Wild Reckless Read online

  Wild Reckless

  Ginger Scott

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  13 Years Later

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. Chapter 21

  22. Chapter 22

  23. Chapter 23

  24. Chapter 24

  Acknowledgments

  Books By Ginger Scott

  About Ginger Scott

  Text copyright © 2015 Ginger Scott (Ginger Eiden)

  Little Miss Write, LLC

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Ginger Scott

  This one’s for the girls.

  Prologue

  The caramel aroma that scented the air was thick. The smells of the Annual Wilson Orchard Apple Fest always began to permeate the streets the night before. Thin lines of smoke trailed from windows and front porches down residential streets of Woodstock, awakening the noses and stirring hungry bellies one at a time until they found the Harper residence.

  This was going to be Owen Harper’s first year at the festival. His dad took off special from his job at the warehouse just so he could take his middle son to the hometown tradition where the town’s best bakers lined up their pies made of the fruits from Old Man Wilson’s trees.

  Owen liked the pies. He always ate them when his parents or grandparents brought them home. But what he really wanted to do was go on the Ferris wheel. His older brother James had been to the festival twice. James was ten, and he’d always been tall, so he could pass the height requirement easily and ride alone. But Owen was not yet five, so he would need a chaperone. His mother worked long hours, and his father rarely got a weekend off. But today…today was an exception. And today, Owen Harper would ride the Ferris wheel and look out over the town until he could see the roof of his house.

  He promised to bring his younger brother Andrew to the festival one day too. He’d be old enough to walk to the festival on his own then, and tall enough to serve as his brother’s chaperone—and together they’d both feel like they could fly.

  Owen’s dad talked to himself a lot. It wasn’t anything unusual to Owen. He’d often watched his father have arguments within his own mind, his lips muttering fragments of words over his cereal. He learned to ignore the nonsensical tirades his dad would have with someone who seemed to be invisible while he drove his son to school. And the long hours on the porch at night, when his dad would stare off at nothing for hours at a time—those were routine, too. Owen loved those nights the best, because he would get to lie in the hammock, and sometimes he’d wake there in the morning.

  Bill Harper was talking to himself a lot today. And everyone was staring. But Owen didn’t understand why. Nothing was unusual.

  His father paid their admission, and his son breathed in deeply, his lungs so full of the caramel, cinnamon, and apple fragrances that he was sure he could actually taste them.

  His father’s hand was rough from working heavy machines for hours every day, and when he pulled his son’s hand into his, his skin felt scratchy. Owen didn’t care. His own fingernails were chewed away and his palms were dirty from his morning hunt for worms in his mother’s garden. He squeezed his father’s hand tightly and let his grin stretch the freckles on his cheeks as he took in the sounds of popcorn popping, kids screaming on the roller coaster and carnival workers yelling out from all directions to win prizes.

  Everything about today was perfect—just as Owen had dreamt it would be.

  Bill Harper pulled his son up to the ticket booth, and stood him next to a hand-painted post. Owen stood tall, stretching out a little and lifting his heels up just enough that the woman checking his height wouldn’t notice he was cheating. He didn’t want anything to go wrong, and this would be just a little bit of insurance. In the end, he didn’t have a reason to worry. He was forty-four inches—two inches taller than the requirement. Still too short to ride alone, but tall enough to ride. And that was all that mattered.

  As his dad handed the tickets to the man wearing overalls and working the controls for the Ferris wheel, Owen noticed the people in line behind him staring again. His dad was talking off to the side, arguing with himself over something. But it was nothing unusual. His dad did this—often. Sometimes Owen did it too, because he wanted to see what it felt like.

  Their brows were all pinched, and when one woman pulled her two girls in close to her body, away from him and his father, it made Owen angry. He sneered and actually let out a faint growl, which only made the woman hold on more tightly to her girls, who looked like they were about the same age as Owen. Their blond hair was pulled up on either side in pigtails. They wore matching dresses—pink—and they looked afraid. He had scared them, and eventually they left the line.

  Owen was pleased.

  He forgot all about the angry and frightened faces as soon as his carriage lifted from the platform and he and his father climbed higher in the air. The wind was colder up there, and everything about the day smelled like Halloween. It was morning, so the lights weren’t on for any of the festival rides, but it didn’t matter to Owen. The earth looked magical from up above.

  While their cart was paused at the top, Owen twisted in his seat, counting rows of trees and buildings until he was sure he had the right road in his view. He counted chimneys to seven. And then he was sure he found it. He turned back around when the wheels started to spin again, satisfied that he could now check off the box in his mind—the one to see his house from up above.

  He wanted to show his father. But Bill Harper was talking to himself. His son had learned it was better not to interrupt. He’d wait. His turn to talk would come eventually.

  It always did.

