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  Go Forward Slowly

  Copyright © 2019 by Whitney Cannon

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means – by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without prior written permission, except in the case of the brief quotations embodied in the critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Published by Whitney Cannon

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All products and/or brand names mentioned are registered trademarks of their respective holders/companies.

  First Edition, September 2019

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  More Books by Whitney Cannon

  Chapter 1

  Patton slammed his locker shut after stuffing his sweaty gym clothes inside. Barely a week into the semester and he had been brutally reminded of why PE was his most hated hour of school.

  The first few weeks after returning from summer break were always torture.

  Every class had new faces, new teachers, new seating assignments. It took weeks just to finally remember where he was supposed to be going and when. At least this year he was considered an upperclassman and didn’t have the crappy locker location like he’d had as a freshman and sophomore.

  He spun the lock on his gym locker to reset it and shouldered his backpack, wiping the sweat dripping down his temples with the back of his hand. Summer was still very much in full swing and even though they were in early September, fall didn’t look like it would ever come.

  Bumping along with everyone else trying to get out of the locker room to get to their next class, Patton wondered if that was what cattle felt like as they were prodded along through chutes without any concept of what awaited them at the end of their journey. Only difference was, he knew exactly what awaited him.

  Another two hours of high school hell.

  He was one of the unlucky kids that had somehow been blessed with PE right after lunch. Of course he had been. Why wouldn’t he be? It was like the universe’s cruel way of reminding him that everything he’d just eaten was only going to stick to his hips, and he should try harder to not to be the chubby kid who threw up if he ran too hard.

  He snorted to himself.

  His throat felt raw and he could still taste the bile in his mouth.

  He was convinced PE teachers took a certain kind of sick and twisted enjoyment from the first few weeks of each new school year. Between all the lethargy and grumbling from those who’d done nothing all summer and the beginning of the year baseline testing that forced their juvenile puny muscles to perform inhuman acts of strength and endurance, it had been a miserable first week for everyone except Mr. Dunlap.

  Add in the fact that, yes, Patton had indeed thrown up during the mile run thirty minutes ago, and his day had gone from bad to worse.

  Leaving the locker room and entering the general melee of his peers, Patton tried to push aside the embarrassment of his hellish last hour and stopped at a drinking fountain to rinse his mouth out again to get rid of the taste of his regurgitated lunch.

  “Ugh,” he groaned as some chick knocked into him and continued on her way without even a look in his direction. As much as not being noticed sucked, it was probably for the best. When people looked at him, he always had to see their faces as they took in his appearance.

  It wasn’t like he was huge or anything. At just under six feet he wasn’t short, but he was overweight. And add that to his broad shoulders and shaggy, dirty blond hair that was a week past needing a haircut and even he didn’t love seeing himself in the mirror. Maybe if he had shaved that morning he’d feel a little better, but since his facial hair grew so slowly and came in fairly light, he usually only shaved once every few weeks.

  Whatever.

  He knew the cards he’d been dealt and had accepted his place in life.

  But that didn’t stop him from feeling slightly hurt and bitter about it.

  Only two more hours. Then he could go home and work on his boat.

  He’d only gotten the kit a couple of weeks ago after his sixteenth birthday. Between his birthday money from his mom, dad, and grandparents, plus his savings from babysitting and dog-watching, he’d been able to afford the ten-foot dinghy kit on Chesapeake's website. He hadn’t wanted a party or anything else for his birthday since he had so few real friends—read: none. So all his combined family had splurged a bit on his one big gift.

  And as if he wasn’t dorky or awkward enough, he had to be obsessed with boats. There was just something about them that called to him in an unexplainable way.

  Ever since he was little and his parents, when they’d still been married, had taken him on vacation to Southern California, he’d been consumed with boats. He’d seen so many different types of boats when they’d driven along the coast and past some high-end marinas. There had just been something about all the sails and colors and cool names of the different vessels that he’d just loved.

  His parents had parked their rental car and walked him around the marina, reading all the names of the boats. He remembered the barnacles and buoys, the smell of the briny air, and the small schools of fish in the water around the pilings of the piers.

  Next to the marina had been a cool restaurant. Patton still remembered it. It probably wasn’t anything all that exciting and more likely just a regular nautical-themed restaurant, but he’d begged his parents to go inside for lunch and to his four-year-old eyes, it had been better than Disneyland. He’d eaten a grilled cheese sandwich, french fries, and slurped down his chocolate shake while taking in every detail of that restaurant. The blues and greens of the ocean paintings, the nets and fishing poles adorning the walls, the crab pots and anchors both new and rusted from use, and the first ship in a bottle he’d ever seen. His little mind had literally been blown.

