Wild Child: A Novel

by Molly O'Keefe

  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 s
ideways 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.

  Hands down. The dirtiest, kinkiest, most thrilling sexual act she’d ever been a part of in a history checkered with kink. And today, when he’d whispered that he’d like to see her later, she knew what he meant. What they might be doing. And it had felt—no joke—as if something had been unlocked. If she had sex with him, she didn’t know if she would actually come. But she really, really wanted to find out.

  And she couldn’t walk away from this table and still have Jackson.

  “All right,” she sighed. “First thing we’re going to do is work on who we are as writers.”

  Eager, the kids all nodded. “Figuring out who you are as a writer, or even who you want to be as a writer, will inform your work. It will give you a voice. And I’m not saying you should write down your goal—like ‘I want to write a bestseller.’ Or whatever. I want you to think about what is special about you that will make your work special.”

  Again the kids nodded. Ania and Jay flipped open their notebooks and started writing things down. Gwen stared at her hands.

  “Who are you as a writer?” Gwen asked Monica.

  Monica felt the painful eye of the camera, the attention of the kids. And suddenly her mother’s words from the other night rang—loud as an alarm—in her ear.

  You’re just like me, digging through your life for little shiny bits and scary bits and terrifying bits to show the world so they have something to talk about at work, so they can feel better about their own lives because ours are such a mess.

  She shook her head, rejecting the words. Rejecting her mother.

  “I’m …,” she said, needing to find new words to fill the terrible empty void her mother had created in her. “I’m a truth-teller.”

  “Because you write nonfiction,” Ania said, showing her stripes as a classroom keener. “Autobiography, right? You can’t make it up.”

  “You wrote a book of poems, too,” Jay said. “And a book about groupies and articles for a bunch of magazines.”

  “How in the world …?”

  “I googled you.”

  Of course, not even bad poetry could die in the computer age.

  “No. I mean, yes, you’re right. But when I say truth-teller, I mean that I tell the hard truths. The ones people don’t want to look at, or are painful to look at. And you can do that in fiction, too.”

  “Do you write fiction?” Ania asked.

  Monica shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “I guess … because I never really tried. So,” she said, pushing them back on track, “everyone take a few minutes to write down who you think you are as a writer.”

  As they scribbled away, Monica pulled out her own notebook and stared at the notes from yesterday.

  “Kicked like a dog” stood out in grisly detail and she shut the notebook.

  A few minutes later, Vanessa swung the camera off her shoulder. “That’ll work,” she said.

  “We’re done?” Ania asked.

  “For the moment,” Vanessa said, and Ania started stacking up her stuff while Jay kept writing. “I’m going to need to interview you.” Vanessa checked her watch. “Tomorrow, though.”

  “Interview me?” Monica asked. “About what?”

  “About writing and Bishop, I guess.”

  “No one said anything about interviewing.”

  Vanessa stared at her. “What’s the big deal? You’ve done it like a million times.”

  “Not about Bishop!”

  Vanessa sighed and gathered her equipment. “I’m sure you can think of something. I’ll meet you here tomorrow.”

  And then she was gone, leaving her with the three kids, all blinking and staring at her. Monica wondered if she clapped her hands together whether the kids would scatter.

  “Are we doing this again tomorrow?” Gwen asked.

  “No,” Monica answered. Nope. Writing class was canceled. Indefinitely.

  Jay looked like he’d been shot.

  “It’s not … you know … it wasn’t going to be a real class,” Monica said.

  “Why not?” Jay asked. “I mean, we don’t have a lot of camps right now. We could do it, just like a half hour or something for the rest of the week.”

  Monica laughed, so uncomfortable her skin felt like it was too tight. “Guys, I’m not a real teacher. I mean … I just passed my GED last year. I don’t know—”

  Gwen’s black-rimmed eyes were searing. “I read your book, you know. Wild Child.”

  It sounded like an indictment. “Uh … thanks.”

  “Do you remember the dedication?”

