Wild Child (20 page)

“Wow,” a voice said from behind her and Shelby turned to see Monica Appleby in a denim skirt and a tee shirt with Tweety Bird smoking a cigarette.

“Really?” Shelby asked, pointing to the shirt.

Monica started, no doubt surprised to be attacked the moment she walked in the door, and Shelby wished she could just rewind her life. Try again.

But then Monica glanced down and shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “I didn’t realize there was a dress code.”

“There isn’t a dress code,” Shelby said, painfully aware of how she sounded, how breathlessly and tragically uncool she was compared to Monica, who just reeked of disenfranchised … hipness. “But there are standards.”

Monica’s eyes ran down Shelby’s denim capri pants and the white men’s shirt she used as a smock. It was shapeless; she knew that. It somehow managed to both hide her body and announce all the things she hated about it—her broad shoulders and belly.

She wasn’t feminine in these clothes, she wasn’t anything, and Monica saw all of that, her judgment clear as a bell.

This was immediately going badly between them. In the span of ten seconds they’d picked their corners.

“How about you spare me the lecture and just let me know what I can do to help?” Monica stepped closer, deeper into Shelby’s closely monitored and cared-for domain, and Shelby had to look away or she’d growl. Bar the way. Pick up a paintbrush, poke at her, and tell
her to “git,” like one of the stray dogs around her property.

“I’m Monica, by the way.” Her voice was heavy with irony, well aware she needed no introduction.

“I gathered. I’m Shelby.”

From the drying racks she grabbed the comic-book pages that the ten-year-olds had been working on, laying them down in the spots the kids had claimed at their table. From the corner of her eye she watched Monica come closer, her eyes missing nothing. Not the Christmas lights Shelby had put up, thinking they would add something special, or the wires hanging low between the rafters with the toddlers’ masterpieces clipped to them.

“So, how do we do this today?” Monica asked.

“Well, we’re going to pretend you’re teaching a class to teenagers—”

“I said adults only.”

“Well, there was a serious lack of adults interested.”

“How many?”

“None.”

“How many did you ask?”

Shelby sniffed and turned away, putting the last of the comic-book pages down.

Monica’s rich laugh only made her bristle harder.

“You know, this place is really amazing,” Monica said, touching the white twinkle lights Shelby had put up around the coat hooks and cubbies. “If you’re a kid who likes art, this must be paradise.”

“I like to think so,” Shelby said, nearly snuffing the praise under a cool tide of disdain. Monica continued to walk around, touching the toddlers’ artwork where it hung from the rafters. Shelby couldn’t stop watching her from the corners of her eyes.

“You know, I’m only here because Jackson asked me,” Monica said. “Once the filming stops I’ll get out of your hair. I have no interest in encroaching on your art
kingdom. So, how about we stop circling each other like cats and just be civil?”

Well. Damn it!
Shelby kind of liked this anger. It felt protective. But she’d been raised to take the high road.

“That sounds reasonable,” she said. “Why are you here so early?”

Monica shrugged, hitching a turquoise purse, which honestly matched not one thing that she was wearing, farther up on her shoulder. She even broke all the fashion rules and still looked good. “This is when Jackson told me to be here.”

As if beckoned, Jackson came in the front door carrying a small tray of coffees. His hair still damp from his early-morning swim, his face split in that wide smile of his that Shelby always loved the best. She was so relieved to see him; he’d balance the scales in this room. With him there, Shelby wouldn’t feel quite so invaded.

But when Jackson’s eyes fell on Monica, it was as if a silent and invisible bomb went off. The whole room changed. The chemistry. The air, even.

The two of them stared at each other, smiling like idiots, and then quickly glanced away, making a bit of a shuffle about the coffees. But Shelby stood there, in the ruins of the world she’d known before Jackson walked in, and tried to get used to the new reality.

Jackson and Monica were having … a thing.

How much of a thing, she didn’t know. She wasn’t that wise in the language of glances and smiles and fingers brushing fingers as they handed each other coffees. But
something
had happened.