  After they’d eaten, he remembered that off to the side of the restaurant, there had been several little tourist shops and places his mom had dragged him to but once they’d discovered the small enclosed RC boat course where you could pay a fee to rent a remote-controlled boat for five minutes, there’d been no turning back. Patton had no idea how long they’d spent there or how many dollars his parents had wasted on keeping him happy, but the memory of turning that wheel and watching his green-and-white boat maneuver at his will—turning corners, going through tunnels, and almost running aground at the small red-and-white lighthouse—had been a turning point in his life.

  After that, his parents had changed up the rest of their vacation, and they’d spent the rest of their time near the ocean. They’d gone whale watching, rented a paddleboat, and generally hung around anything to do with boats or boating.

  Patton still had the scrapbook on a shelf in his room that his mom had made him after that trip.

  Over the years since then, he’d bee
n taken on many more vacations and seen tons more boats of dozens of different shapes and sizes and even gone on a week-long private chartered sailing trip around the Florida Keys with his dad and stepmom for their one year anniversary a few years ago. But none of his vacations since then had held the same lustrous shine in his memory as that very first one when he was so young and first discovering his passion for boats.

  It was probably a little naïve to think he’d had such great memories of a vacation he’d taken when he was four, but to him, that trip was gold.

  He readjusted the backpack strap digging into his shoulder and finally trudged resignedly into Mrs. Lowman’s English class. He found the same empty seat he’d had the last four days and plopped down, grunting slightly at finally getting off his feet after that stupid mile run in PE.

  The girl ahead of him turned around and glared as she flipped her hair over her shoulder and resumed her conversation with the girl next to her.

  Whatever. They would get over it.

  Pulling out his binder and used copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Patton scanned his notes in his spiral notebook, then flipped to a blank page in the back of his binder. He’d begun to doodle yesterday while listening to Mrs. Lowman drone on about the life and history of Mark Twain, A.K.A. Samuel Clemens, author of “The Great American Novel.”

  In other words—boring.

  His sketch, however, was starting to take shape. It was still a work in progress but seemed to be a figurehead on the bow of an old-time sailing ship. The rough outline of the bow had been the first thing to go on paper yesterday, and as he started in on the figurehead itself, he absentmindedly doodled in the beginnings of a mermaid tail.

  Unfortunately, the bell rang and Mrs. Lowman called the class to attention. With a few more quick lines though, Patton added the beginning details to the fins of his mermaid and then flipped back to his lecture notes and tried to pay attention to his teacher’s monotone voice for the next forty-five minutes.

  Chemistry with Mr. Burbank, however, was beyond hopeless. He had that class with three different people who had also been in his PE class and they all made quite the show of looking at him with varying levels of interest on their faces, ranging from disgust to empathy.

  Nothing to be done about that either. Yeah, he’d puked. Move on already.

  His peers notwithstanding, Chemistry sucked. Patton hated that class almost as much as he hated PE, and that was saying something because he loathed PE. He had absolutely no interest in the subject matter and as his last class of the day, he found it extremely difficult to concentrate. He was definitely going to be filling more than a few pages in his notebook with doodles over the semester.

  When the final bell rang and Friday after school was blessedly upon him, Patton made a quick stop at his locker to gather what he’d need for the weekend and then hastily made his way to his SUV. It wasn’t the best car in the parking lot, but it was pretty good and it got him from point A to point B safely. His mom, Grace, and stepdad, Gary, had told his dad, Tim, and stepmom, Tiffini, that they wanted to take care of getting Patton a car for his birthday as long as Tim and Tiffani agreed to pay for his insurance and since he was also the primary babysitter for all his half-siblings, he’d gotten a pretty sweet deal out of it for hauling his siblings around.

  Gary was a mechanic and had scored the Land Cruiser pretty cheap at an auto auction. He’d fixed it up and upgraded the stereo and nav systems so Patton could do almost anything via Bluetooth. The only downfall to having the car was that two of his seats were permanently occupied by his sisters’ booster seats.

  But, he couldn’t complain. It was nice for him to finally have his license and the freedom that came with it, even if he really had nowhere to go.

  Both sets of parents had happily relinquished afternoon elementary school pick ups and after school childcare to him for the new school year. The one exception being his youngest sister, Tallie, who was only three and needed to be picked up from preschool after the others were picked up from elementary.

  He was lucky in that way he supposed. His parents had still gotten along amicably after their divorce and had both remained living in the same city for easy visitation. He’d spent his time pretty evenly between his mom and dad until his mom had gotten serious with Gary. Then he’d chosen to stay more regularly with his dad. There hadn’t been anything wrong with Gary. Patton had just been old enough to understand that his mom enjoyed time alone with her new boyfriend. So he’d all but moved in with his dad, only staying with his mom and Gary on the weekends. Then Rose had been born and nine-year-old Patton hadn’t wanted to go back, feeling resentful of the new baby and her demands of his mother’s time.

