The Tramp (The Bound Chronicles #1) (9 page)

chapter eleven

“Hey, baby girl,” George cooed and leaned in for a morning kiss on Candy’s forehead. She clenched her shoulders and recoiled from the painful scrape of morning stubble on her father’s chin. At least he had bothered to brush his teeth that day, even though he had once again forgotten how much she hated to have her hair ruffled, especially in the morning. Candy scowled at the back of his head, wrinkling her nose at the thinness of his embroidered silk robe.

She was in a sour mood. She hadn’t slept well and she hadn’t seen Sam in days. What was he doing all weekend? She still felt weird calling him, preferring to wait until he called her, even though she knew that was stupid. And she had that weird dream again, with her Uncle Brian. Why was she dreaming about that? She hadn’t thought about it years. That night, her mom had also made an appearance, which was most upsetting. Back then was the last time she had seen her mom alive. Right before.

“Looks like rain today,” her dad said with a yawn. He craned his head around the curtains that overhung the sink and fastened the tieback on the wooden cabinet next to it. He scrubbed his face and turned back to the kitchen table to smile at his disgruntled daughter, who hid her revulsion behind a peaceful smile. “Something’s got to quench this heat.”

“I better get going, then.” Candy plunked her spoon into her empty cereal bowl. She had even drained the milk, a reminder lodged in her brain over a decade ago by Grandma Catherine; she could never pour cereal milk down the drain without some measure of guilt, warm and oaty-sweet as it became by the end of her Grape-Nuts. “I’ve got to stop by the shop and pick up those drawings from Ms. Willow to bring them to town.”

“You’ll never guess how this Rotary Club thing is turning out,” George said, ignoring her plainly stated haste, as always, and speaking as though still in the middle of a conversation they had already begun in his head. He held her eyes and sat down, “So, it turns out Mieke and Joe have been cooking up this scheme for who knows how long, with this Italian foreign exchange boy. And he’s not a kid at all, but a man.”

Candy stifled a sigh, checked the time on the coo-coo clock out of the corner of her eye, and sat back down with feigned interest. Her dad had already told her about the exchange student several times.

“Oh, yeah? Some kind of prestigious thing to have one, right?”

“They had to apply and everything months ago, and never said a word to anyone. Can you believe that? Antonio di Brigo,” George went on, rolling the r’s with a flourish and raising his eyebrows. Candy knew he expected a laugh, so she delivered one dutifully. “Turns out, he’s from Verona—which always reminds me of Zeffereli’s Romeo and Juliet, I love that one.”

“M-hm, me too.”

“Well, it’s interesting that his name is di Brigo, His family has lived in the Veneto region of Italy for generations. You see, common throughout Italy, but especially in the Veneto area, like Verona, they use the preposition ‘di’ to indicate parenthood. Many Italian names come from their professions or even nicknames, all the way back from the Middle Ages.”

“Really? What does di Brigo mean?” asked Candy, actually interested.

“You know, I don’t really know. We should look that up.”

Typical.
“So anyway, you said he was not a kid, but a man?”

“Oh, right. He’s nineteen-years-old.” He slapped his palms down on the table between them, rattling the teaspoon in the sugar bowl and leaning forward with anticipation.

That was new. “What? How can he be—”

“Well, I got this from Ian yesterday. Turns out, they have a dual enrollment program at his high school. A lot of schools in Europe do that. He’ll be a year older than normal in his senior year. That’s how this foreign exchange business that Mieke Walsh cooked up works.” George raised his voice an octave and flipped imaginary hair when he said the woman’s name. “You know how the Europeans are…”

Candy could tell he was on the verge of a political diatribe. Knowing she could be trapped in her seat indefinitely, she steered her father into a more manageable direction, fast. “Wait, wait—won’t everyone freak out about him being nineteen?”

“Oh, you should have seen the reaction at the first hint of a foreigner here. They’re gonna lose it when they find out his age,” Frank predicted with glee, his eyes glinting. “Marge Tillman, that old cow—I thought she was gonna blow herself right out of her seat with that fart when she heard about the new Pakistani doctor—”

“Indian, Dad.”

