Chapter 12
Jett
It turns out that you don’t always get to keep a giant check after it’s presented to you for the cameras. That's okay, because the real fifty thousand dollars is deposited electronically, but it would have been cool to bring that huge plastic check home.
And the important part here is that I won the money.
My muscles ache in places they haven’t hurt in a while, and I’m not sure I still have the endurance to do it again next week, but luckily I don’t have to.
This was a one-time thing and I can’t wait to get back home with my huge pile of money—well, digital money since again, they didn’t let me keep the check—and share it with my family.
I debate calling Keanna and telling her or just keeping it a secret, but then as the team and I walk out of the greenroom after the races, and cameras flash in my face and reporters call my name, I realize there’s no way I can keep this a secret from her.
Someone has probably texted her already with the news of the race results.
I answer some questions on camera, take a few photos, and then tell the guys of Team Loco that I have an early flight to catch so I need to skip going out to dinner with them.
Technically, there’s plenty of time for dinner, but I’d rather FaceTime Keanna and Harper while lying on my hotel bed with the air conditioning on full blast.
I take an Uber to the airport at six in the morning. I am somehow exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. Three days of racing was a lot, physically, but I am so pumped to have this extra cash. We still haven’t received a dime from the insurance money, so this will help.
The flight is short and easy, and soon I’m grabbing my suitcase off the conveyor belt and walking toward the exit.
I scan the line of cars for Dad’s truck.
When I don’t see it, I look again for Park’s truck.
Confused, and hoping they didn’t forget about me, I look slower down the long line of cars waiting to pick up passengers.
Then I see Keanna’s car. What the hell?
I jog over and she steps out of the car, a big smile on her face. “Hi babe!”
”What are you doing here?” I ask, kissing her quickly while loading my suitcase in the trunk.
She puts her hands on her hips. “What? You’re not happy to see me?”
”Of course I’m happy to see you, but you didn’t have to drive all the way out here. My dad’s usually the one to do that.”
She shrugs. “I missed you a lot and I begged to come get you. Trust me, your dad did not like it one bit.” She laughs.
I hug her quickly then jump into the driver’s seat so no one honks at us for taking too long.
“Bad news,” she says, buckling her seatbelt and kicking back with her feet on the dash. “I’ve already found a way to spend allllll that money you won us.”
I laugh. “How’s that?”
”I added a bunch of household stuff to my online wish list last night. Just for fun, ya know? Some stuff I want but most of it is stuff we need, and then before I knew it, the total was already over fifty thousand dollars.” She blows a raspberry with her lips. “Stuff is expensive.”
”We’ll get everything back,” I say. “Eventually.”
There’s no place like home after a trip, and I don’t really have my “home” anymore, but pulling into the driveway of my childhood home still feels pretty good. That is until we walk inside and hear a loud commotion.
”What’s going on?” I ask. No one hears me.
Harper is crying, Brooke is talking a mile a minute, and my mom is freaking out.
Arko? He’s laying on the floor in the living room with the guiltiest look on his face.
We find them in the kitchen. Keanna sees the problem before I do because she gasps. “Oh my gosh!”
I follow her gaze to the back door, which is wide open, with a giant hole where the glass window used to be.
A million little shards of glass litter the file floor like glitter, and Harper is standing in the middle of it, crying her eyes out.
”Honey, are you hurt?” I rush over to her, crunching over the glass. Unlike the kids, I’m wearing shoes so I’m not concerned.
She shakes her head and cries harder.
”Brooke? You good?”
She nods.
Across the room, Mom struggles with trying to pull off the attached dustpan from the broomstick.
“Mom, let me have it.” I unhook the dustpan and start sweeping. “What happened in here?”
Keanna sighs. “I think I know what happened.”
Mom gives us a look. “It was an accident.”
I know my mom well enough to know she’s trying her hardest to be cool about all of this, but deep down she’s pissed.
”Mom said we can take Arko outside for a walk and when Harper tried to put his leash on him, he got so excited he ran to the back door and broke the glass.”
”Is the dog okay?” Keanna says, running into the other room. She comes back a few moments later. “His paws are fine. I’m surprised with all this glass, no one got hurt.”
”It’s tempered glass,” I say, sweeping up another pile and tossing it into the trash can. “It’s a little better than regular glass, but it’s still sharp so you girls be careful.”
I get it all cleaned up and the girls take Arko outside to play.
They call it a walk, but I only allow them to walk around the back yard with his leash on because they’re too young to be on the street by themselves.
I don’t care how small our town is, and how few cars drive down our street, that’s not a risk I’m going to take.
“Mom, we’ll pay to fix this.”
She nods. “I know you will. What do we do about it, tonight? Jace is next door and I don’t want to bother him with it.”
”I got it.”
There’s some old plywood in the garage. I take some measurements and cut it to the size of the window that used to cover half the back door. It’s ugly, but keeps the outside from getting inside for now. Keanna looks up glass companies and schedules someone to come out tomorrow to fix it.
“Eight hundred dollars,” she says.
I groan. “Dogs are expensive.”
”We need our own house,” she says. “I’d rather Arko destroy our stuff than your parents’ stuff. I feel terrible.”
”Yeah, I agree. Any new rentals yet?”
”There’s one but it doesn’t look that good from the pictures. And the houses always seem to look worse in real life so this isn’t promising.”
”Let’s look at it anyway,” I say. “You never know. Maybe it’ll be great.”
Spoiler: it is not great.
This rental house is somehow worse than all the previous rental houses, except maybe the one that smelled terrible.
Our families go out to dinner after work at one of my favorite restaurants.
They have a lot of outdoor seating, a big children’s play area, and they’re dog friendly.
Arko lays patiently at my feet like a very good boy and I sneak him a bite of my fries every so often.
Keanna catches up our parents on the rental house saga and how nothing has been good enough yet.
“What about getting an RV?” her dad says. “You could set it up in our back yard with electricity and water.”
”That doesn’t solve the fence problem,” Keanna says.
”True.”
“But they have temporary outdoor kennel runs,” Park says. “Like long fencing you can put up for the dog to run in.”
”Would we be able to do that on your property?” she asks.
He shrugs, looking at his wife, Becca. “I don’t see why not?”
”Fine with me,” Becca says.
“Cool.” Keanna looks at me. “Should we look into RVs?”
”It can’t hurt to look.”
She smiles. “Let’s do it.”