And this, she thought, getting hot, getting good and pissed off, after that lecture Jackson gave her about not screwing up anything for the
America Today
show. The nerve! The nerve of both of them, standing there trying to pretend that they were truly that interested in Matthew Henshaw’s comic book about a farting robot.

The
America Today
crew came in with their equipment and another little cardboard container full of coffee cups. The producer was a woman with purple hair who introduced herself as Vanessa, and a man wearing a vest with a ton of pockets started unloading small cameras and a microphone system.

Dean was there too, glittering in her barn. Larger than life. Glamorous in a totally masculine way.

Everything about him registered underneath her peevishness; it woke up her body. Just like it had the other day by the side of the road, and again at Cora’s.

“How did the taping go yesterday?” Jackson asked the guy with the pockets, trying so obviously to keep it casual.

Vanessa answered the question, because apparently Pockets didn’t talk much. “Cora’s is amazing. Truly world class.” Shelby smiled at the news. Cora deserved some success and happiness after all she’d been through. “And the pageant stuff was actually really cute, a terrific contrast to those horror shows we see on TV these days.”

“Your sister wasn’t there,” Pockets said, looking up from the equipment in a box.

“She wasn’t?”

“No. You said she would be. But she wasn’t. Everyone seemed a little rattled.”

The news rattled Jackson, too, and he glanced quickly over to Shelby as if she could corroborate the story. She shook her head. Gwen was going through something dark and strange, and Jackson would be smart to be worried. Wary.

“I’ll, uh … have to talk to her.”

But he wouldn’t, Shelby knew. He’d try, but Gwen would brush him off and he’d walk away, frustrated. And Shelby could say something, as she’d tried in the past, but he’d ignore her, or divert the conversation, unable to accept
help when he needed it. It was the pattern they’d established years ago.

Jackson’s phone buzzed and he dug into his pocket to read the text. “I … I’m sorry, I have to head back to City Hall.” He glanced up and put the phone back in his pocket, that smooth fake smile over his face. “I trust you have everything you need?”

“We’re good,” Vanessa said. “We’ll be in touch with you later.”

Before leaving, Jackson walked over to Monica and whispered something in her ear, which made her blush.

Hot with fury—with something worse than fury, something that felt like a tally of all she’d given up, every pleasure she’d denied herself because it didn’t seem “right”—Shelby turned away.

Her counselors arrived. Gwen, with her new eye makeup that made her look somehow both older and younger at the same time. Tougher, but infinitely more fragile. Following her, Jay, so love-struck over Gwen he’d all but grown puppy-dog ears. And Ania, sweet, quiet Ania, who reminded Shelby very painfully of herself as a sixteen-year-old. So eager to please, so scared of being different.

Don’t bother!
Shelby wanted to yell.
You can be as good as you want and no one will care
.

A few minutes later the toddlers came in with their mothers, who had all put some extra effort into their looks this morning. Gone were the yoga pants and sloppy ponytails, replaced with skirts and dark blue jeans, coiffed hair and lipstick.

The ten-year-olds trickled in with so much noise and energy you’d think there were eighteen of them instead of just eight. They threw their backpacks into their cubbies and launched themselves at the table with their work. Jay and Ania met them there and slowed them down.

Her camps, her barn, her whole damn life was such a
well-oiled machine that everyone just fell into the places and the work that she’d meticulously prepared for them. She didn’t have to say a word. Do a thing. It all just happened, spinning on without her.

“Shelby?” She turned to find Dean standing beside her.
You touched me on the side of the road. You kissed me. Put your fingers inside of me. Me. Shelby Monroe
.

“Hi, Dean,” she said.

“This … this place is so amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

She could say thank you. She could smile, acknowledge his sweetness, and go on about her life.

But her life was terrible right now.

“Come back tonight,” she whispered.

He blinked. And then stilled … tautened.

“Here?”

She nodded.

“To talk?”

She shook her head, burning, burning from the inside out.

“Is this a tease, Shelby?” His voice was silky with innuendo, with heat and knowledge and sex. Her heart hammered in her chest, angry and demanding.

Unable to speak, she shook her head.

“Say it,” he commanded, and she was instantly wet between her legs.

