Wildman

by J.C. Geiger

Genres: YA Coming of Age

Synopsis

This "thought-provoking, hilarious, eloquent" ( Kirkus Reviews) debut novel by a remarkable new talent explores the relationship between identity and place, marvels at the speed at which a well-planned life can change forever, and asks the question, " How can a total stranger understand you better than the people you've known your entire life?" When Lance's '93 Buick breaks down in the middle of nowhere, he tells himself Don't panic. After all, he's valedictorian of his class. First-chair trumpet player. Scholarship winner. Nothing can stop Lance Hendricks. But the locals don't know that. They don't even know his name. Stuck in a small town, Lance could be anyone: a delinquent, a traveler, a maniac. One of the townies calls him Wildman, and a new world opens up. He's ordering drinks at a roadhouse. Jumping a train. Talking to an intriguing older girl who is asking about his future. And what he really wants. As one day blurs into the next, Lance finds himself drifting farther from home and closer to a girl who makes him feel a way he's never felt before-like himself.

Release date: June 4, 2017

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 334

Sample

The song skipped.

A crackling beat, a brief tremor in the steering wheel—and Lance Hendricks noticed the gap in the music. He knew every last note of Classical Trumpet Ballads, which had been jammed in the cassette player of his ’93 Buick since the unfortunate day his mother gave him the tape. Now it was his only option. No radio this far from the city. He thumbed the useless eject button, then stared at the speedometer. The needle was suddenly frozen, pointing straight up and down, like a compass finding north.

“Hey,” Lance said, tapping the dash.

The needle hovered like a slender middle finger, then went slipping off to the right: 65, 75, 85, gone. A blank face of numbers. Like he was going no speed at all. Sitka spruce and Madrones blurred past. Douglas fir, and the flash of a small sign:

entering wilderness area

Evergreens and sky vaulted into a new layer of atmosphere, and the car’s dome light flickered. A wet grumbling in the engine. Lance turned up the trumpet solo, trying to ignore the sound. He hummed along, forcing himself to smile. The gas pedal went squishy, and the Buick jolted so hard it made his teeth click.

“Hey!” Lance said, pointing at the steering wheel. “No. Not happening.”

Not tonight. Not with six hours left to drive.

When the song skipped again, Lance’s mind skipped with it, launching his thoughts over 370 miles of rivers and roads to Bend, Oregon. It was 3:35 P.M. Right now his friends would be at Jonathan’s house, preparing for the party of a lifetime. Piping vodka into a hollow watermelon. Regulating the hot tub. Fastening Post-it notes to the rooms of vacationing family members. Lance + Miriam, one note would say. It would be their first overnight in a bedroom together.

He considered the factors that had finally qualified him to share a plus sign with Miriam Seavers on a Post-it note equation. Seven years of dedicated trumpet practice. Four years with a 4.0 GPA. The $16,500 scholarship to OSU both she and his mother agreed he should take. All this multiplied by two years together, X hours spent on the phone, Y hours on the sofa in Miriam’s basement. Their rare make-out sessions, like flinching marathons. Under suffocating blankets, the threat of parents’ footsteps, whiplash jerks of the head—

The Buick shuddered. Power steering went gummy.

Miriam!

Attractive and intelligent. Deep somehow. She swore but went to church on Sundays. Her favorite food groups were vegetables and candy. Gentle with animals and children, yet vicious with inanimate objects. Like the way she banged shut the paper drawer of the school’s copy machine. A lean little pivot, then KA-SHINK! with her hip. If Lance was being honest, it was primarily The Hip Bump KA-SHINK! that had sparked his imaginings of the wild, sexual beast lurking just beneath Miriam’s church-girl façade. She was an erotic volcano, just barely holding herself back.

Holding back for going on two years now.

Because there were so many nights, waiting through a three- or four-hour date wanting only to kiss her. Then leaving her front porch or basement, unkissed, to walk calmly around the corner then race blindly into the night. To try running off the fire in his blood, down one block, then another, only to go home, collapse onto his bed, hold his pillow over his face, and scream.