  “Of course.”

  To all the kids feeling lost and alone in the hopes that you find someone to listen and something to do that makes you feel in control. Help is always there, just have the courage to ask.

  “So?” Gwen asked, her voice a sharp blade of accusation. She gestured toward Jay and Ania, who stood there, frozen, aware something strange was happening but not entirely sure what.

  “Gwen,” Monica said, carefully. “I’m not that person—”

  “You’re a bullshit liar!” Gwen cried. “Just like every other adult!”

  Gwen grabbed her stuff, shoving it into her backpack. Half of it fell out but she didn’t seem to care—she just stormed away, across the lawn toward the barn.

  Damn it! Monica thought. Inside, she screamed, I am an island. An island!

  But she knew a cry for help when she heard one.

  She stood up. “Gwen!” she yelled and the girl stopped, but didn’t turn around. “Fine. For the rest of the week.”

  Jay fist-pumped, Ania groaned.

  Gwen kept walking.

  Chapter 13

  Jackson snuck in the back door of the Peabody. He didn’t like the idea of sneaking around, but he didn’t need the front-desk staff guessing why he was going up to Monica’s room all the time.

  He took a deep breath and then knocked on her door.

  Behind the door he heard the squeak of the bed, and he smiled. She was home. She was here. He was totally unprepared for the wild rush of excitement that squeak unleashed in him. The door opened, revealing Monica, still wearing the skirt and Tweety shirt she’d been wearing earlier, and that, too, was in total accordance with his plan.

  They grinned at each other for what felt like a full minute.

  “What’s in that bag?” she finally asked.

  Having forgotten, he lifted it. “Dinner. Cora’s fried chicken. I know it’s late, but—”

  “It’s perfect. Come on in.”

  She stepped aside and he walked into her room, letting the door close behind him. Suddenly, the room was alive with what had happened the last time he was in here.

  This is where we kissed. This is where she touched me. This is where I stood and watched her touch herself.

  He tried to push away the memories so he could at least feed her. He wanted to finesse his way
slowly into his plan, but the memory of the way they’d touched themselves, of those things they’d said, became another person in the room, taking up space and air, brushing up against them.

  Turning him on.

  Jackson was no longer hungry for food.

  He was nervous and excited in a way that felt somehow new and yet very, very old. As though he’d been wanting this woman forever.

  The silence seemed to pound against his skin and he finally had to say something or go crazy.

  “I don’t want to eat,” he said, his eyes on her. Even though she was on the other side of the room, the distance between them shrank to nothing. She was next to him, around him.

  “What do you want?”

  He put down the chicken.

  “You.”

  Monica watched, her mouth dry, her hands sweaty, as Jackson reached up and yanked off his tie, different from yesterday’s. Yellow. It took a pretty masculine man to look sexy taking off a yellow tie—and he did. And he was. He opened the first few buttons of his white shirt and she caught a glimpse of his tan neck, the tendons in that neck, that divot under his Adam’s apple. It was as if she memorized it in a glance. If she had to pick his neck out of a lineup, she’d be able to do it, after just that hungry moment.

  And then he reached behind his head and an inch of his belly showed, a ripple of muscles, a thin line of blond-brown hair disappearing under his belt. He grabbed the collar of his shirt to pull it off and then the shirt lifted, revealing another inch of his body, more muscles, a stomach of them.

  And then his shirt was off and she was dry-mouthed at the sight of him.

  “I thought I’d put on a show,” he said. “For you, this time.”

  Well, he was starting off right, that was for sure. He had a swimmer’s body, tan and muscled. His khaki pants hung low on lean hips, and he put his hands to his belt buckle and paused. “You’re … ah … getting to the good stuff,” she said, waving her hand at him to keep going.

  “Sit back,” he told her and pointed to the bed, which she nearly jumped into, quickly stacking her book notes and happily setting them aside for the night. His chuckle followed her and she was delighted in her excitement, delighted that he was entertained.