Page 2 of Homecoming

When Lola, and sometimes I, talked, they listened. You could see in their eyes, they were fully following your every word like it was the most important thing they’d hear that day. And I guess, in a way it was.

Especially when Lola was talking.

But I liked that they acted almost the same way about me too. They wanted me at their dinner table every night for the last five years. Once her mother, Mrs. Adams, found me waiting outside a neighbor’s trailer hoping to find food scraps, she lost her mind. Marching over, she threw open the door to our trailer expecting to see my mom in there so she could give her a talking to. Fortunately, or not, depending on how you look at it, she found it empty. And trashed. I was glad Mom was not there that night, I didn’t want the hassle or torment my mom would dish out on Mrs. Adams if she was ‘forced’ to get a telling off from highly-toighty Adamses, as she referred to them.

After that, it was mandatory for me to sit at their dinner table.

So yeah, I didn’t want to leave the Adamses. But especially Lola.

I looked one last time at those steps, wishing she was there, so I could see her one last time.

We had said our goodbyes last night, but it wasn’t enough.

A hand landed on my shoulder giving it a light squeeze, jolting me out of my thoughts.

“Ian, it’s time to go,” a soft, kind voice said, but the heavy words marked my doom.

I didn’t know how this arrangement had come about, or why Mr. Kendrick had pleaded with the judge to agree to it.

Not after what had happened. After what I had done.

“Go,” my Mom spat the word. “I don’t have time for you to be standing here all day, trying to do something we both know you’re incapable of doing. It’s always the same with you. You think you’re better than us, better than anyone. You have all these plans and dreams,” she said those words like they left a bad taste in her mouth. Almost as if having plans and dreams was something to be ashamed of. “But Ian, we both know you’ll just end up here, like the rest of us. If you even stay alive long enough.”

She stood there for a minute longer, looking at me, and I could see hatred seeping into her eyes, hatred for me, for how her life turned out. In the next blink, it was gone, and all that was left was a void that signaled her need for a drink and pills.

“Bye, Mom,” I whispered, my shoulders slumping forward, my head hanging low, and I turned around.

The bang of the door on that trailer that I had called home my whole life was the last thing my mother ever gave me. She was releasing me from the shackles of this place, from having her for a parent, from drifting through days trying to get something done, but failing over and over.

Not the life a sixteen-year-old should be living.

She was done with me for good.

I sealed my fate that night.

Chapter One

Ian

“Check, check,” Kevin’s voice brought me back from my stroll down memory lane.

Fuck. This was the worst time to lose myself in thought. I had to be sharp.

For some reason I couldn’t shake that moment I had walked away from the only parent I ever knew. When I walked away that day, my luck changed.

I didn’t know it then, but Mr. Kendrick ensured I lived a different life than the one I was on the path to back then.

He guided me through all the parol visits and inspections, through mandatory counseling—not that it helped much—and through my community service. I was terrified that he would wake up one day and figure out he was wrong, that he couldn’t vouch for me anymore. I was scared beyond belief I was going to make one wrong move and it would all be yanked away, and I would end up back at that trailer park with no future.

I half-hoped I would be even sent to prison because I deserved it.

But he never did. Instead he got me into every karting race under the sun then one day a call came that changed everything.

I got into a training facility, entered Formula Two, and worked my ass off to get to where I was now.

A Formula One driver.

One of only twenty drivers that got to claim that title.