The Legend (78 page)

A couple
years later, someone said something along the lines of me stealing a car and my
mom got right in their face and said, “He’s eight. He wouldn’t steal a car!”

Little did
she know I actually stole two to be exact when I was six and rearranged a
handful of
them.
I
always
returned them though.
I thought for sure if I at least returned them, it would keep me out of jail.

I moved on
from beer stealing and carjacking around ten and got into things like
persuasion. You’d be amazed what you can convince people to do when you have
chubby cheeks, bright green eyes and dark lashes to bat at them. As I said,
this worked well for me.

I lied a
lot but what kid didn’t? I hit my siblings, I got grounded, earned myself a few
spankings when warranted for the larger mishaps when someone got hurt
unintentionally and I don’t know how many times I heard the words, “I told you
so,” from both my parents and my grandparents.

But still,
I wouldn’t change any of it.

My parents
were cool; I’d never tell them that. They let us be kids and have normalness
even when we didn’t.

Mom made
us focus on school, even when we didn’t want to. Between Arie, Lexi, Cole, the
twins, and me we had quite the team against them. School was their way of
getting some time away from us probably. Axel and Lane were in on it most of
the time but they were different from us. They were more involved in racing
than we all cared to be. Though we loved to be around the local tracks, we
enjoyed the people more than the racing itself.

Aside from
Axel, Arie and I attended public school, as did the rest of our cousins. Got
suspended a time or two and were just normal kids and even played sports.

We just
played the types of sports that involved a motor. I learned a lot by being at
the tracks and growing up around racers. They were all entertaining to me and
the idolizing fans provided loads of ammunition for torturing them.

As I got
older, my focus shifted slightly from entertaining myself to girls.

What boy
didn’t shift focus to the opposite sex though?

Even my
brother who rarely found time for anything other than racing was interested in
them. Cole and I found great entertainment in catching him and Lily making out.
We learned a lot about girls between him and Lane. We probably would have
learned from Charlie and Noah as well but they were honestly too stupid to
understand the opposite sex (unless it had an engine, they were dumbfounded).

Some
thought I was some sort of player once I got into high school since I had a few
regular girls but never any committed relationship. But if you actually asked
those girls I was with, they wouldn’t say that. I treated them all with the
respect they deserved.

I lost my
virginity in Knoxville when I was fourteen to a girl Willie hooked me up with.
It may seem young but I was
very
eager to experience the whole sex thing
after hearing my cousins and brother talk about how enjoyable it was. Jenny,
the girl I was with, was sixteen and experienced. I was not. But she was
patient and taught me a lot about women in general.

I never
told my parents about Jenny as I only saw her if we were in Knoxville but any
time I was there, she was the first person I called.

When I got
into high school, that’s when the girls congregated to me. I never had to tell
them who my dad was or use my family name but I never would have anyway. If a
girl was into me simply because my dad was Jameson Riley, then she wasn’t worth
it. She wasn’t in it for me and in turn, that wasn’t a good deal for me.

I’m sure
all of them knew who I was, but I didn’t need the name to get their attention.
I knew what they like since I was so close with my sister and Lexi. It also
helped that anytime my aunts were together I was usually around as well. I
liked hanging out with the women in our family; they provided just as much
entertainment as the men.

All of the
women in my family also would have kicked my ass if I disrespected the girls I
was with. And they deserved respect. They weren’t my property or even a
possession to me. They were women, they all deserved respect, and to be treated
as the beautiful mesmerizing creatures they were.

Surprisingly,
I learned the most about how a woman should be treated from my dad. He held my
mom up on a pedestal and looked at her as if she was his very reason for
breathing. If you knew either one of them, you understood the love they had and
that they were each other’s reason for breathing. When the world wasn’t
looking, they had something noteworthy of fairytale.

I may not
have been tied to just one girl but I did give them what they deserved and
wanted. I was always honest up front and some didn’t like that but I never
disrespected them. I also never touched them until they understood what it was
that we shared, something I learned from Ryder. And I also never talked about
what I did with these girls, even with my cousins, it was always kept private
because to me, that was disrespectful to the girl I was with. If she talked
about it, that was her deal but no one would get it out of me.

I did get
the rap in high school as an asshole or a player but one girl defended me,
Delaney. She was a freshman when I was a sophomore and I liked her a lot. She
was sweet and didn’t have many friends so naturally Arie and I befriended her.
She was better friends with Arie and then soon I got to know her well since she
was at the house a few times.

She took
interest in me, flirted, I flirted back and soon I had her in my room. She had
told me she was a virgin and up until that point, I hadn’t been with a virgin.

I told her
that we couldn’t because her first time should be special and not with a guy
that wouldn’t commit to her. I ended up just showing her a good time in other
ways that day but later she came back and said she wanted it to be me.

I took it
into consideration and then asked Arie what she thought about it. She was
always who I talked to about that sort of thing.

Arie said
to me, “Casten, taking a girl’s virginity is not something that should be a
game to you. If you’re considering it, make it special to her. Delaney knows
what you’re about but that shouldn’t stop you from making it special. Treat her
the way she deserves to be treated.”

Eventually
I agreed to it but I made that night with Delaney probably the best night of
her life. She knew I wouldn’t be her boyfriend nor would we be dating. But I
did spend the entire day with her, took her to dinner and then back to my
parent’s condo in Jacksonville Beach where I showed her what her first time
should be like with candles and music and soft touches.