  His parents had allowed him the opportunity to do things at his pace and since his dad had still been single at that point, everything had been cool.

  But then his mom and Gary had gotten married and Tiffani and Taylor had come into his dad’s life. Taylor had only been one at the time, and the product of a failed long-term relationship between Tiffani and her ex, where they’d tried to make things work by having a baby. Needless to say, the problems between Tiffani and her ex had only intensified. But Rose had only been a year old at that point as well and his mom had gotten pregnant again almost immediately after marrying Gary. Patton had gone from having no siblings to having two sisters and another sister on the way in a relatively short amount of time.

  So Patton had stayed with his dad and had been living with him ever since. His dad and Tiffani had gotten married when he was twelve and then Tallie had come along a year later.

  So even though his sisters were at different schools within their city limits, they were all well within driving distance for Patton to pick up and part of the reason he’d had the money to buy his Chesapeake boat kit in the first place.

  He’d been babysitting his sisters for money since he’d turned fourteen. Nothing permanent or too overwhelming. Mostly just the occasional grocery shopping trip or date night for either set of parents and only for a few hours a couple of times a week. But that had changed over the previous summer and he’d been asked to watch his three oldest sisters over the summer break. Tallie had still been too young to be left with a teenager and his dad and Tiffani had chosen to keep her in full-day preschool.

  He’d earned quite a bit of money over the summer and since his mom and Gary had promised him a car and his dad and Tiffani were paying the insurance, he’d been free to save up his cash and buy his first two-seater boat that he would build from scratch. Well, it was technically from a kit, but still. He was going to have to put together all the parts and pieces himself, and he couldn’t wait to get started.

  But, one thing at a time. Sister pick up, preschool pick up, home for snacks, and finally, chill.

  Chapter 2

  Sunday morning was always one of Wesley’s favorite times of the week. The streets were quiet as families either woke late or woke early for church. Since his family had never been much for religion, he found the quiet morning a welcomed reprieve from his busy week.

  Every Sunday he would try to take that time for himself and use the quiet roads to head over to one of his favorite trails. Sleepy Hollow ran a full circle around Legend Lake and was only a few streets over. At one-and-a-half miles, it was the perfect place for trail running.

  Being part of a local cross-country team was one of several things Wesley did in his spare time. Although cross-country usually just ran at parks or on the streets, he liked to change things up and run trails on the weekends or for an added challenge or change of scenery. Running around the lake had become a favorite of his for places to de-stress and just hang out.

  He’d discovered the full loop trail by accident when he’d only been five years old. His mom, Janice, still shuddered at the mention of that incident.

  He’d been out fishing with his dad, Stan, which was one of their favorite things to do together and had wandered off along a trail he’d thought was the correct one after going a b
it too far from their fishing spot to pee in a bush. He’d been too young to really pay attention to his surroundings and had turned down a worn path that he thought would lead him back to his dad, only it had been the wrong path. He’d ended up walking thoughtlessly for far longer than would have taken him to get back to his dad’s side and hadn’t realized how far he’d actually gone, having been far too interested in the new sights and scenery to realize his mistake.

  As coincidence would have it, his dad had also gotten a hit to his fishing line at that same moment and hadn’t noticed his delayed absence either. Wesley had gone over a quarter-mile on his own before anyone had come along.

  Whether fortunate or not, his savior had been old Mr. Muller who lived on Wes’s street and was whispered about by other kids to have been one of the legends of Legend Lake. Though Wesley and his brother, Calvin, had never been exactly certain what the legend was, it had still been enough to ensure they ran past his house every time they went that direction.

  Turns out Mr. Muller had been walking his dog around the lake, which he did every day at precisely five-thirty as he got home from work, and he’d known who Wesley was upon first glance.

  Though Mr. Muller had been pleasant enough and had spoken kindly to five-year-old Wesley, Wes still remembered being terrified of the old man stealing him away on the offer of puppies and ice cream only to end up trapped in a hole in a cornfield and then tossed into a sinkhole inside a safe where no one would ever know what had happened to him as he watched them try to solve his case from heaven— Okay, so maybe the story had changed a bit over the years and had been heavily influenced by the movie The Lovely Bones, but hey, in that story the girl was also killed by her unsuspecting neighbor. So, you know, it could’ve happened.

  Needless to say, it had not happened and Mr. Muller had simply spotted his father and called out to him as he’d begun to call out for Wesley at the same time.