But tonight in the bedroom, floodgates would open. Lives would be changed.

The stereo skipped again and Lance hit the power button. Life Radio was no longer playing trumpet, nor Songs to Lose Your Virginity To. The only station coming in was NEWS RADIO: PANIC EDITION: You are in a twenty-five-year-old Buick, said the DJ in Lance’s head. You are 370 miles from everyone you know and your car has 145,238 miles on it. You will not make it to Bend. You will break down and be barbecued on the side of the road by Uneducated Forest People.

On either side of him, a parade of roadside evergreens, stiff and straight as soldiers. The occasional odd shape, flickering through the pines.

Meth labs! Bigfoot!

Lance rolled down his window, tasting the wind. He breathed deeply, summoning his mantras, centering himself:

You are valedictorian.

You are the first-chair trumpet player.

You have a full-ride scholarship.

Miriam Seavers is in love with you.

The mantras helped. He was The Lance Hendricks Machine. He solved problems with the application of math and clear goal setting. Around the next curve, a blue sign rotated into view.

EXIT 126: BARING, WASHINGTON.

No rectangular logos. No fast food. Stark white symbols of a tent and a gas pump.

Ghost camping. Ghost gas.

Jonathan would’ve been whistling “Dueling Banjos.”

Lance reached over and touched the black hard case of his Wild Thing trumpet, strapped in beside him like a tiny passenger. Miriam had watched as he buckled in the horn the morning he left for Seattle. Probably a mistake, letting her see that.

I feel like you and the Wild Thing are running away together.

He patted the case.

“Don’t worry,” he told his trumpet. “We got this.”

Lance kept one hand on his trumpet case as he steered the Buick toward the exit ramp. A long, gradual climb. The car slowed, sputtered, and died just shy of a stop sign. Lance unfastened his seatbelt and squinted up at irregular blobs of daylight in the metal. Bullet holes.

This stop sign had been murdered.

Lance put his foot on the brake, shifted to park, and took what his mother would’ve called a deep, cleansing breath. But the Buick wasn’t good for deep breathing. Sunbaked upholstery. Stale fries and cigarettes. His father, lingering at the molecular level.

Lance opened the door and climbed out. The air had the familiar nip of wilderness. Tree bark, baking in the sun. The mix of scents and adrenaline conjured his father with uncanny clarity. Over the years, he and his dad had lain on pavement beneath broken-down vehicles in remarkable locations throughout the Northwest. They’d unscrewed hex nuts and replaced fuses in three national wilderness areas, and Lance remembered most of their seven-step engine diagnostics ritual: The Seven Stages of Grief.

Leaning on the Buick, he removed his right shoe.

Lance popped the hood and went to work on the battery terminals first. He whacked them hard with the sole, knocking off corrosion crystals, rotating them around their posts. He pounded the starter next. Then the alternator.

That’s it? he’d asked his dad. You just bang on stuff?

It’s an art form, kid. You’ll never be stranded, so long as you got your shoes.

But when Lance climbed back in and turned the key, the engine gagged, then died. Lance pounded the steering wheel. He cursed and climbed outside, then lay on his back. Cold, pebbled pavement. The breeze cut through his sock. Inching beneath the car, Lance tapped the exhaust line with his fingers. Hot! He jerked back, scraping his knuckle. Bleeding. He cursed again and whacked the gas tank with the rubber heel of his shoe.

Never, he’d once told his father, in the history of time and mechanical troubleshooting, has it ever worked to bang on a car’s gas tank.

But when Lance got back in, the car started.

Dome light blazing, Lance whooped. He punched the sagging fabric ceiling.

“Yes!” he hooted. “Here we go!”

