Miss Behave (The Anderson Family Series Book 1)

by Traci Highland

  Miss Behave

  Traci Highland

  Miss Behave

  Traci Highland

  Copyright © 2018 by Tracy Costa

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  For my sister by blood, Holly, you mean the world to me. And for my sisters by choice, Joanne, Ashleigh, Jamie, and Christina. I love you all.

  Contents

  1. The Problem With A Naked Woman

  2. A Bad Boy, A Naughty Girl

  Untitled

  3. Men of God, Gamblers and the WWE

  4. Things Not to Say To Gun Enthusiasts

  Untitled

  5. An Unexpected Guest

  6. Making Friends and Why Windows Suck

  7. Fun with Fantasy

  Untitled

  Untitled

  Untitled

  8. Coffee Can’t Cure All Ills

  Untitled

  9. Fun with Beer and Punches

  Untitled

  Untitled

  10. A Firm Lack of Resolve

  Chapter 11

  12. Don’t Feed the Mansquatch

  Untitled

  13. Odd Fathers

  14. Aunties and Other Naughty Birds

  15. Domestic Bliss or Something

  Untitled

  16. Pancakes Make Mornings Better

  Untitled

  17. Incontinence is not your Friend

  18. Missing in Action

  Untitled

  19. Meow, Bitches

  Untitled

  20. Bliss. A temporary state of being

  Untitled

  21. Strange Women with Strange Tales

  22. When You Can’t Handle the Truth

  23. Living the Impossible Dream

  24. Decisions

  25. Bullying and Frostbite

  Untitled

  26. Why Hating Mushrooms is Patently Not Recommended

  Untitled

  About the Author

  Also by Traci Highland

  Chapter 1

  The Problem With A Naked Woman

  Dear Miss Behave,

  Last weekend I was at the pool with the children, and there was a woman naked and walking around the locker room.

  I hate to be prissy, but to be naked around young children like that just isn’t right. She comes to the pool regularly and I am not the only one who has happened upon her strolling around the locker room without clothes. Now I know there are showers and that people change in locker rooms, but showers should be taken while wearing bathing suits and there are private changing rooms that are clearly marked.

  How can I convey to her the accepted rules of decency before any of our children become hopelessly corrupted?

  Sincerely,

  -Agape at the AquaPark

  Dear Agape,

  Do please get over yourself. People shower naked. If you choose not to, then I assume you probably smell and your skin is beset by odd rashes.

  I suggest that you buy your kids an ice-cream and treat yourself to a margarita. Life is short, darling. Lighten up.

  Sincerely,

  Miss Behave

  Piper

  There are days when throwing my keys onto the counter and sinking into the couch is enough to put the ugliness of the stories behind me, and then there are the days when nothing short of a bottle of Riesling and bag of Doritos will do.

  Considering the crap I’m hearing from my mother and the stupid advice column I had to write in the morning, dealing with people doing terrible things to each other and then having to cover the armed robbery of a local bank in the afternoon, today is totally the latter.

  “Listen, I have to go, okay?”

  “But Piper, you have to listen to me, you can’t go around advising people to drink in that column of yours-“

  I roll my eyes. My mother, the ridiculously named Ann Anderson, lives to make me second guess each and every choice I’ve ever made. “You’re breaking up on me, Mom, my reception in here sucks.”

  “Aren’t you at home? I mean, honey, what are people going to say if you’re always telling them to booze it up?”

  “Too much static on the line. I’ll call you later.”

  She huffs out some vague response and I make like I can’t hear the what will people think lecture and end the call with a quick. “Okay, great, love you, bye.”

  God and Riesling save me from my mother and her misplaced importance on appearances.

  I open the fridge and stand, letting the cool air hit me in the face. “Genn, you home?”

  She comes down the stairs and tosses her cell on the counter with a rather ferocious indifference. It’s a look her ex-girlfriend used to refer to as her puma-face, and I swear Gen ditched her for that reason alone.

  In three years she’s gone from the girl who interviewed me for the job to one of my besties. I just love her. In fact there have been nights that I’ve lain awake at night praying to be gay just to be able to date Gennifer. She has short, straight black hair with blond and pink and sometimes blue stripes, and always looks great in her usual black, or maybe black and gray ensemble. It’s total nerd-girl chic and it works for her.

  “Air conditioning’s busted,” Gennifer mutters as she grabs a bottle of Jack Daniels off the counter and takes a healthy swig. “Gotta haul ass down to the civic center and cover that boy band concert. It’s going to get filed under third circle of hell in the recesses of my subconscious for the rest of my life, but whatever.”

  “Throw your bra on stage for me?”

  “Bite me.” She takes another large swig from the bottle of Jack.

  “Call me after, okay?” I give her a quick hug and watch as she walks upstairs to change. She pauses, mid-climb and says, “Hey, did you see that job listing I forwarded you? The one for the Chicago Sentinel?”