  After four more pauses, every carriage on the wheel was full, and the ride began its first full circle, the speed faster than Owen had expected. It was a little scary, and he wanted to hold his father’s hand, but Bill Harper was still talking, his hands flying in front of him in various directions while he argued with someone—the person Owen could never see.

  The air was cold when the wheel hit its top speed, so the young boy pulled the zipper up on his jacket with one hand, his other hand gripping the bar in front of him tightly. As he leaned forward, he noticed the woman with the two blond girls standing below, and he thought about spitting. He didn’t, but he chuckled to himself when he pictured it.

  His dad would think that was funny. He liked things like that. Bill Harper was very much a boy—he liked dirt, and messes, and swear words and beer. Owen wanted to grow up to be just like him.

  By the third pass of the wheel, Owen was no longer nervous, and he loosened his grip on the bar in front of him. He wasn’t brave enough yet to stretch his arms out, but he cou
ld close his eyes. With his head tilted toward the sky, he smiled big and shut his eyes tightly, letting the crisp air sting his face. With each pass along the ground, he heard the laughing and yelling of more people entering the festival, and the closer his cart climbed to the sky, the fainter those sounds became, until they started up again.

  This was going to be the best memory of his life. He knew it.

  His car paused at the very top while the riders on the other end of the wheel exited their carts. His ride was over. It was perfect.

  When his father reached around and unclipped the latch, Owen didn’t flinch. His dad worked with machines all day. He had worked with them for years. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t make a sound when his father stood up, reaching for the long support beam above them. He held on tight when the cart swung forward. His father didn’t tell him to, he just knew he was supposed to. He wouldn’t want Owen to fall out.

  It wasn’t until his father took his first step out onto the beam below that Owen knew something was wrong. And then he saw the face of the woman below. He heard one of the little girls scream. Owen’s world shifted, and everything began happening in slow motion. He slid his body to the place where his father had just been sitting, he reached his tiny hand—the one scuffed with dirt and scratched from trees—out to grip his father’s leg, hoping he could just reach the denim of his jeans…reach anything. He reached, and reached, and reached. But no matter what, Owen was too small, his arm not yet long enough.

  He tried to scream, but no sound would escape his mouth. His lungs felt flat. His stomach felt sick. This was no longer going to be his favorite day.

  His father’s boots gripped the beam, and his large hands held on to the large steel bar above him. He was moving slowly down, closer to the center of the Ferris wheel. He was moving down, and that was the only thing that made Owen feel okay.

  The words of the carnival worker were a blur. He heard the man who ran the ride speaking over a loudspeaker, but he couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.

  Owen turned behind him to see if someone was coming to help, but that cart was empty. The one below him was full, and he could see a man with two kids sitting still, watching Owen’s father climb out into the center of the wheel, his hands letting go every so often to point while he yelled.

  Bill Harper was yelling. He was yelling at someone who was invisible, someone who couldn’t be heard yelling back. He was pointing at him, shoving him, laughing wildly, and then crying.

  Then he took a step, and Bill Harper fell to the earth.

  In the end, all anyone could seem to talk about was how sad it was that Carolyn Potter’s apple pie went to waste that year.

  Owen never went to the festival again.

  And he’d make damn sure his baby brother never went either.

  13 Years Later

  Chapter 1

  “Kensington! Come downstairs! Your sandwich is ready!”

  We’ve been in the suburbs—no, the country!—for less than six hours, and already my mom has morphed into some form of June Cleaver. I half expect to walk down the steps and see her in one of those poufy A-line dresses with a pretty bow cinched about her waist.

  She’s been walking on eggshells with me ever since we handed over the keys to our old home. I didn’t want to move here. Nothing about this move is about me though. And that’s why my mom is playing up the nice. Not that she isn’t normally nice. Normally, she isn’t really there at all. Mom’s the head nurse practitioner at a major hospital in Chicago. Dad’s a conductor and a music professor in Milwaukee. He was just promoted to the head of the department. So we moved here…to the middle. Woodstock—exactly halfway between the two. “An ideal and convenient location,” everyone said.

  Convenient.

  Far.

  Lonely.

  My two best girlfriends are starting their first day of senior year at Bryce Academy today. My old school. In the city. I wanted to stay. Mom didn’t like me taking the train on my own, though. So I’ll have to live vicariously through the pictures and texts they send. This morning’s was a shot of Gaby frowning by my old locker. Morgan tried to get her face in the shot too, but all I caught was her ear. She was terrible at taking selfies. I miss them. But there’s some strange comfort in visual proof that they miss me too.

  It’s hot here in the summer—hotter than in the city. There are more bugs, and the grass is itchy. It’s green everywhere, and I’m not really used to that either. The houses all seem…old. Everyone has a front porch, and driveways that stretch into these enormous garages that sometimes aren’t even attached to the houses at all. That’s going to suck when it snows.