He pressed on the gas and the Buick rolled forward. He would make it, half an hour late with a great story. He could feel Miriam’s arms pulling him close. Taste the creamy perfection of Jonathan’s famous White Russian. The engine popped. Convulsed. The brass treble clef hanging from his rearview mirror rattled, pecking glass. Tickticktickticktick. Lance’s hands strangled the wheel. He could only steer away from the highway and down the hill to whatever was there.

At the bottom of the slope, a stand of pines and a small white building.

Lance shifted to neutral and the steering locked up. The dash, a checkerboard of red and orange emergencies. Gravity threw its weight behind the bumper and Lance had to stand, one foot pumping a squishy brake, his whole body draped over the wheel, grunting as he angled the Buick into a jackknife parking job across all three marked spaces in the parking lot.

According to the marquee, he was now at JOE’S PLACE.

LAST GAS FOR 30

MEAT OAF 5.99

BROASTED CHKN 6.5

MARLIGHT PK 7.88

KEYSONE! 6 PK 12 PK

CLD BEER

CLD SUNDAY

In these parts, CLD meant “closed” and “cold.”

Cobwebs stuffed the building’s eaves like cotton candy, and the nearby gas pumps were museum pieces—boxy, with faded red fishbowl tops. The smell of gasoline, like it was being ladled from open barrels. Clearly, he could not leave his trumpet unattended.

Carrying his case, Lance left his car and opened the door to the service station.

A bell clanged overhead. It made an awful sound, like hitting a tuba with a tack hammer. The man behind the counter glared. A black man. Bearded and frosted up top, like he’d come in from a snowstorm and had never run a hand through his hair. Joe, apparently.

“That your car?” Joe said.

“Yeah.”

“Why do you need three spaces?”

“Sorry. It’s dead or something.”

“Or something,” he said. “Dead’s dead.” Joe looked down at a pile of paper tickets on the counter. He turned one over. Tore off little strips.

“Do you know if there’s a mechanic in town?” Lance’s voice was shaking.

“Ain’t nothing in town,” Joe said. “You’ll be needing a tow.”

“Tow,” he said, tasting the word’s weight. Three letters full of lost time. Lance needed a different answer. His break-glass-in-case-of-emergency solution. The dreaded red lever: A Phone Call to Mom. His phone’s battery would never last. Not the way she talked. He returned to his car, got his charger, and walked back inside.

The bell clanged.

“Damn it,” Joe said to no one in particular.

“Could I plug in my charger?” Lance asked, holding it up. “Is that okay?”

“Plug in by the nachos.” He pointed to a dusty back corner of the store. A giant nacho cheese pump half blocked a single dust-clotted outlet. Hair-curling heat radiated from the box, and Lance held his phone up to keep the cord from melting into cheddar. The odor was a mix of hot plastic and cumin. It smelled good, which meant he was starving.

“Hey hon,” his mother said. “Almost home?”

“The car’s dead.”

Saying the words made it real.

“Dead? Oh my God, Lance. Where are you?”

“Exit 126, I think. In the Wenatchee Wilderness.”

“Wilderness? Lance. Are you kidding me? Is this really happening?”

Lance licked his finger and touched the top of the cheese box. Spit sizzled, hopping around on the surface.

“This is really happening,” Lance said.

“Are you safe? Where are you?”

“A service station,” Lance said. “Joe’s Place.”

“Joe’s Place. Why don’t you get back in the car. Lock the doors.”

“Mom. It’s the middle of the day. I’m not going to be murdered.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I need your help, Mom. That’s why I called.”

His voice went half an octave higher. It had done that since he was a toddler. She had to make this right. This was The Party. The solitary glimmer of hope in a year of windowless study sessions. An evening planned with the care of a shuttle launch. Orbits, accounted for. Equipment, secured. Excuses, made and believed. A miraculous alignment of circumstances.

His mother must fix this.

“I’ve got to get to Jonathan’s tonight,” Lance said, bouncing his right leg. He had the crawlies in his calves and it wasn’t even dark yet.

