Page 39 of The Legend

“That is along story and I assure you it wasn’t entirelymyfault.”

Van walkedinto the house and stopped when he saw us standing in the family room staringat Casten.

Van gave anod in the direction of the backyard. “How often do you guys swim in thatpool?”

We lookedin the backyard at the same time to see that my now found GTO.

Castensmiled and patted my back. “Ah yes, right where I left it last night. Phew.” Heswiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “I was worried I misplacedit.”

Believe mewhen I say that my rage was boiling by that point.

“How didit get in the pool?”

“Ran outof gas when I tried to jump it over the pool?” He asked this as if it was afucking question and then when my eyes widened, he tried to run away.

I caughthim by the hood of his sweatshirt before he could escape. “How did the streetcatch on fire?”

“It was abigmisunderstanding.” He gestured outside so we followed him to the back yardwhere the motocross track was. “See,” he flicked his wrist to a smoking pileunder the double jump, “it didn’t go as planned.”

“I thinkit was more than a misunderstanding, Casten.” With my hands on my hips, I hungmy head in shame that my kid had caused this much damage. Our entire backyardwas black and smoking along with the field behind the house and much of theforest.

“It’s notthat bad.”

Sway hadto hold him back behind her when he said that. Spencer laughed and then ran offin the other direction. My eyes focused on Van. “Where were you in all this?”

His eyeswidened in shock. “Me?”

“Yes, you...bodyguard,”

“I was outof town. It was Clint’s turn to watch them but he...well...” Van’s eyes scanned the yard. “I’m not surewhere he is.”

“He’sprobably with Arie, I think. Listen dad,” Casten peeked around Sway’s shoulder,“it wasn’t planned. We had some people over and it got a little out ofcontrol.”

“I gatherthat.” I snapped throwing my arms up. “You better tell me what the fuckhappened here!”

Casten startedcoming clean but surprisingly maintained his composed demeanor. “What’s the bigdeal? Lane wanted to jump through fire. It was a cool idea. We tried to build afire jump. Which we succeeded in doing and it wasawesome. It was a coolidea but we didn’t take into account the fact that the bike could catch on fire...Around the fifth or sixth jump; Willie’s bikecaught a flame or something. I think his carb was leaking gas.” Casten pointedto the field. “He went off into the field and it caught the field on fire. Ipersonally blame our hot summer. If we had some rain sometime we wouldn’t havehad this problem.”

“You’renot really helping yourself.” Van patted his back. Even though Van was ourbodyguard, over the years he had developed a huge soft spot for our kids andLane. Cole, Noah and Charlie were assholes. No one had soft spots for them.

Sway and Iboth looked at him and then noticed Lane and Noah standing beside Spencer. Bothof them resembled zombies.

“JesusCasten, look at this!” Sway raised her voice. Sway hardly ever lost it with thekids. I can actually count the number or occasions that she has gotten angryand yelled at them in a tone that I liked to refer to as the Mama Wizard Wrath.

Taking a deepbreath, Sway shot him a glare. “It wasn’t this bad on the news.”

“Shit,” helooked surprised. “...it made the localnews?”

“How didyou think we found out?”

“I thoughtyou found out this morning when you got home. Now I know it was a plannedexecution.” He looked at Spencer. “How’d it get on the news?”

“Noah.”Lane mumbled leaning against Van’s burly shoulders as support. Van side-eyedhim and then laughed.

Castenlooked at Lane and then Noah.

“Goddamnyou Noah!” Casten shoved him. “I told you not to put that on YouTube.”

Noahchuckled as he gained his footing, “My bad.”

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