The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (free e reader txt) 📗

the warm air. High Street was cordoned off by police cars with flashing lights and the sidewalks along the route were lined with animated crowds. I stood on trembling legs at the starting line with the other racers in front of Pineview Lodge. I had no idea where Ricky and Mom were along the route or if they were even together. An organizer wearing a bright orange vest was arranging the racers into four groups. “You,” she said, tapping me on the arm, “over here. You’re in the second group. Stand back and don’t move into position until I say.”

The first group lined up and when the starter gun went off, the racers gave their karts a quick shove before jumping in and rolling down High Street. Only two of the six kids made it to the finish line. Three of them drove off the course, and one kid’s wheel fell off in the first fifteen seconds. The corner of his kart scraped the pavement with a sickening screech before the whole thing ground to a lopsided halt.

The woman in the orange vest motioned my group forward. I moved to the starting line. All I could think about, standing beside my kart with my heart pounding, was steering straight. Then, all of a sudden, the starter gun rang out and I was pushing my kart forward and clambering over the side, grasping my wobbly steering wheel with every muscle in my scrawny arms. My front wheels were zigzagging like crazy as the steering wheel jerked from left to right in my hands. There were two people ahead of me, but I wasn’t worried about them. I just wanted to keep the Zo-kart on the course right to the end.

When I lurched across the finish line, I looked around excitedly for Ricky, but before I had even finished scanning the faces of the crowd, I was being told to clear the way for the next group.

“Move along, move along! Get your karts out of the way!”

I stumbled to the side.

“Good job, Zoe!” a voice called out. I looked up to see Mom pushing her way toward me. “You made it!”

I nodded, still scanning the crowd for my brother. The third group of racers were on their way down the hill, with one kart way in front of the others. Someone let out a piercing whistle followed by an enthusiastic holler, “Go Steven!” I stood to the side with my mom, watching as Steven crossed the finish line in his bright blue kart. It had a giant yellow ‘S’ painted on the side and I suddenly wished that I’d done a bit more to spruce up my kart. I could have written Zo-kart on the side, although part of me didn’t want anyone else to know about that nickname. It belonged to me and Ricky and to our afternoons in the basement with Def Leppard blasting from the stereo.

After the fourth group of racers came teetering down the street, the winner of each group prepared for the final race-off in our age category. I still hadn’t found Ricky. Not surprisingly, Steven, the boy with the bright blue kart, won the final race and I watched with envy as his whole family surrounded him at the finish line.

I tugged on Mom’s arm. “We should put this in the car,” I said, motioning to my rickety, unpainted kart.

“Don’t you want to see the older kids race?”

I didn’t, but I couldn’t come up with a good reason not to stay and watch. For the past three years, I’d begged Mom to take me to the races where I’d eagerly watched every group of karts roll down the hill and across the finish line. The older kids were more aggressive; they sometimes tried to force each other off the course, which usually resulted in them veering out of bounds themselves. But today, I didn’t want to watch them; I just wanted to find Ricky.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said to my mom, because it seemed simpler than putting my disappointment into words.

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “Are you sad that you didn’t win?”

I shrugged. “At least I made it to the finish line.”

The bazaar in the Pentecostal Church parking lot was crawling with people. I stared into the crowd until I finally spotted Ricky standing beside a girl who was holding a bag of pink and blue cotton candy.

“Can you watch my kart?” I said to Mom, before dashing past tables of knitted hats and homemade jam toward my big brother.

The girl pulled out a chunk of pink cotton candy and offered it to Ricky, who leaned over and ate it out of her hand. She laughed as he wrapped his mouth around her fingers. I stood absolutely still, but Ricky had seen me.

“Zoe!” he called. The girl glanced in my direction, then wiped her hand on her jeans.

“Did you see my race?” I asked. “I kept it straight the whole time. I made it all the way!”

“Awesome,” Ricky said. He lifted his palm in a high-five and I reached up to smack it.

Only later did it occur to me that Ricky hadn’t answered my question and that quite possibly he hadn’t bothered to watch my race at all. I couldn’t compete with a girl who was willing to let him suck cotton candy off her fingers in the middle of a crowded church parking lot.

I was upset with Ricky that day, but my disappointment was nothing compared to what would follow in just a few short months — when everything good I believed about my brother came crashing down around me.

CHAPTER FIVE

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ON MONDAY MORNING, I NOTICE right away that the temperature has dropped. No double digits for us today. Instead, a thin sheen of frost coats my windshield, and even with my car’s heat on high, the coldness seeps into my skin as I drive to the Water Treatment Plant. Once I’m there, I can’t get warm. The inside of the plant is always chilly,