean I don’t know that some of you are legally old enough to be held accountable for your actions. If you are a day over eighteen, I want you to hang back for a quick minute so I can lecture your faces off!”

  She would have done it, too, Carrie didn’t doubt. Except before people could start collecting their things and trip out the door, a voice came in over the deputy’s radio, alerting her that there was a barn fire over on the highway.

  Dillon hopped off the couch and went to Carrie’s side. “Pretty lucky, huh?” he said, now that the deputy was too distracted to mess with some kids. “We should get outta here. Can I bum a ride off you? I was riding with Brent and I think he’s gonna be busy…”

  Carrie grabbed her cousin by the arm and hauled him into the kitchen. They were one of the first out the door as soon as the coast was clear.

  Chapter 8

  LEIGH-ANN

  Leigh-Ann awoke Saturday morning to the whispers of a party and a barn fire. She wasn’t sure what happened in what order.

  She wasn’t a big coffee drinker, but she made the exception for that bone tired Saturday morning. I was up half the night reading fanfiction. She couldn’t remember what intellectual property had captivated her this time. One moment she was browsing through Netflix, and the next? Browsing through AO3 and Tumblr for something interesting to read. Leigh-Ann may not drink much coffee, but she also didn’t make a habit of reading half the night. The last time she did that was when she decided to reread the Harry Potter series in one weekend. The librarian had laughed at her when Leigh-Ann checked out every paperback and hauled them home, but when she brought them back that following Tuesday, nobody was laughing.

  Why didn’t I take them back Monday? Because that was my day of rest from so much reading.

  There must have been enough caffeine in the scent of the coffee, for one sniff woke her up to the point she came into the parents’ mumbled conversation. Her mother flipped fried eggs on the stove while her dad scrolled through his phone and sipped his coffee. The only person stumbling around was Leigh-Ann, who was briefly chastised for staying up too late before her mother returned to her conversation.

  “…Sandy Jones, hon,” she said to her husband, who kept asking her who the hell she was talking about. “She’s the one blowing up my phone about her daughter Chrystal. One of your classmates, right, Leigh-Ann?”

  With a mighty yawn, Leigh-Ann slumped into the chair by the window and waited for her coffee to cool. An empty plate before her promised protein and carbs as soon as her mother was done cooking breakfast. “Yeah. She’s one of my classmates. Don’t know her as well as some of the others, though.”

  “I know her mom pretty well. She’s telling me that some big party got busted last night. Deputy Greenhill waltzed through there to break it up before she was summoned to that barn fire on the other side of the town.”

  “Another one?” Mr. Hardy asked. “What is that, the fifth one these past few weeks?”

  “Apparently, a couple animals were killed in this one. Real shame. Whoever’s firebugging around town needs to stop before someone seriously gets hurt.” The stove turned off, and two eggs slid onto Leigh-Ann’s plate. “It’s bad enough they’re destroying people’s properties! The Longfellows are gonna hurt for a long while with the insurance, I hear. Apparently, the fire marshal has cleared them of any wrongdoing, but their company isn’t believing it. Even if they don’t need to rebuild it, they still gotta clean it up. Now they can’t use that patch of land for o
ther things.”

  Leigh-Ann yawned. “What’s this about the party breaking up?”

  “Oh, I bet a lot of your classmates were there.” Her mom turned around without saying anything else. Her dad, meanwhile, looked up from his phone and right into her eyes.

  “You didn’t go to that, right?” he asked.

  “I was here all night, Dad. Besides, you know I ain’t into parties anymore.”

  “Now, what do I do?” He rubbed his chin. Or, more like, he rubbed the stubble of the beard he had yet to groom that day. “These high-school parties are double-edged swords. On one hand, you get into all sorts of trouble real easily, even if you don’t go to them with the intent of stirring up trouble. On the other, it’s how you kids socialize outside of school. Real important memories to make at those things.”

  Leigh-Ann couldn’t sip her coffee quickly enough. “I’ve played Seven Minutes in Heaven, Dad, but, that’s like… so middle school.”