“Ejector seat,” George exploded with laughter, wiping his eyes and turning to root in the cupboard for the coffee grinder. “Thank god I was on the other side of the room, so I didn’t have to smell it. And then after Abe Waste-of-Good-Oxygen Becker found out about the Italian boy yesterday at the shop, he got all blustery and red-faced and said, ‘We gonna have an eye-talian man living here for the whole dang year?’ What an ignoramus. Then, the widower…” George shuffled around the kitchen, gradually retrieving his coffee supplies and gathering them around the grinder. Without stopping, he transitioned into a tangential topic. “But you know, I’ll bet that we could work in some real-world experience at the shop for him. Part of the Andrew Jackson-Shirley County experience.”

Amazing. He’s trying to find a free labor angle with this poor foreign exchange student.
Her dad was so cheap.

“Since this boy has work experience, and obviously a lot more work ethic than most kids around here….”

Great.
She settled in for a long conversation. Didn’t he hear her say she had to leave? Ms. Willow would be pissed. Candy always met her at Dad’s shop on Monday mornings and brought the stuff she had worked on all weekend to Big Joe’s; the poor old lady couldn’t drive anymore and she depended on it. She would freak if Candy didn’t get those drawings there before they opened; who knew why? She was old.

And, now I’ll have to run all the way there and get sweaty.

She had let her dad’s new assistant mechanic, Jo, borrow her dirt-bike the night before, but she had promised to have it back at the shop in the morning.

It had better be there—I can’t run all the way into town for god’s sake.

She hoped the ride down into the valley would dry her off after a jog to the shop. She looked wistfully out the glass doors in the next room that led onto their deck. The sunlight was blazing down, lighting up the plank floor as if it was on fire, the early dew long evaporated and the morning mist chased away.

Her dad was chattering on, not registering the stiffness of his daughter’s back, her arm clutching the back of her chair, poised to go. “I always thought it would be cool to have real, die-cast replicas of the old classics. You know, like the ’53 Chrysler—the New Yorker, maybe,”

“Yeah, that would be cool,” Candy said absently.

“Well, it’s good business to have more varied inventory.”

“Uh huh…”

“You know, I always wanted to expand the shop into…”

She really hadn’t wanted to arrive at Big Joe’s sweaty that day. She was hoping to run into Sam—she had to. He usually had deliveries scheduled in Buffalo Square on Mondays. She pictured him hauling in bags from the supply truck, as she replayed each delicious second from the last time she saw him. She felt like she’d go crazy if she didn’t at least talk to him for a minute. A blush started creeping into her cheeks as she thought and she started thrumming her fingers on the table.

“Oh, sorry,” said George, “I know. You’re going be late.”

“It’s okay. I’m good, Dad,” she blurted stupidly, pushing thoughts of Sam out of her mind before they leaked out her ears. She stood and shoved in her chair, “I do have to go, though.”

“Oh, and I saw Beth Robinson in town yesterday. I mean Beth Bennett. Guess she’s married now. Has been for years—”

Candy froze. “Really? And?” I know who “Aunt Beth” is—what?

“She said John’s coming with his dad next week.”

“John?” Her heart seemed to have stopped.

“Yeah. I guess James is planning to take a sabbatical and run the family business for a few months, until his dad is himself again. Really, I think ‘a few months’ may be wishful thinking, a man Joe Robinson’s age. Seems to me, James might need to think of a more permanent situation.”

“Permanent? With John?” She almost choked on the words.

“Well I don’t know about that,” George corrected hurriedly, “But, I did hear that John will be attending Andrew Jackson High this fall.”

What?
Candy turned away from her dad’s goofy, searching smile, and headed for the front door. “Wow…that’s so awesome.”

“It’ll be nice for you two kids to be together again,” George chuckled and turned his attention back to his coffee. “Have a good day, sweetheart.”

Candy was already halfway across the house. “Thanks, be home late,” she hollered, grabbing her backpack and shooting through the open doorway. She slammed the door shut just in time to muffle a surprised sob. She shuffled down the dirt driveway, her eyes blinded by sudden tears.

Prick. Now, I’m late.
She knuckled her wet eyes with her fists.
Stop crying, you idiot.

