Wild Reckless (Harper Boys #1)(17)
“I see that,” my dad says, kicking one of the crushed cans over into the Harper lawn. “But why am I dealing with the leftovers?”
“I don’t really know. I think it’s the basketball hoop,” I say, looking over my dad’s head at the rusted hoop and rotting wood backboard hung above our garage.
“I see,” my dad says, his hand rubbing the beard on his chin as he steps closer to the front of our garage. “This neighbor…the one that likes the hoop—is it a he?”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice a little hesitant, causing my dad to turn and look at me. “I mean, girls don’t really do this.”
“No…they don’t, do they?” my father responds, turning back to face the hoop. Almost a full minute passes, and I begin cleaning up the mess until I’m distracted by the sound of our garage door opening. My father slides out a ladder, and then goes to a stack of boxes in the back of the garage, searching through three of them before finding what looks like a ratchet set.
He brings the slender toolbox out to the driveway and picks out three or four sizes, then climbs to the top of the ladder, reaching up to loosen the bolts on the basketball hoop.
He’s taking it down. I think I knew he would, and I know deep down that’s why I told him—why I said everything just as I said it. It was all a delicate game of chess that I mastered for this very moment. Only I didn’t expect to feel nervous that Owen would come home suddenly. Worried that we would be caught.
And I certainly didn’t expect to feel regret.
That’s the emotion tripping me up most. Regret—is that even an emotion? Or is it just a result? I’m not sure, but I know my stomach is sick with it as my father finds the perfect fit, his arm pulling one side of the hoop loose from the backboard while he goes to work on the last bolt, the ache in my stomach traveling to my chest when the rusted ring finally falls to the ground. My dad steps from the ladder, folds it back up and puts it in its place along the garage wall. Then he picks up the hoop, carries it to the end of our driveway and throws it on top of the morning’s trash. In the morning, the garbage truck will haul it away forever.
“Pick up the rest of this mess,” he says, not bothering to look my way, instead pulling his phone from his pocket to answer a call—probably from my mother—the back door slamming to a close behind him.
It takes me nearly an hour to gather the rest of the debris in our driveway, and I pick up the can my father kicked onto the Harper lawn, the bottoms of my sweatpants getting soaked from the frosty dew covering their long grass. It looks like it hasn’t been mowed in weeks, though it will be dead and covered in snow soon, so I suppose there’s no reason.
Our lawn is small—most of our front yard made of small plants, wood bark, and bricked walkway. The rest is just a long driveway—Owen’s basketball court.
The air is growing frostier, and my breath comes out in a thick fog as I drag the heavy bag of trash to our can near the street. I flip the lid over and hoist the bag up, stopping it right on the edge, pausing to look at the large metal ring weighing down everything inside. The paint is worn from most of it, and at least two of the bolts look to be stripped. It’s trash, and it has no business hanging on my house. No one in our family will ever throw a ball through it.
But Owen will. He did. And he will again.
Only, now he won’t.
“Damn it!” I yell, my voice echoing in the emptiness of our quiet neighborhood street. I kick the bottom of the large, black, plastic canister, then I pull the bag from the edge and drop it to the ground. I have to stand on one of the can wheels to reach the hoop inside, and its brackets make it heavy and hard to bring back over the edge, but I manage to. I slide it down the side of the can, leaning it against the can while I throw my trash inside and shut the lid.
Holding my breath, I take a few steps closer to my house, looking to see if my father is still inside, still talking to my mom on the phone, but the lights are all off. It’s quiet, and I’m pretty sure he’s gone to bed. The metal is heavy, but I’m able to loop my arms inside the hoop and carry it to the garage that my father left open. I put his tools away first, knowing he probably won’t need them again for quite some time, if ever. He isn’t really handy; he’s more the type of man who likes to be prepared. Then, I slide the hoop behind the stack of boxes to keep it safe.
I’m saving it. I just saved Owen Harper’s basketball hoop. No…I saved my hoop, at my new home—the hoop Owen Harper uses, at my new home. And I have no idea why he uses it, why he steps foot night after night on my driveway, below my window. I have no clue why he pushes my buttons, or why I let him.
I saved his hoop, and I don’t really know why I did it. But I had to.
Goddamn it. I had to.
Chapter 6
I spend the rest of my weekend practicing until my mom gets home, going into quiet mode when she needs to catch up on sleep. When she wakes on Sunday, we find the box labeled BLANKETS and make a large bowl of popcorn, settling in for a binge on home improvement shows. My mom has these fantasies of home construction…not necessarily building a home from scratch, but taking a sledgehammer to something—something like a wall.
She would be good at it. I could even see her having her own show—Home Surgery with Karen Worth. She did a lot of painting in our row home in the city. She’d change entire rooms on her week off, even if they didn’t need new paint. She always said she was addicted to change, but I kind of think change terrifies her, and making those small changes, the superficial kinds, was her way of being brave.