The Best Year - 20. Chapter 20

The next morning when I opened my eyes, I felt a weight on my side. Sometime during the night I had turned my back on Luke and in the coolness of the night, we had drifted together. That wasn’t what woke me up though, it was someone attempting to unzip my tent, the bright morning sun already shining through the thin material.

“Dude, get up, get your clothes on,” Toby hissed still fumbling with the zipper. “She’s here!”

“I have my clothes on,” I groaned looking down at my morning wood rolling my eyes. I could also feel Luke’s pressed up against my lower back.

“What is it?” Luke mumbled pressing his chest against my back.

“Church!” Toby said his voice becoming shriller. “Your mom is tearing through the camp lookin’ for you.”

“What?” Luke asked, but he immediately rolled away from me. Now fully awake I got on my knees and found the zipper. The very mention of Cindy was like a cold shower and my dick went into hiding. Luke was already gathering everything inside the tent.

“Luke all this shit is mine,” I said, and he cursed under his breath as he dropped everything and looked at me. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll get it later.”

“Derek is stalling until you two get your shit together,” Toby said, and I wanted to laugh as he held the tent flap up. “Get decent.”

“Fuck you,” I groaned, “it isn’t funny.”

“I’m serious, I think the woman is about to have a fit,” Toby countered, but he let the flap fall open and I scrambled out of the tent hissing when my toes came into contact with the cold morning dew. I tiptoed and squinted against the brightness of the sun until I saw Cindy off in the distance tapping on the top of someone’s tent with Derek trying to calm her down.

“Damn,” I said as Luke crawled out of the tent and stood beside me. When he saw his mother, his face flushed, and he took off in a jog. When I went to follow, Toby grabbed my arm.

“You better get packed, you know where she’ll end up,” he said, “poor Church, I really was starting to like him, but he’s lucky if she don’t put him in the ground.”

“Shut up,” I countered, and he smirked, but helped me gather my stuff from the inside of the tent. Then he helped me take it down. The only thing that had kept Cindy and Luke on the farm was now that Luke was found, Olivia was Cindy’s next problem. Looking over my shoulder as I started to pull the tent poles apart, I saw her stepping around beer cans with Luke following a couple of steps behind her, his hands shoved into his pocket. When he saw me looking, he nodded his head towards her wanting me to do something about it, but I didn’t know how to deal with Cindy. If it were my Mom, I would tell her to wait by the car, but I also didn’t see Mom roaming around a beer can littered field knocking on tent walls and screaming Olivia’s name. Olivia should be well within shouting distance and I couldn’t help smirking at her stubbornness to show herself. I imagined Connor was pissing himself by now as they stayed holed up in whatever tent he had like two startled pheasants hearing the footsteps of their hunter.

“Got everything?” Toby asked as I stuffed my tent into the bag.

“Yeah,” I answered as I draped my backpack over my shoulder and grabbed my sleeping bag. Toby grabbed the flashlight that Luke brought with him and followed me towards Cindy. By now people were coming out of the tents to see what was going on, all of them frowning and shying away from the sun. Some girls were trying to quickly wipe away smeared makeup and finger through knots in their hair. Olivia still wasn’t showing herself.

“Luke Easton Clarke,” Cindy yelled, “you better be helping me find Olivia and not just standing around.”

“Mrs. Clarke,” I said clearing my voice still holding my things. Hearing me she whirled around, still dressed in what she wore to church, and glared at me until I felt three inches tall.

“Jackson, I should have known,” she said shaking her head. “Kids drinking and doing God knows what else, of course you would be here, but to drag my son and my niece into this.”

“Now wait a minute,” Toby started as he shouldered past me. Unlike me, Toby didn’t have anything to lose by pissing off Cindy.

“And you, Toby Marks,” Cindy growled, “where is your father, Troy?”

“At the house,” he answered crossing his arms. “Probably feeding the calves in the barn by now.”

“I will be having a talk with the police over this party,” she threatened, “you be sure to tell your father that.”

