A Crooked Mile (Rust Book 1) Read online

  When you were a social outcast there was nothing worse than any kind of group work. She had no real friends and only one acquaintance in school, who wasn’t even in the same class as her. Not that it mattered anyway, because Mrs. Bond took joy in breaking up friend groups because she thought kids needed to branch out more. Not that Ramona explicitly disagreed with that course of action; it was just that she preferred to work alone.

  She was considering raising her hand, begging to be able to do a solo project, when the dreaded list was produced from a stack of papers on the desk. Mrs. Bond began to read off the names as she walked down the rows, speaking with clarity so nobody could claim that they hadn't understood. When she reached Ramona's desk she glanced at her and offered her a soft look, clearly knowing how much she would hate this but forcing her to do it anyway.

  "Ramona Sanders and Alec Davis."

  No way. There was just. No. Way.

  Chapter Two: Profile of a Montana Girl

  Ramona Sanders was weird. Everyone thought so, and that was one of the very first things that Alec had learned when he'd moved back to Rust to attend high school. That had been nearly four years ago, during freshman year, and as far as he could tell she was still pretty weird. Though, if he were being honest with himself, he wasn't really sure what it was that actually made her weird. He'd never had a proper conversation with her, so he was basing his opinion solely on what he had been told by those in his peer group.

  They were pretty unreliable narrators though, the entire lot of them. It was sometimes hard to sort out fact from fiction when they were talking, and so many years of building up their sordid tales made it even harder. Maybe that was what he could use for his English project subject, unreliable narrators in multiple works of fiction instead of just one book off the list. The choice wasn't his alone though; it was a choice he had to make with Stuttering Sanders who, at the moment, looked like she might actually cry.

  Public schools were a real sham.

  Alec would know, because he hadn't always been a public school kid. He had started his educational career in Atlanta, where he had been born and where he had lived until age ten. In Atlanta he had gone to a private preparatory school that required a uniform and had an excellent basketball program. He knew that was his father’s primary reason for picking it, but he hadn't minded. After all, he'd started there at age five and had attended until the big move. When you're five you aren't exactly questioning your parents motives on anything, especially not about the school they’ve chosen for you to attend.

  Their move back to Rust, his father's former hometown, had been pretty sudden and out of left field. It had started with a bad car accident on the 285, and had ended with his father being released from the hospital and deciding that a lifestyle change was in order for his entire family. So he had given up his private law practice to do civil litigation, had packed up them all up, and had moved back to Montana. It had been quite a culture shock, and that was really understating the situation. To go from living in a big house in Buckhead, with everything you could imagine within driving distance, to being nearly two hours from the nearest town in an old farm house in the middle of nowhere had been more than just a shock. It had been a damn earthquake.

  Alec hadn't stayed in Rust for long after that initial move however. His father enrolled him in an all-boys boarding school in Colorado Springs, and so he'd left that fall and only returned home for holiday breaks. Or at least for most of the summer break anyway. They went skiing over winter break, spent Easter with his grandparents in Georgia, and spring break was always a vacation with his mother and brother (dad was always busy with some case or another and could never find the time). It wasn't until The Bad Thing happened that he came to stay home for good halfway through his freshman year of high school. He had arrived after Christmas break a tall, lanky boy with a mop of dark hair and an L.L. Bean backpack thrown over his shoulder, and had been immediately accepted into the flock.

  He wanted to be part of the flock. That was normal and that was good. His therapist told him it was necessary for him to be involved with his peers, to not be afraid to live his life. So he decided to live it, and that meant accepting the others and being accepted in return. If you bucked the system then they turned on you, and he couldn't afford that. He needed to graduate high school, to get his basketball scholarship, and to move on with his life. Maybe Rust wasn't the most wonderful place in the world. Maybe the movie theater was a dump and only had one screen and showed movies weeks after they'd been seen by everyone else. Maybe the old farm house creaked and groaned too much and night, and maybe the sight of all that wheat waving in the wind made his eyes cross sometimes, but it was okay.

  Rust was as good as anywhere else when you were just passing through.

  Still, even Alec had his limits. His limit, it turned out, was working for twelve weeks with Ramona Sanders, which was a surefire way to get socially rejected. It was senior year, and he had basketball to play soon. He didn't have time to go around trying to make new friends. Protesting was right there on the tip of his tongue, he'd opened his mouth to ask Mrs. Bond for another partner, when Cameron Eccoles, a fellow teammate, spoke up first from across the room.

  "Mrs. Bond," Cam called out, not even raising his hand. "Come on! Can't I work with Alec? I mean we're on the team together. We have the same schedule, so we can get together after practice and stuff. Or work on it on the bus on the way to away games! I mean I think that's absolutely fair, and I think Principal Higgins would agree with me."

  It was a low blow to throw Principal Higgins in the ring, but Alec approved quietly. Higgins was a big fan of the team; he came to every game, and was a big supporter of athletics in school in general. He tended to favor the athletes and everyone knew it, but it was very obvious very fast that Mrs. Bond would not be swayed by such a thinly veiled idle threat.

