There was no doubt about it, Taggart McGill was the bane of my existence.

The thought popped into my head out of the blue while I was sitting in my car parked just outside school. I shifted in my seat car and tried to push the thought from my mind. Turning my head towards the open window I could feel the ocean breeze gently flowing through our small town of New Haven and across the school parking lot. The moist air lifted the hair off my shoulders and to a lesser degree my spirits. Our high school was a short four miles from the Georgia coast, and it was a rare day when a light wind didn’t blow across campus, keeping temperatures bearable even during the most trying heat waves, like today’s. At that moment, it was keeping my irritation under control, barely.

I wondered where the expression bane of existence came from, so I looked it up on my phone. The first definition I came across said it was a person or thing who was a constant irritant or source of misery, and the phrase first appeared in print in the 1590’s. However old it was, the meaning certainly fit Taggert to a tee.

I’d never given much thought to which of the seven heavenly virtues I exhibited most, but the one I struggled with was easy to pick out…patience. I had very little. Especially when forced to wait around because of other people’s poor planning. I wasn’t good at it. I tended to sulk and think non-productive thoughts. Not a good quality—but the truth I’m ashamed to admit. Take this afternoon for example. I could be on my way with my girlfriend, Delta, to watch my boyfriend, Jason, play football, and then afterwards, all of us would head to the shore for a post-game bonfire. Instead, here I was sitting in the school parking lot waiting for my younger sister, Becca. And why was that?

Taggart Friggin’ McGill.

Bane. Existence.

An unproductive thought if there ever was one.

How could he not be? I could trace almost every negative event in my life back to him. It was almost as if the jerk bag was put on this earth for the sole purpose of making my life miserable. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t said a dozen words to him in the last fourteen years.

If I was being technical about it, I was waiting on Becca because her own car was in the shop getting its transmission rebuilt. But the reason it was in the shop was because of all the added miles her already suspect transmission was forced to absorb driving Taggart everywhere – since his own car had broken down and the loser didn’t have money to fix it. It was during one of Taggart’s useless errands that the transmission finally gave out. With Becca without a car, it became my responsibility as the “older sister” to take her to and from school, as well as any of her recitals when Mom or Dad were tied up, which I had a feeling would be all of them. It didn’t matter that I might have had plans of my own. Oh no… I was the older sister and it fell to me to take care of my younger sibling.

Sure, life could be unfair sometimes, but to me, it sure seemed that fairness tended to skew towards little sisters.

I glanced at my phone again, still nothing from my best friend, Delta. That was something else contributing to my sour mood. She had become more and more distant since she began going out with Jason’s best friend, Kevin Steuer, or Stooch as everyone called him. Strictly speaking, the cold shoulder started after I tried to talk her out of dating him. She didn’t take that so well and our relationship had been going downhill ever since. Sadly, it looked like we may have bottomed out. Jason, Stooch, and the others we usually hung out with were at an away game up the coast and their respective girlfriends, except me of course, followed them. Delta would normally be making my phone sound like it was receiving Morse code from her constant texts, but not today. I sighed as I laid my phone down on the seat beside me.

I guessed I shouldn’t have been surprised. Delta rarely listened to any of the advice I gave her. Maybe I should have suggested she and Stooch hook up. That would have guaranteed she’d stay away from him.

As much as I moaned about not being able to go with them, it wasn’t like I had been looking forward to the game or spending time at the beach house anyway. Well, maybe a little. I enjoyed the beach and was sure that good times would happen, but I really needed to start thinking long-term and figure out how I was going to handle my own situation with Jason.

We had both been freshman when we first started going out. I was a wide-eyed dweeb who’d spent most of the time with my head stuck in books, and Jason was putting a twinkle in all the coaches’ eyes with his natural athleticism. For me to start dating him was the equivalent of a minor-league baseball player moving up to the majors, thrilling… but scary. I wondered sometimes what it was that had caused Jason to set his sights on an awkward library rat like me. It wasn’t long before he’d bloomed into an all-star athlete. By the start of our senior year, he was the all-conference quarterback and captain of the basketball team. With that came popularity, something I’ve always struggled with. I began noticing more and more how my priorities were so different than a lot of the kids in our circle, particularly Stooch. The older Stooch got, the more and more of a tool he could be, and the more Jason had to defend him.

Things had recently shifted between Jason and me, and I’d kept putting off the inevitable. Change was hard. This weekend I planned to spend some quality time with Delta to try to shore up our friendship and at the same time make some decisions about Jason and me. Of course, that wasn’t going to happen now.

“Come on,” I said aloud, slapping my hand against the steering wheel, my impatience beginning to boil over. After my last class, I wasted some time by running into town to get a coffee, but once I was back in the school parking lot, I busied myself by listening to tunes and playing some stupid game on my phone since Delta was refusing to answer any of my texts.

School had let out fifteen minutes ago, and I was still waiting.

Patience was so not me.

Taggart. Frickin. McGill.

Bane.

Both of the back-seat doors flew open, startling me. A light-blue backpack landed on the rear right-side seat and the door slammed shut. Someone climbed into the seat behind me and closed the door. Then the front passenger side door opened and Becca plopped down into the seat, smiling like a Cheshire cat.

“Hey, Sis. Sorry for the wait.”

Looking at my sister was like staring into a mirror, except for the clothes and the smile. Even though Becca was eleven months younger than me, she could easily be confused as my twin. She was the same height and weight as me, same auburn hair worn the same way, same hazel eyes and snub nose we’d inherited from our mother.

