Kasie West - On the Fence

“Showering.” I reached my front door then turned around. “See ya.”

He stopped me by saying, “We’re going out for my mom’s birthday tonight. I figured I better go to the mall and find her a present.”

“Probably a good idea.”

My hand was on the doorknob when he asked, “Any ideas for what to get her?”

“You’re asking me?” I laughed. “Funny.”

“I could use a girl’s opinion.”

“Then you better go find one.”

“Well, opinion or not, you want to come?”

“To the mall?” I turned around. He had a look in his eye. Braden may have been a wild card, but I could still read him most of the time, and right now he felt sorry for me. Pity made me angry. “Look, Braden, I’m fine, okay?” And apparently if I needed to talk, Jerom’s ear was available.

He held up his hands in surrender. “Fine.” His eyes seemed to say, Perhaps you do have a cold, cold heart, Charlie. I couldn’t have agreed more.

Nathan was in charge of dinner that night and had just pulled some sort of pasta-and-meat dish out of the oven, timing it perfectly with my dad’s arrival. Kiss-up. As my dad walked into the kitchen from the garage, he found where I sat at the table and narrowed his eyes at me. I wondered which one of my brothers had tattled and why my dad was so upset about it. For heaven’s sake, what was everyone’s problem? If I had started crying over Dave’s grandma my life would’ve been a whole lot easier right then. Maybe I needed to practice some fake waterworks.

My dad was a nice guy and most of the time a pushover, but when he was in his full police garb and had that look on his face, he terrified me. He hung his keys on a hook by the door, then unbuckled and hung his utility belt as well, the heavy flashlight banging the wall as he did. “Charlie . . . ,” he said in a tired voice.

“I’m sorry.” Then I made sure to give all my brothers a death glare. Gage played all big-eyed and innocent.

“You should be, but that’s not going to be good enough this time.”

“This time?” Had I been insensitive to the relatives of a different dead grandma before?

My dad approached the table and plopped a pink copy of my speeding ticket in front of me. Oh. This was worse than being insensitive. This was about breaking the law.

I tried to talk my way out of it. “I didn’t know the speed limit and I didn’t see him. He was hiding down a side street. Isn’t that illegal, like entrapment or something? Nathan? Isn’t that illegal?”

Nathan hid a smile and brought a pitcher of ice water to the table. Nathan was starting his first year of college next year. His ultimate goal—lawyerhood.

My dad leveled a hard stare at me. “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“I’m sorry.” I should’ve been honest. It was always worse when he found out about things from an outside source.

“This is the second ticket in as many months. And that’s not counting the ones you got out of by using my name.”

I ducked my head to hide the heat I could feel on my cheeks at having been caught. I didn’t need my brothers making fun of me for blushing. My dad was right. I had been pulled over multiple times. I used his name every time.

“Do you know how embarrassing it is when my kids get speeding tickets? When I have to find out about those speeding tickets from a coworker?”

“I’m sorry.”

“But worse than the embarrassment you caused me is the blow to my bank account.” His finger came down hard on the pink slip, landing on a number written in his own handwriting that read $264.00. My eyes widened. “Yeah, that’s a lot of money.”

I nodded.

“You’re paying for it.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I don’t think you learned your lesson last time because I paid for your ticket. So, you are paying not only for this ticket, but also the last one, and the extra hundred dollars a month you are going to cost me in insurance.”

“But I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Then find a job.”

“How? Basketball camp starts in about seven weeks, and then there’s school and soccer after that.”

“Dad,” Gage piped in, using his winning smile in my defense this time. “Charlie’s just a little girl. Don’t make her work. She’ll never survive.”

Okay, so that wasn’t exactly the defense I was looking for.

“Gage. Stay out of this,” my dad said.

He saluted. “Yes, officer.”

My dad turned his hard stare on Gage, but just like the rest of us, he couldn’t stay mad at Gage either. So he turned back to me. “Figure it out, because it’s my final decision.” With that, he left the kitchen and went to his room to change. My brothers all stared at me and then, as if they’d counted to three, started laughing at exactly the same time.

