I managed five paces before she asked, “Are you heading home?”
Home. Dad.
“I don’t know.”
“We… We need to compile videos and do a follow-up so I can send stuff to Charles.”
I didn’t care about the stupid show, and she knew it. “Have fun.”
Olivia sighed, perhaps sensing her timing was bad. “Just… Go home, Gale. Dad hasn’t seen you in a week. He’s worried. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I got in the Jeep without answering.
Against every instinct, I went home. The drive did nothing to clear my head. My thoughts spun and spun. Around the shared kiss. Around Ozrik’s teasing remark. Around the reality of keeping such a profound secret when the town’s biggest hotshot had the ammunition to ruin me.
Say… Ozrik makes my dick hard.
I moaned at the memory. How long of a reprieve would I get before my world crumbled? The first time this happened, the disaster had been contained to the school. But did that teach meanything? No, apparently not. I was weak and hormonal, and now I would pay for it.
I had yet to check inside the backpack to see if the pictures were still there. Upon remembering my private journal—also in the bag—and all I’d written, I whimpered.
It was seven in the evening when I got home. The storms had missed Elk City, and the night was dry and warm. Clouds blocked the stars and the moon, making it especially dark. The house was empty, and it would have been too easy to slip downstairs to the basement and lock myself in my bedroom, but I couldn’t do that to Dad. I’d been gone the better part of a week without contact, and he worried.
I tossed my backpack on the kitchen table, braced for the worst, and unzipped one section after another, emptying it. I found a stack of dirty camping clothes tucked inside a plastic bag, the clean clothes I had yet to wear, my novel, journal, and toiletries. Thumbing through the journal, I saw no sign it had been tampered with, but there was no way of knowing if he’d read it.
The photographs of Ozrik were in a separate compartment and slightly battered from having been taken out so many times. Dread filled my belly. If he’d seen them, if he’d read my journal and learned the truth… But why leave them behind? He could have taken both as proof and shown them to anyone.
Satisfied they hadn’t vanished but no less settled, I repacked the bag.
A light was on in the barn, the door propped open, but I wasn’t ready to confront Dad yet, so I trudged downstairs, started a load of laundry, and had a long, hot shower to calm my nerves. As the water sluiced over my sensitive skin, my mind kept pulling me back to the Jeep. To the kiss. To the sensation of Ozrik’s lips. His tongue against mine. His hand on my face.
My body responded. Unlike the thousands of times before when I’d soaked up these private sensations and fantasized about things that would never happen, that night, I refused to acknowledge them. I flicked the temperature to cold, hoping to numb my skin so I didn’t have to feel anything anymore.
It didn’t work, and after the frustrating shower, I put on clean clothes and checked the time. Ten after eight. I wandered upstairs like a man marching to the death chamber.
Dad had an uncanny ability to see everything I didn’t say, and since the last time we were in the same room together was the night he’d discovered the photograph of Ozrik, I had no idea what this confrontation might look like. I felt exposed, like the truth was written all over my face and Dad would see it the second he looked into my eyes.
I headed to the kitchen and out the sliding door to the backyard. Taking my time, I crossed the yard, listening to the chirrup of crickets, and debated jumping the fence instead. I stood in the open barn door and found Dad hunched over the workbench, fussing with a strange piece of machinery I couldn’t identify.
An ancient crackly radio played rock ballads from the seventies and eighties. Olivia and I teased him about his taste in music, but the old man wouldn’t give up his Cat Stevens or Billy Joel for anything.
He hummed along as he used pliers and a wrench on a rusted bolt that refused to move. Every so often, he adjusted his grip and cursed as he strained to undo it without luck. He tossed the tools aside and rubbed his sandpaper jaw as he puzzled over the contraption.
He had yet to notice me. The barn was filled with yard and woodworking equipment of every variety. Some of it was usable, but much of it wasn’t. Dad collected junk from estate sales and secondhand stores. He would either fix them or scrap them forparts. He wasn’t much of a mechanic, but he liked tinkering and enjoyed refurbishing furniture, then selling it for three or four times what he paid. It kept him busy.
I scanned the wall of tools and supplies until I located the WD-40 on an upper shelf. Crossing into the barn, I snagged the can and brought it to the workbench. The heat of Dad’s gaze warmed the side of my face as I set the can down, refusing to meet his eyes.
“This might help,” I said.
Instead of asking where I’d been for the past week or questioning my clearly unstable mental health, he thanked me and sprayed a generous coating over the rusty bolt. “Smart kid. Who raised you?”
“Some guy.”
“Huh. And here I was ready to get the angle grinder and cut the bugger off.”
“No need for drastic measures. Bet it’s easier now.”
“Let’s give ’er a try.”
