Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
“I see why you were laughing now. A few years probably means more like twenty unless dust accumulates at a far faster rate in the country than it does in the city.”
“Possible. There’s dirt that blows in off the gravel roads and the fields around here.”
The place isn’t packed to the rafters or anything. As far as old barns go, it’s probably one of the emptiest I’ve seen, but there’s all the usual. Stacks of boxes, some of them sagging from the weight of the ones above, mismatched crates, a few ancient trunks, tools, gardening implements, and pieces of more than a few of the vehicles that have probably rotted into the ground out in the fields beyond. There’s plenty of garbage, too, although old bottles, cans, and magazines can have some real value. So can old vehicle parts.
That same adrenaline rush I used to get at the start of a pick creeps up on me.
It’s not the same. Not at all. I used to do all my picks alone. The picking, bartering, loading, unloading, cleaning, and posting or putting into the store when I had it up and running. It was all basically a one-man show.
This isn’t about making a living. It’s not about tallying up profit. I don’t have a trailer to fill or clients waiting for me to find something new. This is just for fun. For the sheer love of the old and forgotten, the weird and the wonderful, the worn down or whimsical.
I turn my gaze from the barn’s interior to Bellatrix’s face. Her eyes look huge, with the mask taking up most of her face, but her eyes are dancing. She found this place. She planned this. She did it for me. Again, I wonder why she’s going to such great lengths for me. My chest swells so much that it almost hurts to be in my own skin.
Bellatrix deflates my lung buster by blinking at me. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
I shake myself out of my trance. “Just remember, it’s not the biggest, bestest, and most spectacular object that’s worth it. Sometimes, the thing that means the most to someone is the ugly little nugget that looks like it’s been rotting at the bottom of a swamp. Nostalgia is as powerful a motivator as real value.”
“Swampy butt nuggets. Got it.”
I still can’t tell if she’s smiling or not, but I think so.
“Is this a treasure hunt for the best thing, the weirdest, or the worst?” she asks.
“Whatever you want it to be.”
I walk past her and push the other door along its slider with all my might. Beads of sweat trickle down my neck, soaking my T-shirt at the back and front. I’m wet under the pits, too, and we haven’t even gotten a proper workout yet.
I just hope my deodorant is up to the task. The last thing I want to do is have tea with Mr. and Mrs. Davis, with Bellatrix right beside me, while smelling like last year’s barbeque sauce and old onions.
She channels all her inner deviousness into her eyes, which flash with excitement now that the stakes are different. Weird and wacky are so much more fun than valuable and rare.
It’s been an age and a half since I had fun like this with a pick. The last few years I was doing it, it was all about business and profit. I can admit that I lost the joy of it.
Cracking open these barn doors feels a little bit like the first pick I ever went on or getting a great score at a garage sale, flea market, or thrift store before I was doing it as a job. It’s more than rediscovering an old passion. It’s falling back into that passion when it was still a passion, back before I killed it by commodifying it.
Like I do on the odd night I bartend, I slip back into the parts of me that are old me. Fun me. Just me. The me that no one gets to see anymore.
I get my mask, but before I put it on, I let Bellatrix see exactly what this means to me by flashing her an epic grin that is probably a direct mirror to the one she has hidden under her mask.
Chapter ten
Bellatrix
“Ugh, this trunk is being salty!” I tug at the lid so hard that I move the whole thing, causing a stack of boxes off to the side to creak ominously.
Precarious is too kind a word for what those top boxes are doing. The middle and bottom ones are so squished from the weight of the ones above them that even the slightest breeze could dislodge the whole shebang.
For the past hour, I’ve found out the hard way that picking isn’t what they make it out to be on those shows. It’s a lot of dust, sweat, grime, heavy lifting, and grunt work.