The Legend (79 page)

I believe
it would have destroyed my mom. It’d be hard for a kid like me to explain but I
knew enough that she couldn’t lose him.

Our family
was forever changed after that day in Knoxville.

The way we
moved on was simple, we just did. It wasn’t like us to dwell on something we
couldn’t change, or at least it wasn’t like me. I took to showing my grandma
what she needed to live for. I couldn’t help but want to help her when I found
her crying one morning when I went to check on her. From then on, I took her to
breakfast every Saturday morning and every Wednesday we had movie night.
Eventually Arie, Lexi, Lane and Cole joined in but Saturday morning breakfast
was all about us. We never told anyone we did it but we did. And over time, she
told me her entire life story. I learned a lot about our family through her and
while it was interesting, I also learned new inventive ways to fuck with all of
them. It was all in good fun and my sixty-three year old grandmother had a
blast finding ways to prank our unsuspecting family members. Each week we had a
new target and when we ran out, it was a random draw.

I couldn’t
be a normal person to pull her out of her depression
she’d
been
slipping into nor was I that great of a listener but apparently, I
was what she needed.

I think
that’s what describes me, while I was independent in my own ways, I was what a
lot of what people needed. Whether it was my family needing a good laugh, a
lonely freshman wanting someone special to take her virginity, or my
grandmother needing someone to show her how to laugh again, I was just simply
myself.

I had no
direction and I had no real purpose for anything I did, just that I did it
because it felt natural to me. And none of these people ever tried to mold me
to be something I wasn’t, they let me be me and move independently.

Books by Shey Stahl

Racing on the Edge (Happy Hour,
Black Flag, Trading Paint,
The
Champion and The Legend

Delayed Penalty – Coming soon!

About the
author:

Shey Stahl
lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family. She enjoys motorsports of any
kind and can usually be found at a dirt track somewhere. When Shey is not
writing, she is spending time with family and friends more than likely doing
something that involves racing.

Her next
project is a book about an NHL hockey player that’s set to be released late
March of 2013.