Taylor Made Owens (2 page)

•

Lisa thought Robert could benefit by earning some money. Maybe that would attenuate any disposition he had to steal. She was also anxious to get rid of a dirt mountain in her driveway that was growing its own forest while waiting for her husband and son to spread it. She offered the lad fifty dollars for the chore, and he agreed. Her husband, Bill, an inspector with the Ontario Provincial Police, wasn’t pleased with his do-gooder wife bringing this delinquent into his neighborhood, but said nothing on the matter. When she hatched a plan to bring him to their house, though, he balked.

“I don’t want that hoodlum near my children or niece. God knows what losing his family did to his mind. Tell him never mind.”

“Come on, Bill,” Lisa replied. “He’s no angel, but he’s had an awful life since his parents died. There aren’t many boys around with Bobby Owens’s pedigree; I don’t know of any. His parents were brilliant scientists, and I think he’s just as brilliant. I’d hate to shut him off from our children for that reason alone. Besides, if everyone shunned him for something that wasn’t his fault, he would become unbalanced.”

Mr. Taylor relented, but resolved to keep a close eye on him, especially around his daughter.

Robert showed up at the appointed time and place on an idyllic early spring Saturday morning. Idyllic or no, he became distressed at the sight of a pile of dirt so huge, he needed a Sherpa guide to scale to its snowy summit. Water from heavy storms was seeping into the basement, so Bill wanted to change the grade in the backyard to direct the water away from the house, preferably into the neighbor’s. Bill gave Robert a shovel, wheelbarrow, and instructions, and he got to work.

About three hours into the endeavor, Lisa returned from the mall with her children, thirteen-year-old fraternal twins—a girl and a boy—and her fourteen-year-old niece. The boy, Jeremy, went into the house, but the two girls stayed for a few minutes to gawk at the longhaired imp.

At first Robert didn’t notice them. Although girls tended to notice him, even through the scruffy appearance and tattered clothes that evinced poverty, he paid them no heed—he’d had more important things on his mind like baseball and food—but when the fourteen-year-old girl, Jennifer, approached him, he stared until he walked the wheelbarrow into a tree. It stopped short upon hitting the tree, and the angle was such that the left handle swung around and lodged in his groin.

Discomfited, he thought to himself,
Oh, man, that hurts. I must have—God she’s perfect!—squashed them for good
.

Amazing, isn’t it, how a million years of evolution enables an immediate recognition of beauty, no matter what the circumstance? He told himself,
Aphrodite, surrender your crown and bow ye to the new icon of feminine pulchritude
. Well, okay, it was closer to,
My balls are crushed, but I’ve never seen such a fabulous face!
She had awakened something that had never before stirred in this young man, who was still progressing through puberty.

Jennifer Lynn Taylor had a perfectly proportioned, magnificent face framed by sensational blonde hair that cascaded down her long neck and splashed off her fair shoulders. Rosy cheeks, a delicate nose, and soft chin surrounded sumptuous lips that curved up at each extreme, forming a perfect pout when closed, and revealing a smile of surpassing splendor when drawn back. Divine eyes the color of a mountain lake on a sunny summer day, accented by long lashes, and set above her high cheeks, were of such ineffable beauty that the finest poets could no more capture it with words than they could capture a cloud with their hands. Her right eyelid drooped a touch, the imperfection that completed the perfection, rendering her countenance all the more dreamy. Slender, but developing flawlessly … Oh, just picture the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen with blonde hair and blue eyes, and that’s Jennifer. The young lady lived with her mother in nearby London, but, after her parents divorced, spent much of her time at her cousin’s happy home in Kilworth. Her father was an advertising executive in New York City.

Her cousin, Kristen Julia Taylor, though but one year younger, still looked like a little girl. She was cute, with big blue-green eyes, prominent cheeks, pert nose, and short, dark brown hair, but suffered by comparison with her cousin. A certain gleam in her eyes disclosed her kind and artless nature, her vivacity, and a sagacity far beyond her years. She was known as the smart one, her cousin the pretty one, which bothered Kristen, though she didn’t let on.

