Everything Changes (2 page)

You would think that we had the overweight guys
who wore holey jeans and wife-beater tank tops with their ass cracks hanging
out, but we were selective about the mechanics.

Parker O’Neil was the shy younger brother who, up
until this year, was a professional dirt bike racer. From what my dad had told
me, they came to Shelton for summer work and so they could ride some of the
toughest trail riding the northwest had to offer in Belfair and
Tahuya
.

Shelton, Washington, a place I call home, was a
small town in the Puget Sound built around logging, farming, and oyster
cultivation. It was also known as the
Christmas
Tree Capital
. Everywhere you looked was thick with dense Evergreen and
Douglas firs. With plentiful rainfall, the ground was soggy most of the time.
When summer came along a cool breeze remained as weather moved in from Pacific
Ocean.

It was kind of funny to me that anyone would
travel to this small town, but I guess it had its appeal just like any city.
Some people thought it was so cool to live where there were hundreds of miles
of trails only thirty minutes away, but just like any town, it had its
drawbacks. It was just a town to me, one I badly wanted out of at times. Just
north of this town, buried deep in the forest, were some of the best dirt bike
trails known to any enthusiast around. Technical, single track mostly, with
steep muddy, sharp, and undefined turns, thick overgrown grass, and roots and
stumps schooled even the adept riders.

I understood why they came here. It was exactly
where any dirt bike rider would want to train for anything technical so they
could get better at that type of riding. Knowing Parker was a Motocross guy, it
was probably right up his alley.

Since Parker arrived he had yet to speak to me
directly, but I did get a lot of smiles from him. One time I got a wink out of
him but never words. It wasn’t like I had never heard him talk; he just never
talked to me.

After a while, it was sort of a mission for
Addy
and me to get him to talk us, but we never succeeded.
Soon, I became obsessed with Parker and why he wouldn’t talk to me.

No more than a few weeks after they arrived,
Justin and Parker began attending Shelton High School with us and became the
topic of our small town, everyone wondering why they were here. From what
Justin said, it was the trails and I could understand that, but it seemed there
was a bigger reason as to why they came here. It didn’t make a lot of sense how
Parker raced professionally and then one day suddenly didn’t.

Gossip and sighing admirers followed Parker
everywhere in school, as did I. I couldn’t help myself. He was amazingly good
looking and kind of intriguing with the way he was so shy.

He wasn’t your stereotypical, obnoxious high
school jock that made it to the big time at a young age. Parker O’Neil was
someone you noticed, no matter how hard you tried not to. Whether you wanted to
admit it or not, he drew you in.

I found myself checking him out when I saw him
the day he arrived in town and then again in school. I was just as much in awe
of his tall, lean figure, tousled chocolate hair, and the mysterious blue eyes
as the next hopeless girl.

As hopeless as I was, I still hadn’t talked to
him as summer was approaching.

May 31, 1997

As the winter progressed and turned to spring, I
was still stalking Parker at school and at work in hopes of actually having a
conversation with him but never did. Day after day, I tried to make excuses to
flirt with him or strike up a conversation, all with failed attempts that left
me feeling more and more like a loser. It was like I was some kind of mental
case any time I was around him, and I forgot how to speak and walk, let alone
my own name. The more that happened, the more I despised being a teenage girl.

I felt like time was my enemy, too, because how
long would someone like Parker stay in this small Northwest town? If I didn’t have
to stay, I wouldn’t have.
 
Shelton had
nothing to offer besides logging or farming. There were people who had good
jobs, but they usually commuted to the larger cities surrounding us like
Olympia or Tacoma.

It was a few weeks before the end of my junior
year.
 
Addy
and
I were messing around in the office before closing up for the night when she
sprung her summer plans upon me and how I initially found myself talking to
Parker O’Neil.

“Do you think your parents would let you go
somewhere this summer?” she asked, filing purchase orders for the week.

Sitting down at my desk, I thumbed through a few
work orders for Saturday’s schedule. “Well let’s see. My mom asked me yesterday
if I’d be graduating college next week, so I’m certain she wouldn’t even know
where I was, and Rick…he might have something to say about that.” I gestured
around to the mountains of paper work surrounding us.

Addy
had an
answer for everything. “What if I found him a replacement for the summer so we
could act like normal seventeen-year-old kids?”

My eyebrow arched in question.
Addy
always had ulterior motives for everything, and she
never exposed the plan until she had you hooked. “Who?”

“My sister…Mia.”

Mia Hanson was not Addy’s sister; she was her
guardian. Addy’s parents couldn’t take care of her when she was younger so her
mom’s best friend obtained custody. Mia cared deeply about
Addy
and her safety, given her rough childhood, but she also encouraged
Addy
to enjoy life. She could basically do what she wanted
and when she wanted as long as she checked in.

“What would make Mia want to sit inside an office
all summer long?”

Mia was a teacher at the elementary school in
town, so she had summers off. Why she would want to work all summer when they
paid her to enjoy her freedom seemed odd to me until
Addy
giggled.

“Ben. Why else?”

Ben Peterson was our new lead mechanic in the
shop who my dad adored, as did Mia apparently.

“Come on, Rowan.”
Addy
brought out the begging and worked those blue eyes to her benefit. “We haven’t
done anything fun beside work here.” Her eyes could persuade even me.

“And what do you suppose we do?” I looked up from
the work order in my hands to her smiling face.