“I swear, Lance. This little trip of yours.” She tsked. Sighed. The sound of gears turning. “Get back in the car. Promise me you’ll get back in the car immediately.”

“I promise.”

“Right now, Lance.”

“I will.”

They hung up. Lance looked out the window at his Buick and didn’t move. He took out his phone and composed and deleted three separate texts to Jonathan and one to Miriam. He couldn’t send the messages:

breakdown, stranded, stuck

Those words could not apply to him. His mom would make this right.

When his phone rang, she opened with her classic line:

“Okay, Lance. I’ve got this figured out.”

Her words soothed. Lance’s shoulders lowered. Breathing resumed.

“I called you a cab. A train leaves from Bellevue in two hours. Take the six forty-five to Eugene, and I’ll have Dave pick you up. You’ll be at the party by eleven, midnight at the latest.”

“I won’t get back until midnight?” Lance asked, a full octave higher now. He did a frantic half pirouette by the nacho machine and knocked his wrist into metal. A hot pinch. Burning hair. He shrieked and dropped his phone. Crack. He picked it up: tiny lines, spiderwebbing through his screen. Frozen ripples in a pond. He wiped the phone. Licked his finger. Wiped again, grunting. Cracks. Cracks! Permanent!

He made a high eeping noise.

“Lance? Lance! What is wrong with you!”

“You made me drop my phone.”

“Lance.”

“My phone’s broken.”

“We’re still talking, Lance.”

“I’m going to miss the party. I can feel it.”

“Calm down. Just stay in the car. You are in the car, right?”

When they hung up, he gripped the phone and felt its edges. Reassuring angles of glass and steel. What if his phone had died? For the first time, he felt incredibly distant from Bend.

He stood very still.

A familiar sensation, beginning with a spontaneous tingle up the back of his neck. Then a swelling in his chest, and he reached for a napkin. Fished a pen from his pocket. He drew on the soft paper surface, pressing too hard, leaving small gouges, until he had created a blank five-line musical stave. He began to blacken the lines with heads and stems, the first pair of notes in a new composition.

He was humming, scratching out a time signature, still trying to pin the magic to a napkin when the door to Joe’s Place blasted open. That bell. The sound was all wrong, knocking him out of the song. A cool breeze swept through the shop. When Lance looked up at the strange man who had come for him, the rest of his notes blew away.

The man at the door was so bone-thin wiry you could almost hear him jangle in his denim overalls. Blue eyes, wild and burning. Emblazoned on a stained white oval, his first name, last initial: william s.

“Guessin’ it’s you whose momma called. C’mon out.”

Momma.

Outside, clouds had darkened the sky. William stepped in close to Lance, stale cigarettes on his breath. Not his father’s brand. More like tobacco and sawdust soaked in whisky, and the guy’s teeth had a motor-oil sheen, as if he drank the stuff by the glassful. He stared at Lance. One angle, then another, cocking his head like a curious dog.

“You a car guy?” William asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You know a little about cars?”

“A little,” Lance said.

“Knew it! Knew it the second I looked at ya.” William laughed a full, raucous laugh that ricocheted under the eaves. It was a sound too big for his body—a flute of a man who blew like a saxophone. This man in dirty overalls now stood between him and a night with Miriam. William S, asking questions:

What kinda noise did it make?

Did you give it gas?

What happened with the lights? They flicker a little?

It had started to rain. Water dribbled through the gaps in the rafters and they had to keep shuffling around, standing at awkward angles. Together with the dead Buick, they were an isosceles triangle. Acute. Equilateral.

“You think the car’s fixable?” William asked.

“Me?”

“Yeah. What do you think?”

He didn’t know, but William had called him a Car Guy.

“Oh yeah,” Lance said. “I think it’s fixable. Definitely.”

“Good. Yeah, me too,” William said. “Well. I got a garage. Don’t advertise or nothing, but I’d be happy to take a look.”

“Tonight?”

