There's Just Something About a Bad Boy

Readjusting and Remembering

I have never lived in the same place for over a year. In my life, homes are just temporary houses and new schools are stepping stones. Because of this, I keep to myself; avoiding making friendships that I know will never last. It's better this way - keeping to myself means not having to say goodbye when my father's job inevitably pulls us to a new city. This has been my routine for all sixteen years of my life, but that is about to change. 

This time we are moving back to a city we have been to before - Jacksonville, Florida. When we lived here the first time, my brother was a freshman in high school and I was still in middle school, and now we are starting our senior and junior years. He is ecstatic when dad tells us the news - and I am happy for him, he still has old friends in Florida, but because of my habits I will be starting fresh once again.

Despite being used to the routine of slipping into classes days - even weeks, behind the original start date, it is still not fun being the new girl a week and a half into the fall semester. That's what is happening this year - apparently Florida high school starts earlier than the western states.My brother, Kade, and I have never been close - he is into cars and girls and I, on the other hand, stay more in the shadows, learning from his mistakes and observing how not to get caught. I still have fun, I am just more private about it - Kade, however, has always been popular, it is like he is magnetic - people are just drawn to him. I am sure that also has something to do with the fact that he is 6'5 and has managed to steal all of the good genes out of the pool - leaving me with a short, scrawny figure and musky brown hair in comparison to his perfectly styled, dark hair and muscular features.

I don't remember Kade's old friends from Florida, despite how much I dig at my memory trying to at least come up with one face, but there are too many to keep up. At some point all of the people Kade has been and is still friends with blur together into a mush of faces that I can't decipher even if I try. Even him adding the names Cole, Cody, Zach and David into the mix doesn't ring a bell. He insists that I should have remembered them since they were "over at the house literally all of the time", and is disappointed when I still look at him with no recognition of these people.

"Well, that's okay, you will get reacquainted with them soon enough," Kade says after bringing up the fact that I should remember them for the hundredth time. We have been in the car for damn near an entire day and I swear he has brought it up at least once every half hour. 

"Yeah, yeah whatever. How far out are we anyways?" I ask him with an eye roll. I have chosen to ride with Kade instead of squeezing into the rental truck with my parents - a good choice based off of how queasy my mother looked the last time we stopped for a rest area.

"Bout an hour," he says after checking the map pulled up on his phone. I nod at him, content to return to the comfortable silence we have found in between Kade's outbursts about my memory, but he continues. "Kayla, I kind of need to tell you something about living in Florida."I side-eye him, but remain silent and wait for him to continue.

"Well, you see - I'm kind of the leader of a car group down here," my jaw drops, but he continues before I can butt in "and the guys I keep talking about are the members of my group. The last time we lived here, I was in training for leadership, but now that we're moving back I get to actually use that training."

"What the fuck does 'leader of a car group' even mean?" I ask fully turning to where I can glare at him from across the center console.

"It means that I lead a group of guys that illegally street race," Kade says matter-of-factly. I sit in bewilderment for a minute. My brother has done some crazy shit over the years, but this would be a-whole-nother level of insanity for him. The pieces begin to click together in my head - the late nights, the girls, the fucking sports car that I am currently sitting in.