Getting out of this town for the summer was
exactly what I needed. I didn’t have any friends outside of
Addy
,
and with my mom’s memory slipping, it would do me some good to get away from
everything and see what this world had to offer. I needed some
me
time and something more than what I
had here. I guess you had to understand that other than trips to Seattle and
the one trip to Idaho to see my grandparents last summer, I had never left this
sleepy northwest town.

Addy’s eyes dropped, a ringlet of blonde hair
falling into her eyes. “We could go to Moab…”

I knew exactly where this was going. “And would
this have anything to do with Justin going to Moab?”

Her shy smile gave it away. “Gee, I guess that’s
a yes.”

Justin and Parker
lived
for riding. They
both had these Suzuki RM 250 dirt bikes that they were on pretty much every
day. Living in the Northwest where the cloud cover and trees took over, they
had an ample amount of space to tear up the dirt.

Justin looked like a badass, a good looking
badass, with shaggy light brown hair and dreamy blue-gray eyes. He was always
smiling and striking up a conversation with anyone who stopped by the shop and
the complete opposite of Parker.

Addy
was,
without a shred of doubt, in love with Justin O’Neil—even without his
two-stroke. I had a feeling if he asked her to marry him, she would but under
one condition: they rode off into the sunset on his bike.

I wasn’t any better.

Since Parker had arrived, I had frequent dreams
of him doing the same, but Parker barely looked my direction. He never looked
at anyone; he kept his head down while he worked on cars or rode his dirt bike.
For a while, I thought maybe if I threw myself on his bike naked or on the hood
of a car, he’d notice me. Then I thought, “There goes my dignity!”
 
So I decided to keep my clothes and my
dignity.

“So…” I hedged, pulling myself from my dirty
thoughts.

“He and Parker are leaving in two weeks and well,
I can’t go that long without seeing him and I just…”
Addy
sighed and became a version of her enigmatic self.

“Does he know you want to go? Or…is this another
situation like the Backstreet Boys concert last year?”

Addy
slapped the back of my head. “You promised me you would never mention that
again?”

“Sorry.”

My apology seemed to appease her for the moment
as she continued to explain herself. “He invited me…
us
…he invited both
of us.”

I was alarmed for a few reasons. Though
Addy
and I rode dirt bikes frequently, a trip to Moab was
entirely out of our league. Moab, Utah was a frequent playground for some of
the best riders around. We were hardly in the same league as the O’Neil
boys.
 
If it was only Justin and Parker
going, why would they want two girls tagging along?

“What do you mean he invited
me
?” My
thoughts swirled as I tried to imagine the conversation they must have had.
“Did he actually say that or did you...”

“No...” she shook her head with wide, encouraging
eyes “...he said
you
. His exact words were,
‘Would you and Rowan come
with us?’
and then I spit my coffee all over him. It was rather
mortifying.”

“What did he say after that?”

“You mean after I drenched him?”

“Yeah...”

Addy
shrugged, squinting at me. “He smiled and asked for a towel.”

“Did you tell him we’d go?”

The mysterious glint in her eyes told me her
answer.

“
Addy
!” I wanted to
smack her cute little face. “You didn’t think to ask me first?”

“I had to say yes, Rowan.” Her blue eyes pleaded
with me to see her side. “What if they asked someone else?”

“Then someone else would have gone.” It didn’t
seem that hard to comprehend, but I also knew
Addy
was an all or nothing type of girl. When she had something she wanted to do,
she would stop at nothing to get it. A perfect example was when she wanted to
see Backstreet Boys in concert. She basically stalked the radio stations for
tickets and ended up dressing up in a chicken suit to win tickets. It wasn’t
that big of a deal, but
Addy
would love to forget about
the chicken dance she was forced to do in front of two thousand people.

Trying to make
Addy
see
we were in over our heads, I attempted to reason with her. “Listen, I’m not
sure this is such a good idea. I mean we got stuck up in
Tahuya
last week. If you remember correctly, Rick had to ride your bike out. What
makes you think we can bang bars with the boys in Moab?”

Addy
closed
the drawer she’d been filing, and the sound echoed throughout the room. Leaning
against the edge of my desk, she stared at me with her arms crossed over her
chest. “Don’t you want to go?”

Did I?

Yes
, I did. I wanted more than anything to get away
from my obligations here, but with two boys we barely knew outside of stolen
glances and secret stalking? Well, that might not be so great.

I gave
Addy
a shy nod,
and then she went into full planning mode. She tossed her head back and
laughed, bouncing around and scrunching her neck into her shoulders.
Addy
was my exact opposite too
—
happy,
enthusiastic, and outgoing
—
but for some reason we found middle ground and were best friends.

At the time, I couldn’t wrap my mind around us
going away for summer vacation because I had never been allowed to go anywhere
before. From the time I was old enough to understand business, I was working
every summer.

Looking back on the decision to go, I didn’t
regret it. That was the summer my life began in the dry desert of Moab, Utah.

CHAPTER 2

Rowan Jensen

Qualifying

A session, usually one
hour in duration, where riders attempt to set the fastest time. The quickest
riders in the qualifying section start from the best position at the starting
gate.

June 1,
1997

It was Saturday morning, the day after
Addy
divulged her
plan
to me. All I had to do was
convince Rick, my stepfather. Rick was a great guy, but granting freedom wasn’t
his strong suit. He was protective of me, especially with my mom’s
situation.