  “You played that game?” her mom asked. “Is that the one where…”

  Her dad cut back in. “Making out with strangers decided by some game or other. In the closet for seven minutes.”

  “Sounds like either a dream come true or a total nightmare!”

  Tell me about it. The two times Leigh-Ann ended up in the closet, she was either kissing Aiden or Digby. Blech. Both of them were terrible. Best kiss ever did not happen in a closet.

  “Sounds like it’s a good thing you didn’t go to this one,” Leigh-Ann’s dad continued.

  “Apparently it was so loud that the neighbor called the police on them. Doesn’t that Aiden boy and his folks live all the way out of town a bit? That’s downright sad. Either that neighbor is super sensitive, or they made bigger fools of themselves than you have any business getting mixed up with. Sandy said her daughter was escorted home reeking of pot and booze.”

  “The horror,” Leigh-Ann’s father muttered. “The same shit we were doing at that age.”

  “Oh, you know it’s one thing for us to do it when we know what’s going on, hon.” Leigh-Ann’s mother joined them at the table. “It’s another when we have no idea what our kids are doing or how they’ll handle things.”

  The more Leigh-Ann sipped her coffee, the more awake she became. Awake enough to understand that her parents had gone from the party, to the new teller at the bank, to the quality of the balsamic vinegar at Frankie’s Deli, to the barn fires plaguing that corner of the county. A bunch of things Leigh-Ann had no interest in.

  Until a certain someone came up in conversation, anyway.

  “That new girl, right?” Mrs. Hardy scoffed. “I don’t know anything about her, but I’ve heard many things.”

  Leigh-Ann lowered her fork to her plate. “What new girl?”

  “The one in your class, hon. I think she’s from Georgia.”

  Sheesh, she might know more about Carrie than I do right now. Rumors really flew in a place like Paradise Valley. Didn’t help they lived in a congested trailer park where people often didn’t have anything better to do than congregate on their lawn chairs and talk about the second-hand news they picked up down at the supermarket. Practically a national sport, and Paradise RV and Trailer Park was the epicenter of gold medals.

  “You mean Carrie? She’s the new girl in my class from Alabama.”

  “Alabama! Now, there’s a place you don’t meet many people from around here.”

  Was she kidding? Leigh-Ann could name a couple off the top of her head, and they were adults. “She’s nice. We have lunch together sometimes.”

  Her parents exchanged a look Leigh-Ann could not interpret.

  “What?”

  “Now, don’t take me at face value, hon,” her mother said, “but I’ve heard some interesting things about that new girl. Through Sandy and some of the other mothers, that is. Oh, apparently she was at that party tonight.” That was directed to Leigh-Ann’s father. “Rumor is that Deputy Greenhill looked right at her and was prepared to cuff her for the fire!”

  “No need to spread those kinds of rumors.” Mr. Hardy shook his head. “I’m sure she’s a nice girl, if our baby girl is talking to her.”

  They both looked at Leigh-Ann, who shoveled breakfast into her mouth.

  The concept of Carrie having anything to do with the barn fires made absolutely zero sense. For one thing, the barn fires started like… six weeks ago. Before Carrie moved there. Right? Leigh-Ann attempted to construct a timeline as she took her sweet time getting dressed in her room. Carrie said she had moved there “a month ago”, but that was on the first day of school. Who knew if she added or subtracted a week in her head? She might have moved here right before the fires started, but it’s crazy to think she would immediately start setting some! Shouldn’t a girl settle in, first? People were picking on her because she was from out of town. Probably because she was a nineteen-year-old repeating senior year. Most of the kids at school whispered that Carrie was expelled for this and that. Either she had brought a gun to school, sold drugs, or got into fights. Leigh-Ann’s favorite was the one about the “lesbian gang,” which went over about as well as suggesting she was politically affiliated with certain fascist regimes – that was not something people joked about in Paradise Valley, including teenagers. (Not without getting verbally clocked by their peers, anyway.)

  Leigh-Ann had mostly forgotten about it until she hopped on her bike and rode a quarter mile out of town to Waterlily House, a place she did not expect to be perpetuating many of those same rumors.