“Yeah, it’s so funny,” I said. “As if you’ve never been pulled over before.”

Nathan raised his hand. “Never.” Of course not.

“Twice,” Jerom said.

I looked at Gage. Of all my brothers, he and I were not only the closest but the most alike. “A few times,” he said, “but I always got out of tickets. You gotta act a little more innocent, Charlie. You can’t be belligerent with the cops. They don’t like it.”

“How do you know I was?”

They all laughed again. This round of laughter was cut off by the ringing of a cell phone, from where it sat being charged on the counter. Gage jumped up and slid across the island to answer it before it went to voice mail.

My dad came back, and the change in his clothes seemed to change his demeanor as well. He kissed the top of my head. Maybe this meant he was rethinking the whole job thing. “You should probably start looking first thing tomorrow,” he said. Then he looked at Gage and snapped, “Off the phone.”

I sank down farther in my chair and spooned myself some of Nathan’s pasta creation. My dad said a prayer (being a cop for the last twenty years had put the fear of God in him). Then we all dug in. Dinner in our house was like a race. If you didn’t eat fast, you missed out on seconds. I didn’t feel much like seconds anyway.

I lay on my bed, feet up on the headboard, and threw a tennis ball against the wall over and over. There was a single knock on my door, and then someone I assumed was Gage let himself in. He was the only one who never waited for an answer. I tilted my head back and saw an upside-down version of Gage right before he took a flying leap and landed on my head.

I grunted my disapproval and he rolled off.

“So, a job, huh?”

“Don’t remind me.”

“I think this day should go down in history as the day Dad decreed one of his offspring must seek employment.”

“Seriously. Whatever happened to ‘School is your job’ or ‘Sports can pay for college so I consider that your job’?”

“Apparently, someone by the name of Speed Racer changed that.” He paused and—just like Gage to always see the positive in something (which was one of the only ways we weren’t alike)—said, “Finding a job is way better than getting grounded. If you were grounded, all the indoor air your body isn’t used to breathing would dry out your pores and cause you to wither up and die.”

Okay, maybe not positive, per se, but close to it.

He pushed his bangs off his forehead. “Well, for what it’s worth, I offer you my job-hunting prowess.”

“Which consists of?”

“Accompanying you and pointing to the stores you should pick up applications from, helping you write your name in little boxes. You know, invaluable stuff like that.”

“What would I do without you?”

“It’s too painful to even consider, but it might involve drying pores and withering.”

I came out of Urban Chic carrying an application and had to wait while Gage finished talking to a redhead and her short friend. I listened to the sound of the ocean, only three blocks away, and took a deep breath of coastal air. Old Town was only ten minutes from our house, but the air tasted different here.

“Did you come to help me or to pick up girls?” After the way the lady behind the register looked at me, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be a future employee of Urban Chic. Perfectly fine with me. There were so many sequins reflecting the fluorescent lighting in that store, I was sure it would produce a massive headache after five minutes.

“I can do both at the same time,” he assured me. “I’m talented like that.”

The only reason I chose Old Town to look for a place of possible employment was because it had so many stores so close together and I wouldn’t have to drive all around town picking up applications. And unlike the mall, hopefully nobody I knew would come around. It was near the beach, so mostly tourists or rich types shopped here. The stores consisted mainly of local owners with local wares—lots of antique shops and vintage clothing stores. And although I liked the feel of the area, what I truly and sincerely hoped was that I wouldn’t be able to find a job. Maybe that was why I stayed in my jeans and T-shirt, my hair pulled up into a ponytail, still wet from my shower.

“Never date a guy whose jeans don’t cover his ankles,” Gage said, pointing to the guy twenty yards ahead. He shuddered.

“But he’d be able to walk through puddles and stuff without even getting his jeans wet. He’s a planner.”

I often wondered why my brothers insisted on making these lists for me. It wasn’t like I had been waiting anxiously on the sidelines for the dating buzzer to sound.