Ignoring my sister, I swiveled around in my seat and looked into the back. The boy sitting behind me stared back through long shaggy hair. If I was being completely honest, Taggart could be considered… in a scruffy Ian Somerhalder of The Vampire Diaries sort of way… cute. He gave off that type of vibe, rough around the edges with shoulder length brown hair that probably never saw a comb, frequently wearing the same disheveled clothes to school for days in a row, with his shoulders always slouched and his head down. Looking closer I saw his dimpled chin and dark eyes were outlined by a white cord attached to a pair of earbuds in his ears, dangling down the front of his shirt and disappearing into his pocket. The expression on his face was blank, unreadable.

“Oh, hell NO!” I exclaimed, facing my sister.

“Come on, Cassie,” Becca said, her smile changing into one of concern. “He doesn’t have any other way home.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“I’ll get out,” came a barely audible voice from the back seat, followed by the opening of the door.

“Taggart, don’t,” Becca commanded, which seemed to freeze the boy in his tracks. Turning back to me she pleaded, “Cassie, how will he get home?”

“He can walk for all I care, or maybe he can get one of the Wilsons to come get him.”

“Cassie, you know neither of the Wilsons can drive anymore, and it’s a five-mile walk from here. Please, have a heart.”

I placed both of my hands on the steering wheel and stared out the front window, the anger rising off me like heat from the blacktop.

Becca reached out her hand and laid it on my arm. “Cassie, he’s my friend.”

I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs…WHY? Why are you his friend? After everything he’s done and the reputation he’s earned, why are you letting yourself be dragged down with him? Why? Why? Why!

But I didn’t. No matter how I frustrated my sister’s relationship with Taggart made me feel, I could never stay upset with her for long. So instead, I sighed and said, “Close the door.”

When I heard the door close behind me, I pushed in the clutch and started the car.

“Seatbelt,” I said robotically.

My Subaru Baja roared to life. I loved my car. The moment I’d set eyes on the beach-friendly beauty I knew I had to have her, even though it was $3,000 dollars above the budget my father had given me. But when I made my mind up about something… that was it.

I turned the Subaru out of the parking lot and headed south down Fairview Lane. Though it was in the lower nineties, well within giving thought to turning on the A/C, both Becca and I had our windows rolled down to allow the wind to whip our hair. I glanced into the rear-view mirror and although I couldn’t see Taggart’s face, I could see the tips of his hair as it was caught by the fast moving current of air.

Fairview Lane ended when it ran into the intersection at Bryant-Lynn Expressway, so I turned right and headed for home. As I accelerated past my normal 5-6 miles over the speed limit, Becca swiveled around in her seat and began talking to Taggart.

“I heard Mr. Mallard had a meltdown with Jimmy Franklin this afternoon,” she said.

Mr. Mallard was the school’s American History teacher – and Jimmy Franklin, well, let’s just say academics wasn’t one of his strong points.

All I could hear from the backseat was a grunt.

“How bad was it, really?” Becca asked.

“I wasn’t paying attention,” Taggart answered reluctantly.

“Oh, come on. I heard Mallard’s face turned red.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

That’s the way the rest of the conversation went, Becca needling Taggart for details that he wasn’t interested in coughing up. Typical.

A short distance out of town, the scenery changed as the number of houses decreased, the size of the lots increased from feet to acres, and the trees returned. A half mile ahead, the gate was down and lights were flashing at the railroad crossing for the Amtrak train that ran along the coast from Washington DC to Boca Raton, Florida. I shifted the Subaru into neutral and allowed the car to coast all the way up to the white painted lines, then stopped. There were no other cars waiting on our side of the tracks, but two were already waiting on the other side.

The patch of road in front of the security gate was flat, so I left the car in neutral and removed my feet from the pedals, taking the opportunity to stretch and relax. I looked over at my sister, who was staring back at me with the same Cheshire cat smile she had before.

“You look like you’ve got a Mexican jumping bean rammed up your butt. What gives?” I asked.

“I got in.”

It took me a few moments to register what she meant, then it came flooding back to me in a rush.

“Perlman?”

As wide as Becca’s smile was before, it now threatened to break the boundaries of her face.

“Perlman.”

“Oh my god -- Becca!”

Itzhak Perlman was a violin virtuoso who’d been welcoming gifted students of the violin, viola, cello, and bass into an exclusive musical community since 1994. They chose approximately 40 musicians from around the world each year, ages 12-18, to attend a seven-week summer program on a beautiful waterfront campus on Shelter Island, New York. Becca, who had a very special talent on the violin, had been applying to the workshop since she was 12.

“I know, right,” Becca said.

“That is so awesome. When did you find out?

“Mom texted me during school. Turns out, she’s been opening the letters for years and sealing them back for me to open later. She totally has no self-control.”

“Can’t say that I blame her, given the mind-meld the two of you have about music. Seven weeks in New York. I’m so jealous.”

A blaring horn from the approaching train interrupted our conversation.

“You know what this means, right?” Becca asked.

“What?”

“A hardcore weekend of shopping. I don’t have anything to wear for New York.”

“You don’t have to dress-up for those thick-skinned, self-absorbed transplants. Your music says enough,” came Taggart’s soft voice from the back of the car.

Becca looked toward Taggart, who I could see in my rear-view mirror looking out the side window. She mimicked his pouty face. “Someone isn’t as happy about this as the rest of us.”

“No surprise there,” I said under my breath.

Becca was about to say something else when her eyes suddenly grew big and she started fumbling for the seat belt release.

“CASSIE!”

The impact came from the rear, violently forcing me back into my seat and propelling the car forward, crashing through the crossing gate before eventually coming to rest. At first I was dazed, then anger surged through me. Who had rammed us? There hadn’t even been screeching brakes, giving us at least a little warning. When I had time to look around, the blood froze in my veins.

We were sitting on the train tracks.

A blaring train whistle pulled my attention to the impossible sight of my sister Becca, holding a hand against her forehead and looking bewildered, framed against a train bearing down on us.