The Good Race

Chapter Four

As Danny walked away from Ryan Willis and the new girl, it took all his self-control not to turn back around and gawk. Who was that girl to come to his school out of the clear blue and knocked his world off kilter? It was all he could do to shake himself out of his stupor when she spoke. Or more like whispered. Danny had never met a more timid girl in his short seventeen years, and he knew a lot of girls.

Something about Jackie Reilly nagged at him. He remembered her name all right. Anyone who even skimmed the internet or turned on ESPN for five minutes over the summer knew of stock car racing's tragic event. Jackie and Ryan's picture was plastered everywhere you looked. But none of the articles or picture captions mentioned what Jackie and Ryan's relationship was.

Danny walked into his dorm room and tossed his stuff on his bed. His roommate, the same guy he lived with for the last four of his eleven years at this prison, wasn't there yet. Doug wouldn't arrived until the next day, which meant Danny had to go down to storage and get all their shit out and haul it up. He tried to remember if they had cleaned out their little cube refrigerator before they stored it for the summer. He sure as hell hoped so.

Danny decided to change the setup of the room this year, and he was happy to see that the loft bed was already installed. He figured if they moved one bed along the window wall and slid the loft bed next to it, they could set up the flat screen T.V., stereo, fridge and illegal microwave underneath and fit a futon on the opposite wall under the loft bed. He ditched the desks because they never used them anyway. If one of them couldn't concentrate because of noise in the room, the other one just went downstairs to the dorm's common room or over to the library to get work done. It was the way they always functioned, and it worked for them. The futon would be a nice bonus—especially for Doug, since he was the one with a steady girlfriend.

After Danny pushed the one bed up against the wall, he looked out the window. He studied the campus and the activity below and saw Willis with his new sister in front of the main hall. The girl's shoulders were rounded and her arms were crossed. She didn't appear to be looking at anyone in particular, but Willis had his arm around her. Danny thought it sent a pretty clear message to the other guys in Willis' entourage. His sister was not on the market. Was that because she wanted it that way or did Willis not trust his friends?

Unlike the douchebags in Willis' flock, Danny wasn't afraid of Ryan. Jackie Reilly intrigued him. She seemed shy, almost scared of the world around her. Why was that? Was her father abusive? Is that why she wouldn't meet Danny's eyes? Did she lead a sheltered life? Or maybe she thought she was too good for a guy like Danny. His father was a naval commander, who didn't make too much money, but Danny had been left his mother's fortune when she died shortly after he was born.

His father was a pretty cold man. Danny didn't know if that was because he was so affected by his mother's death and maybe blamed Danny for it or if he was just emotionally unavailable by nature. They didn't speak to each other at all. The commander had hired a full-time caretaker for Danny, who basically raised him until he was six years old. When Danny turned seven, he was enrolled in Trent Academy. During summer breaks, Danny spent the entire time in camp. He didn't go home for holidays, and he rarely saw his old man. They didn't speak on the telephone. They only emailed now if it was absolutely necessary to communicate.

Danny resented the hell out of the old man. How was it that he could treat his own son this way? His mother's family hadn't shown any particular interest in him. They disapproved of her relationship with someone with a distasteful military job. As far as Danny knew, his father didn't have any family to speak of and was frequently deployed. Danny assumed his father worked it that way so he would have the excuse to not have to be available to his son in any way.