4. Riot
Riot
K atie sat on the edge of the front desk when I reentered the auto shop, her suspicious eyes fixed on something beyond me.
“Oh, my gosh! Was that Nicolette Parker?” she said with interested eyes.
“Who?”I asked, trying to sound uninterested.
“You remember Nicolette Parker. She was in my grade.”Katie pressed her face to the glass door, craning her neck to try to catch another glimpse of the bratty little witch.
“She was always camped out in the broadcast journalism studio. She left right before senior year for some big fancy internship at a TV station in New York.”Katie rolled her eyes, feigning like she was unimpressed.
“I remember her getting busted for smoking weed at the water tower with Chelsea,”said Amber, our accountant, sauntering into the shop.
Katie turned her attention. Good, I was glad she had a partner for the gossip. I knew what it was like to be the subject of small-town chatter and didn’t care to partake.
Part of me had been itching to know who the blonde was since I caught her sleeping in her car this morning. But now that I had confirmation she was, in fact, a reporter, like I had guessed when she walked in here asking for Riot Asher, I wanted even less to do with her.
“I heard she was fired from the TV station for sleeping with her boss,”Amber hissed.“It was a whole big affair, like, ten years ago. The guy was married . Had two little girls at the time.”She turned her nose up.
“How do you know?”Katie prattled on .
“Ladies,”I regarded them.“As much as I would love to hear all about Where Are They Now, I do have some quotes to write up.”I nodded to the desk Katie was sitting on. She gave me a flat expression and hopped off, following Amber into her back office.
“She’s been hosting some video podcasts in Easton. Like,how embarrassing! You used to be on TV.”Amber’s voice drifted off and Katie clucked her tongue.
I flipped on the radio to drown out their scandalmongering before scribbling on the quote sheets.
I don’t know why Nicolette Parker was back in Godot.
But after the barrage of media my brother and I had faced over the past twelve years, I was too cynical to believe it had nothing to do with me.
A knot formed in my stomach, picturing the stubborn way she stomped her foot and the bratty toss of her silky blonde hair.
The two exchanges with Nicolette had been brief, but they left an impression on me.
The only vague memory I have of her from high school is when she interviewed me after a handful of big wins for the morning announcements.
I was pretty cut off from the outside world after I went to prison, so I knew nothing of her career after high school.
My curiosity got the better of me and I pulled out my phone and searched for her name.
The first few articles and videos were all old stories from ten or eleven years ago. Most had been written by her for the former media conglomerate, The Independent American.
Sex Trafficking Suburban Nightmare Exposed
Guess Where the Charitable Donations Really Went
Hedge Fund Manager Dethroned for Embezzlement
Fuck, these were serious exposés. The knot in my stomach grew tighter.
A series of videos with a younger version of her behind a news desk were followed by more recent videos with lower production quality of Nicolette up close. She had hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers, but nothing had been posted in the last few months .
I kept scrolling until I spotted an old article that was from some women’s magazine.
IANN Investigative Journalist Wrongfully Terminated for Misconduct, Predatory Producers Strike Again
I scanned the article. Nicolette had barely turned eighteen when she met Bentley Upton, the VP of the floundering network. He was more than twice her age and the article credited her with the resurgence of ratings the network experienced after giving her feature opportunities.
“I was weak and fell victim to the young woman’s advances,” Upton was quoted admitting. The article tore him apart for the sexist douche he sounded like. My gut wrenched at the last line.
Nicolette Parker was not at fault but paid the price with her career and future.
I groaned internally and the girls’ chattering suddenly took on a different meaning.
Don’t put your guard down now, I reminded myself.
Pulling a hand over my face, I returned to the second page of the search results.
Nicolette Parker Nude Photos Leaked!!
My tempted finger hovered over the link.
“Whatcha doing?”Katie’s voice snapped me out of my vortex. I swiped the browser away.
I leaned back in my chair and tossed my phone down on the desk, raking my hands through my hair.“Finishing up the quotes.”I shook my head and stifled a yawn, noticing her inquisitive expression.“It was an early morning. They have me on groundskeeping at the library for community service.”
Katie put a hand on my shoulder.