“The police kind of already know we do this,” Toby countered shaking his head. “So, I guess you can go ahead and call them up.”

“Aunt Cindy,” Olivia groaned. I hadn’t heard her approach, but I turned to see her arms crossed over her chest. “What in the world are you yelling about?”

“Olivia Marie Fairchild, where have you been?” Cindy asked matching Olivia’s stance after she turned to face her.

“Listening to you screaming, just over there,” Olivia answered pointing to a tent on the other side of the bonfire.

“You both lied to me,” Cindy argued waving her finger between Luke and Olivia. Standing slightly behind Olivia I saw Connor staring at me and I had been right, he did look like he was about to wet himself. I knew he wanted me to intervene, most everyone probably wanted me to run Cindy off the place so that they could recover from last night a little better before returning home. “You said you were going camping with kids from church.”

“We are,” Olivia countered still matching Cindy’s glare. “Alison Welker is here; she goes to church. Lily Henson goes to our church, Bailey Ashton, you know his father is a deacon. Then there’s…”

“I don’t want to hear another word,” Cindy said, “you two are following me straight home!”

“I don’t have to listen to you,” Olivia argued, “Luke can take me home, or Jackson, or someone else.”

“Olivia,” Luke warned shaking his head. “Just come on.”

“Fine,” Olivia hissed shaking her head. “Connor, if this didn’t scare you to death, call me later?”

“Yeah,” Connor muttered averting his eyes when Cindy looked at him.

“Bye everyone, I apologize for the rude wake up,” Olivia said and a few people clapped when all three of them rushed off towards the vehicles.

“You better get on home,” Toby whispered after I watched them go. “You probably will have one pissed off mom waiting for you.”

“No, I won’t,” I countered sighing. “Unless Cindy shows up.”

“That’s what I meant,” he said snickering. “Good luck with that, save Church if you can.”

“I’ll be by later to clean this up with you,” I said hating that I was leaving them to clean the place up. Most people did leave their messes behind, but it was a condition of having the parties here to keep the place relatively clean. Toby’s Dad didn’t want any of our litter to get into the cow’s pasture and keeping this place clean was the best way to prevent that from happening.

“You’re damn right you will,” he said smiling and I nodded and awkwardly jogged barefoot back to my car. After fishing out my keys, I pressed the trunk button and shoved everything inside it. Closing it, I didn’t waste time putting on my shoes as I unlocked the car door and slid inside, starting the engine.

As much as I didn’t want to see Cindy, I hoped she stopped by to give Mom a piece of her mind. I wanted to make sure that Luke was okay, and I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to step foot on Cindy’s front porch, not after this. I also hoped Olivia’s parents weren’t like Cindy, or Olivia might be carted off to some private church school for heathens. Even I wouldn’t have stood up to my parents like she did to Cindy, even if I was ambushed and embarrassed.

When I got home, I was only slightly surprised to see Cindy’s green car pulled into my spot. Not wanting to block what would be a quick exit from my house, I parked behind Mom’s car instead of beside it. Cindy was standing out in the yard with Mom and Dad. Olivia had the window rolled down on their car listening. When they saw me pull in, they both got out of the car, which stopped Cindy mid-rant, her hands half thrown in the air.

“As I was saying,” Cindy said as I approached. “You have to know what he has been up to at those parties.”

“Of course we know,” Mom answered crossing her arms. She was also still dressed in her church clothes. Dad was already dressed for work, but he made no move to leave Mom’s side. Instead he put his arm around her and pulled her closer to his side. All three of them were frowning and when I glanced over at Luke and Olivia, Luke looked ready to bolt and Olivia could barely contain her amusement now that she was away from the other kids at the party.

“I hope Dad gets here quick,” Luke whispered leaning closer to me. “I called him on Olivia’s cell.”

“I’ll be grounded until I’m dead,” Olivia said smiling. “I feel so dirty.”

“Shut up,” Luke groaned shaking his head. “Don’t make it worse.”

“Then you condone such a thing?” Cindy asked crossing her arms. “It is like I don’t know you at all, I mean I knew Jackson was wild, but I can see why now.”