  "You can, and will, work with the partner that you have been assigned. You can work around your practices with Amanda James the same as you could with Alec. Find a way to make it work, Mister Eccoles. As far as you're concerned, these partnerships are set in stone. Now we only have half an hour of the period left, so shuffle around and find your partner. I've printed off copies of the reading lists for this year; you can begin to consider what book you would like to choose."

  That was it. All hope was lost. The woman would not see to reason, and Cameron had pitched a pretty good case. That meant that, like it or not, he was stuck with Ramona Sanders. Who was, at that very moment, heading in his direction.

  Ramona wasn't an especially tall person, and he pegged her to be about five feet and a handful of inches maybe. She was a little overweight, which was something that the girls in his clique loved to point out. You couldn't really notice that today though because she was wearing a gray sweater that was so baggy it looked like a sack and hid any shape there might have been underneath it. She had on leggings with a moose print that was sort of interesting, but that also made his head spin a little when he tried to decipher the actual pattern. As she walked across the room she actually clomped, and he wondered if the brown work boots she wore were actually hers or not, because they sounded about three sizes too big. Or at least several pounds to heavy, gauging by the way they hit the floor. Her hair was a sort of dirty blond and was all over the place, a massive wave of curls that no elastic hairband could possibly tame. Since summer was over and everyone was now contained inside any color she might have had was long gone, so her freckles stood out even more beneath her murky eyes, which were framed by a pair of large black framed glasses.

  She made a hell of a lot of noise as she approached, dropping her books onto the desk beside of his and heaving herself into the seat like she was on death row. Her math book took a nose dive as she sat, sliding toward the floor where Alec caught it in one hand, placing it back on top the English text that was balanced on top of her notebooks.

  "Look," she spat out, before Alec could even so much as say hello. "I don't want to work with you,
and I KNOW you don't want to work with me. It's a mutual thing, okay? Now we pick a book, and then I can put together the project. That way you can go off and play your little bouncy ball game, and do whatever it is you do with your idiot friends, and I don't have to put up with you or them. Alright?"

  "No."

  Alec was so stunned that, for a moment, that was all he could say. He had never had someone talk to him that way before, like they were putting him into his place, and he also didn't like the general idea of her just taking over the project. It was his grade too, and if she did a crappy job than he was the one who also had to suffer for it. Good grades were as important as playing good basketball if he wanted to get a scholarship offer, and he wasn't going to let her jeopardize that because she was self-righteous.

  "I happen to like English, and I don't even really know you. How do I know you won't do a shitty job on purpose just to throw me under the bus? No way. It's half mine, and I'll do my share. You don't have to like me; you just have to work with me for twelve weeks. Anyway it's not like we have to see each other every single day. We'll work out a schedule, and we'll meet at those times. It doesn't have to be a big deal," Alec told her, crinkling his nose up and shaking his head.

  He could tell that she was surprised in return, having anticipated him to readily accept her offer. After all, what high school joke didn't want someone just offering to do their work for them? Unfortunately for Ramona, he was not a typical high school jock. He wasn't really very typical at all for an eighteen year old boy, not really, and he wasn't about to fake it for her sake.

  "Alright," Ramona grumbled begrudgingly, clearly not impressed but also not about to argue. He had made his point, and she would accept it. "Let's pick a book then, or at least narrow the list down. Class is almost over, we need to get moving."

  They spent the last twenty minutes studying the list, marking off their dislikes and circling their likes. As it turned out, they had only one book in common, so that was what they chose.

  Wuthering Heights.

  Chapter Three: About A Boy

  The Davis family lived on the same winding, rutted gravel road as the Sanders family, just about another mile or so on out. Their house was a big, sprawling renovated thing with more rooms than four people needed meaning that they only had to see one another when they really wanted to. His mother had long ago given up on the notion of housework, and had employed an older local woman to come in twice a week to dust all the big rooms, vacuum the rugs, and do the laundry. They had installed a dishwasher in the vast old kitchen when they had moved in, so at least that much was taken care of on a daily business even if it couldn’t be considered actual work.

  Alec got along decently enough with his mother, who was the only parent to take an active interest in all facets of his life instead of just sports. She asked him about his day over dinner, and encouraged him when it came to his school work and his other activities. She always took the time to have a hot meal waiting for him and his younger brother, Bryson, even if it was just take out from the diner in town or something pre-made from the deli counter at the grocery store. Family dinners were important to her, and had been even before The Bad Thing, which Alec could appreciate. It was always nice to come home to food and conversation with his mother and his little brother. It was his father who gummed up the works.

  Alec Lysander Davis II was an imposing man, tall with broad shoulders and a smile that could cut you down faster than any knife. He had built a life out of defending people, even if they were the wrong sort to be defending, and he prided himself on winning cases and being ruthless in his efforts to do so. He had never been a soft man, not even when Alec was little, and he didn't like it when things weren't going in his favor. Whether that was in the court room or at home, he held sway over all and that was that.