  “Kensington!” Mom yells again, her voice less bubbly than before. The edge in her tone makes my lip tick up into a faint smile; I prefer her being real.

  “I’m coming!” I yell, sending a quick heart image message to my two friends, then shoving my phone into my back pocket. I pause at the stairs to look out over the vast emptiness that is my new home. Our things are trickling in, but everything seems swallowed up by this house. It’s not like the brownstone we lived in just south of Wrigley. Everything there was tight, and cramped, but it all had its place. Everything was at home. I was at home.

  And now I’m here.

  “Put the piano in the dining room…yes…about there. Perfect. Thank you,” my mom says, quickly removing the sheets and pads from my piano. I think she thinks unveiling it quickly will somehow make me happy, like she’s just pulled a bouquet or chocolates out of a hat.

  “Where are we supposed to eat?” I ask, looking at my piano as it sits squarely under the dated, brass chandelier of our new dining room—like the world’s cheapest spotlight. I had a practice room before, in our old house. Nothing fancy, just a door that I could close anytime I wanted.

  I miss that door.

  “We have a breakfast bar in the kitchen. It’s fine. It looks nice there, doesn’t it?” she asks without really asking. She walks back to the kitchen, her half-eaten sandwich dangling from her hand.

  I think my piano looks stupid there. I think it looks stupid anywhere but in its home back in Chicago. But this isn’t really about what I think, so I keep my mouth shut and follow my mom’s footsteps into the kitchen where a ham sandwich sits alone on a gigantic white plate. The wastefulness amuses me, and I lift my sandwich, brush away the single crumb, and put the perfectly clean plate in the dishwasher.

  “Thanks,” I say, holding it up and taking a bite. Mom purses her lips, but she goes back to her lunch in front of her computer at the counter.

  My mom finishes her sandwich quickly and without much conversation, then begins carrying boxes from the garage to various rooms around the house. Everything has a label: TOWELS, DISHES, CLEANING SUPPLIES, MOVIES, and KENSI for the few boxes that go to my room. I haven’t been called Kensi or Kens out loud in years. I miss that too.

  The kitchen has more boxes than I do; most of my things are still in the back of the Honda. My music books were already here and waiting for us when we unlocked the doors this morning. Dad brought them on his way to the office, afraid they’d get misplaced or damaged during the move. I could never say this to him, but there are only a few pages in that box that I really care about—the ones with notes I wrote, for me, for my ears and heart to hear.

  I’ve been playing the piano since I was about three. My grandmother left my mother her old piano when she died, and I somehow knew what to do with it the moment the movers left it in our home. I couldn’t reach the pedals, and my fingers barely spread far enough to strike a chord, but I could hear something and instantly mimic the sound. Music came to me before most of my words, and my father was quick to nurture my gift.

  Dad plays brass instruments, so he always sought out the help of others to instruct me. My first music teacher was no longer able to teach me after a year, and I outgrew the next by the time I was ten. I’ve been studying with Chen ever since. He’s a music composition professor at the University of Chicago and
has scored many of the independent shows that play in the theaters downtown. My father hired him to give me private lessons, to challenge me and make it impossible for the best programs in the country to ignore me and “my gift.” But what my father doesn’t know is that when Chen comes over—while he’s not at home—we play jazz.

  Now that we’re out of the city, I’ll only be able to see Chen once a month, unless I take the train into Chicago on my own. My dad expects me to step up my independent playing. He even went as far as to make sure my extra periods at school were all time in the music room.

  I think of everything I miss because of this move, my afternoon jazz with Chen is what I lament the most. It’s been replaced by a gilded light fixture and a soaring ceiling that will make my playing echo out into the streets. It will be impossible to run away from the sounds my fingers will be forced to make. But I will practice, and I’ll play the Bachs and the Mozarts and the Beethovens—those seemingly impossible songs that have become habits for my hands. I’ll practice because that’s what my father expects, and if I meet his expectations, he’ll support my decision to study in New York or…or Paris or London or Rome. Anywhere…but here.

  And then, I’ll be free.

  Unable to avoid reality any longer, I finally give in and venture to the driveway and the open hatch in the back of the Honda where most of my belongings still rest in taped-up cardboard boxes. My clothes are all stuffed into pillowcases; the wrinkles will have to be dealt with later.

  With the last box wedged between my hip and the bumper, I reach up to slam the hatch closed again. The dark pair of eyes staring at me from the other side of the car make me jump—effectively dropping my boxes to the ground, spilling clothes and books and random trinkets from my girlfriends.

  On instinct, I bend down to gather everything back into my arms, expecting help with my now disorganized load. Instead, I hear the steady drumming of a basketball along the pavement, and when I bend down just a little lower, I see his gray Converse slide slowly away from me, up our driveway toward the garage.