  “I did. Filled out the application and everything. Let’s just hope they show some more interest than the last one.” I rub my neck, the sting of the latest rejection still all-too real.

  “They better. Your piece yesterday about that New Canaan Cassanova was great. You saw a bunch of lovesick old ladies getting conned out of their retirement in three different states and made a case that it’s the same guy. Pretty good stuff.” She smiles and finishes climbing the stairs. Gennifer is thirty-five, doing what she loves as a freelancer. She works with me at The Pendleton Falls Herald for the health insurance.

  She’s also a for-real kind of journalist, she went from college to Salon.com then to Columbia for her MFA. She only lives in Connecticut so she can be close to the insurance industry in Hartford. It’s her personal mission to overhaul absolutely everything about the healthcare system, and everyone from the New York Times to the Atlantic are hot for her freelance work.

  Which is sort of the exact opposite of me, really. I could dance naked on the news floor of the New York Times and no one would cover it.

  I told her once that I dreamed of working on the staff of a big paper, covering stories that mattered to a lot of people, affecting change and all that. Ever since, she’s been helping me keep an eye out for any and all job listings that could fit the description.

  But as of now, I’m twenty-seven and living the nightmare. A
small-town advice columnist that occasionally gets assigned to cover a domestic violence incident and wrote one for-real piece about nice old ladies being left high and dry by a con man.

  I text my sisters and my stepdad Ted about applying to the Sentinel and Ted answers right away:

  Great! There is something waiting for you here at the house. A good luck charm, if you believe in such things. Cheers, -Ted

  I grin and send him a smiley face before putting my phone and purse back in the closet, grabbing the Riesling and Doritos, and strolling out the door.

  It’s too hot to stay in our little sweatbox. When Gen sold me on rooming with her, she showed me an old real estate listing that described the house as a “charming cape” with “authentic colonial character.” What I didn’t realize at the time was that the listing was just realtor code for “doesn’t play well with modern amenities.” The air conditioning has never worked for more than half an hour.

  Thankfully, the lake isn’t a long walk from our little cape.

  I make my way down the street, cross it, and struggle to keep my flip flops steady as I make my way down the dirt cut-through that runs behind our neighbors yard, across the wider, more well-groomed, lakeside jogging path, and down a ways to the little beach. Swatting my way through the clouds of gnats, I smile as the first few katydids of the night sing through the pine-scented air.

  Being a short walk away from Bee’s Pond (and having a view in Winter!) was one of the reasons Gen picked the run-down cape as home. The lake doesn’t allow any kind of motorized vehicles and only has a smattering of oversized houses surrounding it. Sure, the sounds of the kids’ camp on the opposite end of the pond can be a bit loud in the summer, but times like now, in early October, after all the kids and renters have left, the lake feels like a little bit of heaven.

  I set up on the small rocky beach, sitting on my favorite rocks and savoring the wine and salty, fatty goodness of the chips. The water laps at my toes. I wish I’d remembered to bring my suit. The heat drapes over me like a sweater. I stare at the clean, open lines of the lake.

  The cool, refreshing, positively empty lake.

  The sun rides low and heavy over the tops of the trees, and the spot where I’m sitting is really only visible through one small space in the trees. And that’s only to people who happen to be walking on the jogging path. The empty jogging path.

  I put down the bag of chips. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a single person pass by on the jogging path tonight. And honestly, once I get in the water, no one would be able to see anything; they would just walk on by, never knowing…

  My shirt is up and over my head and my shorts down before I finish the thought. My panties and bra join the pile on the rock and I sink into the cool, amazing water, enjoying the feeling of the mud squishing beneath my toes.

  I swim, letting the nasty day of writing nasty articles about nasty people doing nasty things, fall away to the bottom of the pond like the filth that it is. I wonder if I really am cut out for a big news powerhouse, like the Chicago Sentinel. Today I had to write an article about a father threatening his wife and kids with a gun and I cried. Cried. It was horrible.

  Dipping my head under the water I close my eyes, the water rushing up over my face, washing the hot of the tears along with it. It’s not supposed to upset me, I’m supposed to stay neutral, stay unaffected. But I can’t. With each story that I have to try and tuck my emotions away in order to write I find myself tucking a part of me away along with it, and if I really want to reach the big time, I know I can’t let it get to me.

  Can’t and don’t are unfortunately two entirely different things.

  My arms stretch and feet kick as I move, loving how each muscle synchs up with each movement, feeling alive, feeling clean in the middle of a lake surrounded by nothing but trees and sky and-

  Is that giggling?

  It really sounds like someone is laughing.

  I look back towards the shore.

  How did I get out this far? I didn’t realize.

  Someone is definitely laughing.

  Oh no.