“It’s … it’s not a tease.”

“What time?”

“Eight.”

“I’ll be here.”

And so would she, despite the damage it could do to her business, her reputation, the contest, her relationship with Jackson—none of them felt half as important as how alive and dangerous being with Dean made her feel.

*   *   *

Monica didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Help? The counselors and the parents seemed to have everything under control. The glitter situation with the toddlers was getting out of hand, but no one seemed to care.

And Ania, Jay, and Gwen, with the heavy makeup, were doing a great job with the graphic artists.

With nothing to do, Monica sat on a little chair in the corner, feeling vulnerable and slightly naked under the lights after her conversation with Ed yesterday. She watched the kids and thought melancholy thoughts about the fragile and fleeting nature of childhood.

“Are you crying?” Vanessa asked.

“No,” she snapped, but a few seconds later Gwen handed her a Kleenex and Monica could have kissed her.

I’m a mess
, she thought.
One conversation. One interview. How am I going to do this? I can’t write a book feeling this … raw. I can’t do anything but sit here and leak
. This morning she’d thrown in the towel with Shelby, unable to go twelve rounds with the woman, when days ago she would have relished a little verbal sparring with the stuck-up princess.

But not today. Today she just needed some peace. And to watch kids make a mess out of glitter.

“So,” Vanessa said to Shelby, putting down the small camera. “I think we’re ready for Monica.”

Both of them looked at her. Monica couldn’t even muster up enough fight to give them the finger or make a face. She just sat there and let them stare at her.

“I’ll take the graphic artists,” Shelby said with an over-bright smile, looking down at the table of kids. She appeared slightly manic, probably with the adrenaline of being taped. “Ania, Jay, and Gwen, you go on outside with Monica. You can work at the lunch tables.”

“Uh …,” Monica said, suddenly painfully aware of what she was supposed to be doing. Teaching them. She wondered what Shelby would think if she knew that she
had only gotten her GED last year. On this planet there could not be a worse person for this job. “Get your bags,” she said, grabbing her own, and then she led the kids outside, where there was a concrete slab and three picnic tables underneath a cedar roof. There was a storm of butterflies in the backyard. Large purple bushes behind the tables seemed to attract them.

It was just as magical out here as it was inside the barn.

“This is where everyone eats,” Ania said, suddenly the most talkative of the three.

“It’s cool,” Monica said, putting her bag on a table, painfully aware of Vanessa and Matt behind her.

“So.” She sat down and the three kids sat across from her, crowded onto one bench.
Ridiculous!
But she pressed on. “Did … ah … did you guys bring some writing?”

“I did,” Jay said, eager. He pulled out a limp red notebook covered in doodles. Ania rolled her eyes. Gwen stared at the ground. “Just one of you?” she asked.

“I have a notebook,” Gwen said. “Shelby told us to bring it. But I haven’t written anything.”

“I thought you teaching us what to write was the whole idea,” Ania said, sounding panicked, as if she’d failed something.

“Right. Yes.”
Calm down, you little overachiever
. “I guess … I guess I just thought maybe, if you’d written something … you might … you know, want to talk about it.”

“I will,” Jay said, casting sideways glances at Gwen, whose head was lowered as she painstakingly pulled a notebook from her book bag. Ania yanked a pristine pink notebook from her bag and no fewer than three pens, and then crossed her hands as if waiting for guidance.

Gwen did the same, watching Monica carefully as if she might jump at any sudden movement.

Talk about being set up to fail!
There was so much
expectation in the air, she actually felt herself hyperventilating.

“Not that this isn’t great,” Vanessa said, her voice foul with the stink of sarcasm, “but we actually need some footage of you saying something to them. Something about writing.”

Oh. Screw you
. For a minute she thought about standing up, just pushing away from this table and the kids with their ripe expectations and their wounded serious eyes, and telling Jackson he was going to have to do this shit without her.

Jackson
.

Just the thought of his name flooded her with gratitude. With excitement. With fondness and tenderness. After that experience in the bathroom yesterday, she wasn’t lying to him when she said it was the most exciting thing she’d ever done.