  He was constantly butting heads with his oldest son and things between the two of them had been even more uneasy and tense since Alec had come home from Colorado Springs with a prescription for medication and a therapist that he saw twice a month in Fort Benton. He did not want his son to be weak, and had pushed Alec from the moment he had set foot back in Rust. He pushed Alec to play basketball in the fall, to play hockey in the winter, to do better, and to be more. Always more. More, more, more. More was Alec II's favorite word, and he did not let Alec III forget it. Their home was a frosty place, cold as ice and never thawing out, even in the throes of summer. They kept it that way by being so frigid to one another, screaming when they did speak, and only speaking when they felt it was absolutely necessary.

  Alec rarely, if ever, thought that it was necessary. It was his father always instigating the talks that turned into fights. He tried not to let it get to him, tried to do what his doctor told him to do and just ignore it. It was hard to ignore someone who held power over you though, who knew which buttons to push and what threats to make. He hated that his father could do that to him, but there wasn't much that could be done about. Not until the spring anyway. Not until after he secured himself a scholarship and left Rust behind him for good.

  Once he got out, Alec II couldn't control him anymore. Not for another moment. Not for the rest of his life.

  It was that thought, that feeling, which kept him going on those long days when his father was home and decided to be part of their family. Those were the days that he hated the most, the ones that he dreaded. The ones he had been dreading since he was a little boy in Atlanta, when he'd get off the school bus and there would be that damn Range Rover in the driveway, causing his heart to sink straight into his stomach.

  He had never been his father's son. Would never be his father's son.

  Today he was holding his breath as Cameron dropped him off after school in his new F-150, pulling down the long driveway to let him out near the front door. To his delight the SUV of dread was not in the driveway, which lifted his mood considerably, a real feat considering what a day he’d already had.

  It hadn't taken long for Cameron to spread the news about Stuttering Sanders to the rest of their group, and by lunch time Alec was the topic of choice. They asked him a million questions, most of which he could not answer even if he wanted to. He had sat with her for less than half an hour in English class, and most of that time was spent quietly going over the reading list to figure out what book to choose. He didn't know a thing more about Ramona than he had known when he'd arrived that morning, but trying to explain that to a group of loud and opinionated teenagers was like trying to teach a dog to play the violin.

  It was certainly possible, but the results were not favorable.

  Cameron had spent most of the lunch period complaining about how he got stuck with Amanda James, who was president of the twelfth grade and a bonafide perfectionist. She was already planning out a large and elaborate project that would surely cut into his scant bit of free time during the basketball season, though you would have thought it was an actual Shakespearean tragedy from the way Cam talked. The girls in the group had spent their time picking at their sandwiches and dreaming up ways that they could use Alec to torture Ramona. Their plans all sounded like the beginning of an awkward late 1990s rom-com starring Freddy Prinze Junior, and he wanted no part in any of it.

  The end of day bell had been a blessing to Alec, who had ran to the coach’s office in the gymnasium to pick up his new practice uniform for the season before meeting up with Cameron for his customary lift home. Games wouldn't start until November, but tryouts and practices would start in the next couple of weeks. He knew he didn't have to vie for a spot on the team, but he'd still be expected to show up to teach the new guys how to do drills. That was the price one paid for being named team captain at the end of the previous season.

  Alec was glad to get home, and even gladder that his father was not there. If they were really lucky he'd be stuck out of town for a couple of days and they could have some peace. Or at least as much peace as there would be once the threshing machine came to get what remained of the wheat out of the rented fiel
ds. They were not farmers, and had no aspirations to be. Alec II had grown up in Rust on a vast wheat farm, but his childhood home had long since been destroyed by the weather. Growing up on a farm though had not instilled in him the driving need to be a farmer, and the mere idea of trying to maintain a farm was not on the agenda of anyone in the family. So they rented out the fields to local farmers who wanted to produce a larger crop beyond what their own fields could contain, making a little money from the rental fees once the season was over, and all they had to do besides take the cash was to sit back and watch the wheat grow.

  Alec personally though that Rust was one of the ugliest places he had ever seen. Actually, he didn't see what was so wonderful about Montana at all. It was a lot of flat, open land with mountains far off in the distance, so far that you could never seem to reach them. It was almost as though they were more the suggestions of mountains than real mountains themselves, unobtainable fictions of the imagination. He had much preferred the slight rolling hills of Georgia, with its more temperate climate and laid back way of life. He missed the hustle and bustle of Atlanta, the rush of it all, the slow pace of a place like this seeming to just drag him down. He’d even have preferred to go back to Colorado Springs, where there were at least things to do on a Saturday night. Their idea of a happening weekend in Rust was a bonfire after the big football game.

  He entered the quiet house and kicked his sneakers off in the front hall, dropping his backpack down on top of them. He didn’t hear anyone, which usually meant that his mother was out and Bryson wasn’t home from school yet. So he was sufficiently surprised when he made his way into the kitchen for a snack, finding his mother situated at the small table in the breakfast nook with a book in one hand a cup of coffee in the other. He tried to make himself scarce, hoping to avoid the usual line of questioning that he got after school, but he had no such luck. He had been spotted, and it was too late now to escape upstairs to his room.