“Ry, that’s great.”I winced at the nickname that I’d never cared for. She frowned.“Although I wish it was something a little more public. It’d be good to have people see you out volunteering.”
Volunteering . She had an amazing way of spinning things to make it sound like I wasn’t a convict.
“Maybe I can talk to Jeremy and see if you can switch to helping the church with the annual Field Days coming up—”
“No!”I said, a little too harsh. Guilt struck me for the startled look on her face.“No,”I said, softer.“I like the groundskeeping. I can do a good job with it.”
The idea of being paraded around like some zoo animal on display was bad enough. The thought of it being in front of my mother’s parish was mortifying.
Katie’s gaze was laced with sympathy I found too condescending to appreciate. She ran a hand over my cheek. The physical contact was comforting but my mind flashed to that brief brush of Nicolette’s elbow. The jolt of electricity it sent through my body.
“Riot, you’re going to have to face the church sooner or later. I mean, you see these people every day.”She gestured out the window where the town was bustling.“What’s the difference if you see them all at once under the roof of Redeemer’s?”
I gave her a dark look.“You know it’s not the same.”
She pressed her lips together.“I know it feels that way now. But we’ll give it more time. They need to see you as one of them . And you’ll never be one of them again if you keep avoiding the church.”
Shame and something like irritation ripped through me. I hated this conversation, and it was happening more frequently.
She spun the chair to face me head-on, putting her hands on either side of my face. I closed my eyes at the tender warmth even if it didn’t feel genuine.
“The town needs to stop seeing you for what you did and start seeing the person you could be.”She took her hands back and turned her head.
“I know you think your presence at the church feels... wrong . But eventually, it’s going to be noticed.
People want to believe in you, Riot. I’m doing everything I can, but you’ll need to meet me halfway. ”
My knotted stomach turned to stone. None of that sat well with me but as I looked up into her wide, well-meaning eyes, I reminded myself she was trying to help.
I nodded, which seemed to satisfy her.
“We’ll get there, together. I promise.”She patted my hand and kissed me cordially on the cheek before walking out the front door.
Each minute dragged on for hours the rest of the afternoon. I put a hand over my abs where the knot was growing. I picked my phone up to check the time, and it opened the search results page I had been on.
Nicolette Parker Nude Photos Leaked!!
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious, recalling that light sheen of sweat on her neck that had made her skin glisten.
But for some reason, particularly after Katie’s conversation, it seemed perverse to open Nicolette up to that kind of scrutiny, even if it was just in my head. I closed out the browser.
Besides, the URL was skinflix.me. It would probably give my phone a virus.
When I got home that evening it wasn’t quite six but I was ready to call it a night. I was looking forward to taking a shower, cracking a beer, and going to sleep.
My luck continued to dwindle when a bunch of crashing noises emanated from the storage pod that sat a few yards off our houses. What didn’t get ruined in the fire was ruined putting out the fire and the rest we kept in a storage pod.
“Brennan?”I called out a few feet away, so he’d know I was coming.
He had rifled through almost every box and was sitting on the ground with books and notebooks all around him.
“Wrong,”he muttered, ripping a page out of a Bible in his lap.
“What are you doing?”I asked.
“It’s all wrong,”he repeated scribbling something out. He picked his head up and cackled his signature robotic laugh.“Ha! Ha! Ha! Look at this, Riot. Mom circled this passage.”
He held the book up without looking at me. It was a passage from Genesis. A little heart was scribbled in the corner with my dad’s name, Scotty , inside. My heart twisted at the familiar handwriting .
“Did she really believe she was made from Dad’s rib?” He shook his head in disbelief and took the book back from me.
“What are you doing in here, Brennan?”I asked gently.
“Did you know that there was a rare and powerful microchip built into the Snapmaster 700?”
I furrowed my brow.“The digital camera?”
Brennan had gotten one for his birthday when we were kids.
I remember because he was so excited he wouldn’t open any more presents.
I had asked my mom to get him Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots so we could play later. But he’d spent the rest of the weekend locked in his room, taking photos of his model action figures and posting them to online chat rooms.
He looked up, unblinking.“I was fourteen. It was a Thursday evening, and I had filled the entire memory card with the most wonderful images 1.4 megapixels could take,”he said wistfully.
“Did you find it?”