“You watch yourself, Cindy,” Mom countered taking a step forward just as Henry pulled up in his white pickup truck. “That is my son and you will not speak of him like that.”

“It is true,” Cindy argued. “He is a bad influence, him and that Toby Marks. The police should have already locked them up for having such parties.”

“Cindy what on Earth?” Henry asked as he got out of his truck. He looked rattled and out of sorts. Somewhere between undressing from his Sunday clothes to what he would mow the yard in. His red hair was a bit fly away, but Cindy was talking loud enough that he didn’t need to be clued in on what the problem was.

“Cindy,” Mom said, an unnerving calm to her voice. One that I hadn’t ever heard her use and I thought I had pissed her off well past her limit before. “If you cannot stop talking poorly about my son or his friends, you will need to leave.”

“Well then,” Cindy said, “what are you condoning by letting them run around like this? What sort of example have you set?”

“None,” Dad answered shrugging. “Cindy, they are children. They are children living in a town with nothing to do. Parents have left them to do whatever they wanted for generations. We were no different when we were young.”

“Then you agree,” Cindy argued, “you have failed your son.”

“No,” Dad said offering her a smile that he used only when someone said something funny, intentionally or not. “He has never gotten a DUI because he doesn’t drive impaired. He has never, to my knowledge, gotten lower than a B on any report card. He has a responsible head on his shoulders when it comes to swimming, school, and his future. None of those are failures. I’m immensely proud of him.”

“That doesn’t excuse his behavior,” Cindy countered. “You babied him; you always have.”

“Cindy,” Henry said as he reached for her arm. “These are our friends…”

“I thought someone like you, Grace, would rather see their son grow up respected for the good things,” Cindy said, her voice barely above a harsh whisper. “Not for how good of a party he can throw. I thought after everything you…”

“Cindy come along,” Henry ordered, firmly grabbing Cindy by the elbow. “You are taking this too far. You will regret all of this when you have calmed down.”

“I’m sorry, Henry,” Mom offered taking a step down the stairs towards Cindy. Olivia grabbed my wrist and whispered something in my ear, but I was too fixated to hear what she was saying. “Cindy, we are no longer friends. Not until you can show me, Craig, and most of all, Jackson more respect than you have today.”

“Let’s go home and talk about this, Cindy,” Henry added after an uneasy silence fell between them. When he met my parent’s eyes he nodded and said something too low for me to hear from where I stood. For the first time I wanted to move closer to them, but I only stepped out of the way as Henry herded Cindy towards her car. After he waited patiently for her to climb inside and put her seatbelt on he closed the door and quickly darted to his truck.

“I’m sorry,” Luke whispered, and I looked at him not knowing why he was apologizing.

“What?” I asked, but Henry yelled from his truck ordering Luke to take Olivia home, then to go back and help Toby clean up the mess the other partiers was sure to have left behind. Luke only nodded and got into his car and I watched as Olivia silently walked over to the passenger side and got in. Then all the vehicles backed out of the driveway heading in different directions.

“I’m sorry you had to hear that, Jackson,” Mom said, and I jumped as I whirled to see her standing a few steps behind me. When I recovered, I nearly jogged the few steps between us and wrapped her into a hug.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as a knot formed in my stomach. “If she’s right, then I’m so fucking sorry.”

“No!” Mom nearly yelled as she held me as tight as she could. “No, Jackson.”

“We couldn’t be prouder of you, Jack,” Dad offered and I felt his hand fall on my shoulder. He gave it a gentle squeeze then left it as I blinked tears from my eyes trying to calm myself. “We may not have shown it all the time, but that is on us.”

“You have been all that I’ve ever dreamed,” Mom said pushing me back. She wiped the tears from my cheeks then pulled me back into another hug. “Calm down, it will be alright, we wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“Except for maybe your cleaning habits,” Dad said squeezing my shoulder again. I couldn’t keep from laughing when I heard Mom slap him on the arm and quietly shush him.