Kristen excelled in school to such a degree that her parents decided to pull her out of public school—school systems cater to mediocrity—and place her in Montessori. She was doing tenth grade-level work by the end of seventh grade, when her parents decided to put her back in public school, the cost of private secondary education being too dear for this middle-class family. She was granted admission into ninth grade in the local Catholic high school for the coming fall, joining her cousin. Her twin brother, an average student, entered grade eight.

Like many gorgeous girls, Jennifer felt it was her birthright to capture and discard any boy she pleased. Jennifer had a well-deserved reputation for being callous and capricious with boys. She found she had power over boys and became addicted to it. Jennifer dismissed Robert on first sight as a vagrant in the making. Even Kristen, who would never need a man to rely on, couldn’t defy evolution enough to overcome this instinct. She, too, assumed from his appearance that he was indigent and low-class, unworthy of her.

Jennifer determined it might be fun to play with the cute boy for a while—to tease, taunt, and lure him—with full intentions of marooning him as soon as he made a beachhead. That he would fall for her was certain. Everyone with enough testosterone to qualify as male had since she began developing curves two years previous. That there had to be a rejection stage was also patent. How better to assert complete domination?

Jennifer commenced the game. She took off her jacket. She was wearing a tight red shirt and blue jeans. “Watch,” she mentioned to Kristen, “he’ll stare at me.” Hands clasped behind her behind, she meandered up close to him looking at the ground. Coyly, she raised her eyes to meet his, then quickly lowered her gaze. Demurely inclining her head toward him, she again raised her eyes, but this time stared daringly for a few seconds before again averting her eyes. He was hypnotized. To finish him off, she turned sideways, jutted out her chest, tossed her hair, gazed again at him over her shoulder, and smiled invitingly.

Being unable to disengage the stare, he walked into the tree and bagged himself. She erupted in laughter and said, “Are you all right?”

Struck dumb by this immaculate vision, all he could manage was a nod and a blush, while maintaining his gape at her incomparable face. He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t stop himself until she turned and walked away. She’d attracted many boys before, but she’d never known such exaltation.
I have complete power over this boy
, mused the smug lass.

After Robert recovered, Kristen, who was wearing a knitted white sweater with a colorful log cabin on the chest, came over to see if she could command his attention, too. She had no interest in the teen, but wanted to test how appealing she might be to a guy, so she ambled up to him, smiled, and stuck out her flat chest, hoping he’d walk into another tree.

“Nice sweater,” he noted. “What’s that?” he said, pointing at the log cabin. “The little house on the prairie?”

Kristen, who admired a sharp tongue except when it was lashing her, blushed and retreated to her cousin’s side. Jennifer laughed. That was enough for today. The game shall recommence at a time of her choosing. Bill, who’d seen the girls near Robert, told them to come in. “Stay away from him, both of you. Understand?”

When he finished the chore, Robert came to the door for payment. Kristen answered and promptly shut the door in his face with a giggle. He rang the bell again, and she did the same thing. The next time he rang, Lisa broke the impasse and let him in. “Krissy, behave,” she said.

While Lisa fetched his money, the teens stood in the hallway glaring at each other. Lisa returned, handed him his payment and walked off. Kristen, anxious to repay him for the insult he’d greeted her with, said, “My mother thinks you’re some kind of genius because your parents were. I think this nut fell pretty far from the tree.” He sneered, but said nothing, so she continued. “I think I can classify you. An IQ below seventy is a moron, below fifty an imbecile, below thirty an idiot, and below that—you.”

“I want you to do something for me, but I think you’d tattle on me if I said it straight out, so I’ll give you a hint that I hope you’ll understand: it begins with ‘f’ and ends in ‘uck off.’”

She smirked at him. Never before had she encountered someone who could match her jibe for jibe. She’d met her match.

He continued, “So, Krissy—”

“My name is Kristen. My family calls me Krissy.”

“I’ll jot that in my diary, Taylor. Where’s your sister?”

“You mean Jenny? She’s my cousin.”

“I should’ve figured there wouldn’t be such a wide range of looks within the same family.”