Instead of taking the path by the river that she usually preferred, which was rocky and winding, forcing a pedestrian to poke along, Candy took the longer, paved road to the shop to make some time. She slung her backpack over both shoulders and broke into a jog, willing herself to breathe more evenly and calm her racing heart into a comfortable, regular rhythm.

John.

She was overjoyed to hear that he was coming, and would likely stay for a while. Maybe even the entire school year? They had been close friends since childhood, when he had started spending summers with his grandma. Candy’s Grandma Catherine lived on the property adjacent to the Robinsons’ house, and since she spent most of the summer playing there, and in the surrounding countryside, it was natural for two kids of the same age to become summer buddies. John was a city boy, and he had been clueless about how to play outside in the country. The first time she brought him down to play in the creek that bordered her grandma’s backyard, he walked right into the nettles growing along the bank, the stingy leaves and creepers tangled up and threaded through every toe.

He actually cried, Candy remembered, with a healthy measure of compassion. Those nettles stung like heck. He was embarrassed, but she showed him how to squeeze the juice out of jewelweed flowers and cool down the rash, making barfing noises, like the flowers were puking up the juice, so he’d laugh. They were best friends in an instant.

Candy reigned as queen of the countryside, with her superior knowledge of the flora and fauna, and John demurred to her leadership outdoors. She knew about the caves on the hillside where the foxes made their dens. She taught him how to climb the maple trees with a pocket full of hundreds of helicopter seeds, and then toss them into the branches to send them swirling down like pink snowflakes. She also knew how to creep up behind a horse named Popcorn, who lived on her uncle’s ranch, and open up her umbrella so fast that the horse farted when it jumped and ran away, neighing with indignation.

John was the best at telling stories, especially scary campfire ones, and he was even better than she was at building a fire. He started attending Boy Scout meetings with his dad after he went home that first summer. Candy suspected he wanted to impress her, with his new knowledge about nature, when he returned to Shirley the following year. She let him build the first campfire of the summer, with his dad watching from afar. She was impressed. John didn’t need any help at all. That was when Candy realized John was smarter than she thought, his brain filled with exact knowledge that he could always recall with ease. At the age of eight, he had methodically and precisely built a beautiful campfire, ringed by river-smoothed stones in a perfect circle. He placed neatly sawn logs for sitting safely beyond the spark zone. After the fire was well underway, he called to his dad to bring out the s’mores, and they all roasted marshmallows on hickory sticks gathered from the yard.

That was the first of many campfire nights over at the Robinsons’, the summer air cool on their backs and their faces heated by the fire, melted chocolate running down their hands, filthy from a day of playing in the woods. John was an endless supply of long, drawn-out scary stories, embellishing them anew every telling. He always had surprise endings and loved to use sound effects.

And all that stuff with Uncle Brian. He never made me feel weird about it.
Candy’s thoughts turned sour, and she pushed her unsettling dreams of the past several nights away again.
Anyway, campfires were when we were kids. And we aren’t kids anymore.

About the time they were both entering their teens—and puberty—John had started spending the better part of his summers as a counselor at Camp Wekeima. The first summer he worked at the camp, he had bugged her for months and months beforehand, emailing her links to the website and writing tales of adventure awaiting. She had no intention of joining him there, and she told him so, but he wouldn’t believe her until a couple weeks before school let out for the summer. She remembered the phone call vividly.

“You’re kidding me. You haven’t signed up yet? Candy, there might not be any spots left for counselors anymore. They have to do background checks and everything.”

“I know, John. I’m not going.” John hadn’t spoken for several seconds, the silence on the other end making Candy’s flesh crawl with guilt and impatience. “Hello…?”

“Why not?” He was still insistent. “We would have so much fun. I know so many other people that have done it and they go every year, it’s such an awesome summer. We would have such an awesome summer—”

“Look, I just don’t want to,” Candy had snapped. “Why can’t you get that through your thick skull?”

She instantly regretted saying it (and still did), but there was no way to take it back.

“Fine, I guess I’ll see you around, then.” John was obviously hurt, but he wasn’t one to act brashly, and he held the line to say, “Bye, Candy.”