  It’s them. Gen and I call them the Hell’s Angles, since they always seem to be falling down and breaking limbs at weird angles (I’ve driven two to the hospital in the past three months.) They are boys that ride around the lake and the neighborhood and the whole town on their bikes doing stupid, dangerous things. There’s a whole posse of them, boys roaming the streets at all kinds of after-school hours, I can only assume that they must be feral. Or just untamed. Their mothers must be totally overwhelmed.

  Why are they off their bikes, though? Near the rock? The rock that has my clothes.

  I swim towards the shore, keeping my eye on the one that’s getting a bit too sniffy around my stuff. The others seem to be teasing him. No, wait, daring him.

  Oh no.

  His hand reaches out to my underwear. “Hey!” I yell, heart pounding, kicking my feet, which slap at the water, the plat, plat, plat, plat sound echoing across the still pond.

  The kid looks at me, freezes, and then grabs all of my clothes and hops back onto his bike. Plat, plat, plat, plat. No, no, kid. Don’t start the bike. “No, no, no! Stop!”

  They zoom off, the evil screech of their prepubescent voices chilling me. I get close to shore and stand, the calf-deep in water, and hold my hands out in front of me as I try not to slip.

  “Wait!” I shout but all I catch is the white fluff of the dust and sound clouds the bikes leave behind.

  “Stop!” This can’t be happening. The sunlight clings only to the treetops and the path down which the kids disappeared is dark and full of brambles. I reach the shore and run after them. What can I possibly say that will halt a bunch of rampaging, clothes-stealing demon-spawn? “I’ll call your mothers!”

  My feet are caked in mud as I slip and slide my way down the path.

  Running and glancing behind me to make sure no one is around, I clap my hands and shout, hoping that will do something. But the sounds of bikes and laughter just gets further and further ahead of me and now my boobs flop up and down and oh my gosh that hurts. Ouch, ouch, ouch. I cross my arms across my chest to minimize the amount of bounceage and keep moving forward.

  Stupid me and the stupid heat and the stupid gravel of the stupid trail.

  Run, Piper, run, go now!

  My feet slip as I race around the bend, the woods a blur of khaki and green and brown.

  Lungs and feet and legs and core raw, I turn and turn again and run and run and my feet slip and I slide and there’s a bend in the path and out walks this thing and-

  I slam into some guy. Ack!

  Words spew from my mouth like ice cubes from a fridge dispenser, in a jagged, wicked, unstoppable mess. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry! It’s just it was hot and I wanted to swim and then these kids took my clothes and now I can’t find them and my feet are being torn to shreds by these stupid rocks and oh my God I’m like going to be arrested because my air conditioner is broken.”

  “Piper,” –the sound of my name pings against the whirling vortex of ugly metastasizing in my head-

  Wait.

  This guy’s voice.

  His voice.

  I know that voice.

  My heart races.

  Oh God, no.

  I know that voice really well.

  No, no, no, no!

  I’m going to be sick. I squeeze my eyes shut, like if I will it hard enough I’ll just wake up and be back in my house. Warm and safe and in plenty of clothes.

  Clasping my stomach, I keep my eyes on the ground beneath my feet.

  There’s a noise eating through the humming that’s fogging up my head. I choke on salty tears streaming into my mouth.

  My boss. It’s my boss. Out here. In the woods. Why me? Oh God, why couldn’t I have run into Genn, or the girl who cuts my hair or even Fred, the plumber? Anyone but my boss.

  Something soft lands on my shoulders and gradually the words get through. “Did something happ
en? Are you ok? Can you hear me? Piper, c’mon, I’ll get you someplace safe.”

  He wraps his flannel shirt around me.

  This can’t be happening. Why him? Why the guy that owns the paper? I blink and watch his tshirt strain against his chest. He’s hardly ever in the office, working remotely from New York for two of the three years I’ve been here and when he is in town, he assigns me to terrible, horrible, awful things like the Miss Behave column.

  I’m surprised he even knows my name. He makes us all wear name tags, like we’re some kind of cult. Hello! My name is: Piper.

  Why? Why him? I pull the shirt down as far as I can, wishing it covered a bit, well, more.

  Wait, he could ruin me. Ruin. If this becomes a headline, I’m sunk. My hands shake. Oh God, if my mother ever heard about this. “Please don’t run this in the paper.”

  “Run this in the paper? What? Are you sure you’re all right? Why would I-”

  His dark hair falls in his face as he rips off his tshirt and Holy Mother Of God those abs! I mean, they go on and on like some kind of muscle-licious playground. Acres of taut flesh stretched out over ridges of sheer strength. It’s not right, such a body on my boss. My legs wobble as he holds out his shirt to me. He can’t see me like this, it’s just, just too weird.

  I drop the flannel to the ground, air hitting my naked flesh in a whoosh.