  “Can you believe it?” Sunny said to Terrence Cobb, the local landscaper who came by every other weekend to mow the lawns and make sure everything was properly watered around the property. “Yet another barn fire. I’m sure as hell glad we don’t have any barns adjacent to our property, because all it takes is the wind blowing the wrong way and this goes up in smoke.”

  Terrence shook his head as he remained hunched over his riding lawnmower. “I used to do some work for the Gladsburys.” Was that the family hit this time? Leigh-Ann vaguely recognized the name. Probably because they had a giant sign along the highway announcing where to get fresh eggs. “That barn was built only twenty years ago, too. They didn’t keep much in there since focusing all their efforts on chickens, but I think they still had the one cow.”

  “So many people are saying that a new kid in town has something to do with it.” Sunny happened to catch Leigh-Ann’s presence at that moment. Was it the bike smacking against the earth, or the scowl on Leigh-Ann’s face? “Is it already eleven? My goodness, you look like you’re hungover! Were you at that party last night?”

  “No.” Hungover? Really? A girl stays ups until three in the morning reading guy on guy smut, and she’s hungover? “I wasn’t at that party. I’m just tired.” How does everyone know about a party that happened a little over twelve hours ago? Was it because of the police being called? The supposed connection to the barn fire? Leigh-Ann had no personal knowledge about these events, but she somehow felt partially responsible for them.

  Carrie. I really hope she’s okay…

  Before Leigh-Ann had the chance to pull out her phone and text Carrie, Sunny continued, “Probably a good thing you didn’t go to the party, Leigh-Ann. I’m hearing all sorts of things about what happened in there. Puts my own high school party days to shame!”

  Both she and Terrence laughed as the nostalgic memories Leigh-Ann was much too young to appreciate. Thank God, too. Sounds really lame. She didn’t want to hear about how taboo it was to smoke marijuana back in the nineties, or how it was the age before cell phones and nobody knew where the hell anybody was. Driving home tipsy? Everybody did it! Kids today were too soft. Or they drank way too much. What was going on with today’s youth? They had absolutely no future, so they should do something about it. Not too much to upset the status quo of kids getting into stupid trouble, though. Or any status quo, for that matter.

  Sunny commented on the blank look behind Leigh-Ann’s eyes. After excusing herself to start her ch
ores, Leigh-Ann stole into the house and found the one spot in the dining area that had the best cell reception – always a gamble a quarter mile out of town.

  “Everything cool? I’m hearing all sorts of crazy stuff about that party last night.”

  Leigh-Ann left it at that. She didn’t want to come off as needy or weird to Carrie, the cool girl who might be setting fires. Yeah, right. Still, it didn’t hurt to ask the source, right?

  Although Leigh-Ann intermittently checked her phone throughout the day, she didn’t get a single reply. Not until she left Waterlily House around four, bypassed the road leading to the trailer park, and headed due east for Paradise Pizza.

  Chapter 9

  CARRIE

  It was still early enough in the evening for the rush to only be on the horizon, not hitting the tiny pizza place with the full force of baseball-sized hail. Carrie stood behind the counter in a trucker hat and apron advertising the establishment. For some reason, it was extra itchy that day. What was the deal? Should she be starching them in the laundry? Wasn’t it bad enough she had to take the aprons home for washing? Her aunt had rolled her eyes and chose that moment to tell Carrie she was expected to do her own laundry. What? No, Dillon didn’t have to do his own laundry. Why was Carrie griping? She should be glad she could do free laundry instead of being stuck with the laundromat half a mile away!

  Carrie scratched her arm again. What else was there to do? There were no orders. Her coworkers cleaned up and prepped in the back. Carrie was told to stay up there in case a customer came in, but aside from washing the counters, rearranging brochures, and cleaning off the two bistro tables by the window, there wasn’t anything left to do. The hot case was empty after the last of the a-la-carte slices were bought an hour ago. Carrie had already scrubbed it out and shut it down for the day.