“I can sure try.” William forked over a business card, glossy as an oil painting. And beautiful. It depicted a suspension bridge over a blue ribbon of water. Clusters of trees, clear sky. The back of the card read: Goodview Towing, William Scholz.

Lance checked the name against William’s overalls, then stuck the card in his pocket.

“Wait,” Lance said. “Where were you planning to tow the car?”

“Lady told me to take it to The Boneyard.”

“Boneyard?”

“Junkyard,” William said.

Tires crackled on blacktop, and a green taxi bounced into the parking lot. The creak of brakes. A door popped open and a large man unfolded, stretching skyward, stacking legs, trunk, shoulders, and beard. He wore a rust-colored duster. Rain droplets stained his coat a darker brown.

“You Lance?” the taxi driver said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Meter’s running.”

Lance’s phone vibrated. A text from Miriam.

Hey you. What time are you heading over?

“I have to make a quick call,” Lance said. He stepped under the eaves. Cracked phone and a wet screen. His finger was shaking and would not land on the call button. He tried twice. Three times. And finally:

“Hi there!” his mother said. “Back on the road?”

“What are you doing with the car, Mom?”

“Are you in the taxi, Lance?”

“What’s happening to the Buick?”

Silence.

“A junkyard, Mom? You’re taking the Buick to a junkyard?”

“Did you think I was having it towed to Bend?” she asked. “The tow would cost more than the car.”

A little twist of disdain on the word car, like the Buick didn’t deserve to be called one. William and the driver were facing each other. Rain pattered on their shoulders—taparatataratatap—like distant drums.

“Maybe you can go back up to Washington,” his mother said. “Get it later.”

“How’s that going to happen?”

Water dribbled down through a hole in the roof, tapping his shoulder.

“If I leave the car, I’ll never see it again,” Lance said.

“That’s a little dramatic.”

“It’s true.”

His voice was going reedy.

“They’ll pay you something for the parts.” She sighed. “You can keep the money.”

So that was it. Her angle. His car for a cab ride. His car for a night with Miriam.

“What else are you going to do, Lance?” his mother said. “You’re not going to spend the night in Washington.”

Her words twisted in his stomach. That clammy feeling, like when she’d told him he wouldn’t drive to Seattle. His friends had chimed in: You’re too busy. You won’t go by yourself. You’re afraid of the city.

Yet, he’d gone. He hadn’t been afraid.

Streets teeming with people: so many voices, accents, cultures. His eyes too wide and too small at the same time, straining to peel back the skin of the place and get down to where the notes were humming. He could sense music, quivering along the edges of skyscrapers, cutting long, clean lines against the sky. Solos hiding on street corners. Symphonies in the sewer.

“I’m staying with the car,” he said. Was that him talking?

“You’re staying.”

Worse, hearing her repeat it. With one swift sentence he’d painted himself into a corner, his mother had applied the second coat, and Miriam and the party were on the other side of the room.

“Really, Lance?” His mother laughed. “You’re staying. Miriam is going to love that.”

He could already hear their conversation. His mother’s ripe chuckle. Miriam, giggling. And then he told me he was staying. No, really? He did. He really did. Oh, Lance.

But they’d only laugh if he came home.

“Lance?”

“I’m not leaving Dad’s car.”

Lance launched the D-word. A rocket, dragging a vapor trail through the sky. It pinged off a satellite and rushed over mountains, roads, and streams to land with the precision of a sniper’s bullet in his mother’s ear.

His mom was quiet. Dead, maybe.

“So that’s what this is about,” she said. “Has your father been in touch with you?”

“Seriously, Mom? No.”

“You want to keep the car? Go ahead and stay. I hope you enjoy your night in the wild.”

“I’m at a gas station, Mom. Not the Serengeti.”

His mother hung up. A low ringing, between Lance’s ears. Once, freshman year, his friend Darren had kicked him square in the balls. There had been a swimmy, head-buzzing moment just before his . . .