“Ha. Ha. Jenny’s here every weekend. I can call her if you want, but I should warn you—she’s used much better looking guys than you as a doormat. She forgot you even before you reeled your tongue back in. Come on, we’ll go see her. I want to see her laugh at the thought that you would have a prayer for her.”

“Never mind,” he replied, thinking he’d better be careful about trying to outwit this one. Bill came in at that point and saw his daughter talking to Robert. Seeing the displeasure on her father’s face, Robert quickly quit the Taylor abode.

“I warned you to keep your distance from him, young lady, and I meant it,” Bill pronounced. It was bad enough Owens was a delinquent, he was also a boy. Bill had drilled into Kristen the virtues of staying away from men, since they only think about one thing. Actually, that’s not a fair charge. Most men think about sports and music, too—and how many women they’d get if only they were a pro football player or a rock star.

•

Three more months brought the school year’s surcease, and with it, the Taylors left for their cottage northwest of London on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. The twins and their cousin Jennifer spent the entire summer there with Lisa every year. Bill came up on weekends.

Robert stayed in Kilworth with nothing to do. He yearned to play baseball, but he had no money. He looked around the house for money to steal, but found nothing. At summer’s end, he called Lisa to ask about getting his parents’ money. She informed him that their will specified he couldn’t get access to his trust fund until age nineteen, though it did allow small disbursements if the public guardian approved. Lisa made arrangements for him to get a hundred dollars per month from the fund.

With his first hundred, he got a buzz cut, a used baseball glove, and his first new clothes in years. Privation having been his lot since his family died, he felt richer than the queen of England, but he soon discovered that one hundred dollars is a trifle.

O
n the first day of high school, the girls noticed a new guy at the bus stop. Robert Owens had grown five inches over the past few months. Having outgrown every piece of clothing he owned, he was forced buy a whole new set of secondhand clothing, but he was sporting new attire for the first day. His short haircut showed off his pleasant face.

The bus for the Catholic school always came first, followed shortly thereafter by the public one. Robert chose public school, even though the Catholic one was much closer; he’d have gone any distance to avoid anything to do with religion. As the Catholic school bus pulled up to the stop, several female heads were turned to the right, staring through the windows at him.
Who is that?
they wondered.

One said, “Isn’t that that Owens boy?”

Kristen looked when she heard his name and couldn’t believe the transformation.

“He’s kind of hot,” Terri Zylstra observed.

“Yeah, not bad at all,” seconded Karen Chan, with a glance at her boyfriend, Trevor Larsen, who reacted with a menacing sneer at the low-class rogue.

Ryan Olsen, noting that his goddess, Jennifer, was studying Robert with interest, observed, “Look at the way the ugly fag is standing there, as if he’s real cool.”

Jennifer returned, “Well, I think he’s really cute. You’re just jealous.”

“Of that dumb ass? I could beat the crap out of him,” Ryan declared.

“Yeah, right,” Jennifer said with a smirk. “Get out there and put him in his place,” the troublemaker taunted with a snicker. Kristen smiled to underline that her cousin was being sarcastic, but Ryan interpreted the smile as concurrence and resolved to do as they suggested.

On the bus home, he and two friends planned an ambush at the bus stop. Their bus normally arrived about ten minutes before the public school bus. Ryan, Trevor, and a third bully, Bret Walker, would “rearrange his face.” Overhearing this, Kristen attempted to dissuade them, but to no avail.

“You and your cousin were the ones who said we should put him in his place,” Ryan retorted dismissively.

Jennifer wasn’t on the bus, having gone to her home.

“I never said that. My cousin said it, but she didn’t really mean it,” Kristen protested, but they had decided their course, and that was that.

When he stepped off his bus, Robert saw the three girding for a tussle. Many of the rest of Kilworth’s Catholic high school kids were there as well. Ringside seats to the fight of the month they had, and they sensed a good, old-fashioned blood bath. His first instinct was to run, but he was surrounded and didn’t want to be considered spineless, so he tried to joke his way out of it: “I think you’ve got me really scared, don’t I?” No one laughed.

“We’re here to put you in your place as she suggested,” avowed Ryan, pointing to Kristen.

“No!” she said, “I did not say that. Don’t hurt him.”