I did
things like that. That’s who I was. Like I said, I treated them like the
treasures they were and Delaney deserved that.

The next
morning when I took her home, she said to me. “Thank you Casten. I know you
don’t love me and that wasn’t about that but
...
thank
you for making feel like you loved me and I was special to you.”

I gently
kissed her forehead and said, “You are very special to me and I do love you,
just not in the spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with-just-you way. Does that make
sense? I don’t mean for that to sound badly. I really do care for you.”

She
laughed. “Actually, up until last night I would have said no. But now, after
what we shared, I do understand what you mean.”

That
wasn’t the last time Delaney and I were together physically either. When she
needed me, I was there for her in any way she needed. High school and life is
hard enough, why not just have one thing in your life you don’t have to think
about? It’s just something natural that two people are sharing. That’s the way
I looked at it at least.

Anyways, I
was called an asshole at lunch one day because I wouldn’t date the head
cheerleader of our school. Frankly, she scared the shit out of me and though I
messed around with a handful of girls at school, I didn’t mess around with just
anyone. I had some standards and the cheerleader wasn’t an option.

Delaney
stood up and said, “He’s not an asshole or a player. Yeah he sleeps around but
I assure you the girls that he’s been with have never felt more precious and
more comfortable in themselves than they do with Casten.”

I was
sitting there when she said it, I winked up at her and she smiled back.

It was the
truth though and I was thankful girls like Delaney understood that.

I never
had to break up with a girl or have the awkward conversation of, “Will you
call?”

I always
called. I remained their friends and provided them with what they needed and
when it no longer worked, it was usually mutual. As I said, they knew up front
what it was so I never regretted being that way. I knew that eventually if it
didn’t work for me and I found someone that I only wanted to be with them, then
that’s what would happen but I wouldn’t force it.

The summer
I graduated, my sophomore year because I’m pretty much the smartest person in
my family, I decided to go spend some time with my brother and the sprint car
boys as that was the time my dad was getting back into sprint car racing too. I
always had a good time when I was on the road with them. I had more fun with
the atmosphere of racing life rather than the act of it.

That few
weeks we were all together we acted like normal kids. I think Axel sometime
forgot he was still a kid himself so we, as in Willie, Tommy, and me, felt the
need to remind him.

One night
when we were in Lernerville after a long string of broken parts and blown
motors, Axel won his one hundredth USAC Sprint car race so we partied. A
tradition we’d been doing for years was any time Axel won a feature race; we
played the same song in his hauler when he drove up,
Knock
Knock
by Mac Miller. You could hear the song carry
throughout the pits and soon everyone would start humming along to it before he
got out of the car, including Axel.

He loved
that shit.

As soon as
he pulled himself from the car, we were all dancing around.

That night
in Lernerville for his one hundredth win was a huge party that even Axel
partook in.

Tommy, who
had some liver problems, no doubt from the years of his frequent drinking, was
debating whether to join in the fun. When a group of girls approached Willie
and asked if we could show them a good time, Tommy gave himself a speech that
all of us will remember as the “Liver Speech”.

He sat
there in his chair beside Axel’s hauler in the pits, looked at the bottle of
Jack Daniels in his hand and said, “Listen to me,” he said to his liver while
pointing to his heart. He was no anatomy specialist. Ask him anything about the
setup of a sprint car and he’d rattle off what it was but not his body. So there
he sat pointing to his heart causing Willie and me to crack up. “Liver, I’ve
supported your ass for forty-three years. Pull your own fucking weight for one
goddamn night!”

Tommy was
so wasted that night we found him the next morning passed out inside Axel’s
hauler curled up with a pine tree he’d up rooted from somewhere. Didn’t know
Pennsylvania had pine trees but he found one.

“What’s
with the tree?” Axel asked once we got him outside. He had passed out in the
hallway of the hotel wearing a princess crown, one shoe and a Mohawk.

Willie
smiled at Axel eyeing his new haircut in amusement. “Tommy said it needed an
air-freshener after he
puked
in it. He couldn’t find
one so he thought a tree would work to.”

It was a
clever idea. I would have done something like that as well. And that right
there was a true testament to Tommy and Willie’s maturity levels if a
sixteen-year-old was equally as mature. At least there was hope for me. Tommy
and Willie were screwed.

After
Ryder died when I was eleven, my focus was lost with racing. Ryder was killed
in Perris California not long after the loss of a few of my dad’s team members.

Losing
Ryder left me with little drive to actually race any more. I did it for fun and
it was no longer fun for me to be on a track inside the car, so I quit.
Everyone understood and never questioned why. I think most knew why but never
said anything.

Life
around the track changed considerably without my counterpart but Tommy and
Willie were still good fun. All the guys with JAR Racing were role models to me
and my brother and in a way, they played a big part in
who
we were as much as our parents did. So it wasn’t nearly the same anymore
without Ryder but they were all there to make sure we were all right.

When I was
fifteen, my grandpa was taken from us. I wasn’t there that night and I was glad
I wasn’t. It seemed hard enough for my brother, Axel, who saw the entire wreck
right before his eyes. I saw the video later and again, I was glad not have
been there. Not only was grandpa killed but also my dad was in the worst wreck
of his entire life that day. It was touch and go whether or not he would
survive for a few weeks but he pulled through. I honestly think if he wouldn’t
have, the loss for us would have been too much.