“He got that from you anyway,” Mom added as she broke the hug to look at me. I stopped crying and offered her a smile.

“What did Cindy mean, after everything?” I asked and I saw Mom look past me towards Dad then smiled and shrugged.

“Nothing,” Mom answered smoothing out my wrinkled shirt. “Just Cindy talking.”

“We should tell him, Grace,” Dad countered letting his hand fall from my shoulder. He came to stand beside Mom, and I took a step back. I watched him glance at his watch, so I knew he was already late for work.

“Cindy and Henry know something about us that not a whole lot of other people do,” Mom started then she sighed glancing at Dad. “I had a couple of miscarriages before you were born and after. You remember when you were younger, how I used to call you my little miracle man?”

“Yeah,” I said my face flushing. I remembered telling her to stop calling me that during my eighth birthday party.

“That is why, you really were something we didn’t think could happen for us,” Mom said smiling. “We didn’t tell you, because we didn’t want you thinking about the losses. I was never really all that far along when it would happen.”

“Mom,” I said, “I understand, you don’t have to explain.”

“And honestly where does Cindy get off telling me how I should…” Mom said, but Dad placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Well I need to be getting to work,” Dad said smiling at Mom. “Try not to talk too badly about Cindy, honey.”

“I won’t,” she said sighing as Dad got into his car and left for work. “Are you hungry? I was in the middle of preparing you your healthy breakfast.”

“Starving,” I answered, “but I probably need to get back and help Toby clean up.”

“I’ll have a lunch ready for you and Luke,” she said as she patted me on the shoulder. “The way Henry sounded it would be a long talk, one I don’t think he wants Luke to be around.”

“Okay,” I said and she kissed me on the cheek and I walked back down the driveway to my car and quickly slid into the driver’s seat. Waving I started the car and carefully backed out of the driveway and turned back towards Toby’s farm.

When I got there, it was the guys and the girls. All of them held trash bags, Lily and Heather were holding theirs’ out so that Toby and Derek could fill them with beer cans and wine cooler bottles. To my surprise Ally was there, off by herself, but she was cleaning. Luke wasn’t picking up trash, he was letting the air out of the pools and was just beginning to roll the black plastic up. Noticing me, everyone stopped what they were doing and walked closer together and waited for me to get out of the car and join them.

“Hey,” I greeted offering them a quick smile. “About got this place cleaned up?”

“Just about,” Derek answered as Lily dropped the can she was holding into the trash bag Derek held out for her. There were a couple of trash bags already full and tied in the back of Derek’s truck.

“Well your ass is still alive,” Toby added, and I shook my head and glanced at Luke who stood farther apart than anyone else. “At first I thought it was your Mom storming the place, but I remembered I already told her to make sure to let you come.”

“Thanks for that, by the way,” I countered walking to the back of Derek’s truck to grab the roll of trash bags. Ripping one of them free I found the opening and shook the bag open.

“I never seen Cindy so scary,” Ally said glancing over her shoulder to look at Luke. Luke looked down at his feet but didn’t say anything. Seeing Ally there made me nervous. I didn’t know how much Heather knew, but I definitely didn’t want Ally knowing anything. I doubted she would keep it to herself, not after the screaming match we had in the cafeteria. This was the first time she spoke to me since that day and Bailey Ashton wasn’t anywhere around for her to be here.

“I have,” Luke said stepping closer. “I’m sorry about what happened at your house.”

“It’s alright,” I grunted grabbing my bag. I hated seeing Luke so embarrassed. “Mothers, right?”

“Yeah,” Derek said smirking. “No big deal, it’s happened before.”

“I could see my dad doing that,” Ally offered shuddering. “It would kill me.”

“Let’s get this shit cleaned up,” I said wanting to spare Luke.

“Can I say something?” Ally asked holding up her hand and standing on her tip toes. When we were dating, I found that cute about her. The anticipation of something on her mind, something I knew she would say regardless of my answer, but this time she closed her mouth and waited.

“What is it?” I asked noticing that no one else had made a move to start cleaning up around the firepit.

“I wanted to say that I’m sorry,” she answered shifting back to standing flat on the ground.

“Me too,” I said, “I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that.”

“No, I was a bitch,” she countered shaking her head. “Friends?”

“Sure, yeah,” I answered smiling.

“Good,” Ally said nodding her head and then everyone got back to cleaning the fire pit.

Instead of picking up cans, I stuffed my trash bag inside my pocket and walked over to help Luke. The black plastic Toby used ended up being pretty heavy, but we hadn’t ripped it much while we slid down them so after we got the plastic completely rolled, I helped him carry it over by the water tank. Troy probably meant to use it after we were finished if we didn’t mess it up too bad.

“Did they tell you?” Luke asked his voice barely a whisper as we stood by the water tank. I glanced around the field. I didn’t really care if everyone knew, but I also didn’t really want to talk about it with everyone either.

“You knew?” I asked leaning against the tank.

“Yeah,” he answered, “but I didn’t know that it would be something you didn’t know, not until I saw Dad grab Mom and drag her to the car.”

“I know why they did it,” I shrugged offering him a smile. “How are you?”

“Well they made jokes about what happened this morning,” Luke answered nodding his head towards our friends. “They’re calling her Cinzilla.”

“I’ll tell them to stop,” I said chewing on my bottom lip to keep from laughing. When he saw me fighting back a laugh he reached over and punched me in the arm.

“Don’t,” he said, “I laughed too.”

“Hey lover boys,” Derek yelled, “get to work we have school tomorrow.”

“Fuck,” I hissed turning to glare at him. He was already rubbing his shoulder to please Lily for punching him, even though I doubted that it hurt. Ally turned to look at us and I saw Luke stiffen and look away from the corner of my eye. She seemed amused rolling her eyes as she went back to work.

“Help me with the pools?” Luke asked as he pushed himself off the tank. Shaking my head I shot Derek another glare and followed Luke to the deflated pools. Some of them still had water in them, so we dumped the rest of the water out. Then we pushed down on the sides, hearing the air hiss out of the nozzles. We kept pushing until the first pool was flat and then we began to fold it up as best we could. By the time we had all three of them folded and in the back of Derek’s truck everyone else had managed to fill up a couple more bags of garbage.

Toby made sure the fire in the pit was completely out by emptying more of the water from the tank onto the fire. When it didn’t hiss, we were all satisfied that we wouldn’t burn down his father’s farm and that most of the visible trash was cleared away. The grass had been trampled down worse and there were noticeable patches of raw dirt. I wondered how long before this small patch of the field would look like the rest again. Our nights like last night were numbered now that we were seniors. Our simply sacred spot had been ours seemingly forever. When we were younger Derek, Toby, and I would camp here in a tent. It was always our spot and for me, it felt like the last time we’d be together here as high school seniors.

Looking around, I saw Toby put his arm over Heather’s shoulder and pull her closer to him. Derek was looking at the fire pit and Lily and Ally were whispering to one another. Luke stood beside me and I hated that he missed all the fun that I had here in this simple field.

“Next year by this time we’ll be in college,” Toby said smiling as he looked over the top of Heather’s head at me. “You’ll be training for the Olympics.”

“Shut up,” I groaned walking up to stand around the fire pit with everyone else.

“Do you think we’ll be friends after all this?” Lily asked glancing at Derek. “I mean I know you three will still be friends, you all were practically born together, but the rest of us.”

“Don’t get all sappy on us, we just started Senior year,” I said smiling. “Let’s just make this the best fucking year.”

And I liked to think that we were well on our way to doing that. Even if there were a lot of things that I didn’t really know. Standing here, it all seemed possible. That as long as I had the people standing around the fire pit willing to stand up with me, that we couldn’t fail. I never saw my year starting like this, not at all. I thought I had everything sorted out, that all I had to do is mark the days off the calendar. How fucking boring that sounds now. Now that I stood here with nothing being the same, I felt the excitement and the bitter-sweetness of Senior Year, but I knew that I was about to have the best year of my life so far.