Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
It was an act. It had to be.
But what if it wasn’t?
Thinking about it makes my chest do something I don’t like. It takes me an extra half an hour, but I do something I very rarely do and usually need to psych myself up to a tremendous degree for.
I call Candice.
Chapter three
Amalphia
After I got back from Pittsburgh, I met up with my parents. They were almost out of gas, and none of us even had so much as couch change to scrape together. My mom was losing her cool. She’d seen the inside of far too many public toilets with Granny, her crab needed its regular habitat, she needed to check on her fish, and poor Booty Sue had her really wide eyes on. If you’ve ever met an anxious German Shepherd before, you just know.
Finally, my parents made the hard call to head back home. There was no way they were letting Granny or me go back to our homes. We were better off sticking together. Power in numbers. A pack is harder to defeat and the rule of many.
We went back home and locked and barricaded the door.
My mom saw to the fish, got her crab situated, got Booty Sue to calm down with a bowl of food and her familiar bed and half-chewed, crispy stuffies, gave Granny all the time she needed with the bathroom, made mugs of tea for everyone, which didn’t help the frequent peeing issue for any of us, and started to make a game plan.
At this point, we’ve been brainstorming for an hour, and while we throw ideas out there, my mom writes them down on a pad of paper that I’m pretty sure she’s had in the junk drawer in the kitchen for the past twenty years. It’s the never-ending magical lined paper.
Granny grips the edges of the yellow Formica table. She shifts in her seat uncomfortably, muttering under her breath about the tear in the floral cushion that her left butt cheek keeps sticking to through her polyester pants.
She got the worst of the four. We offered her the unmatched, softer plaid with the fuzzy seat and weirdly modern frame, but she declined on the grounds that it was unnatural. Her chair might have a tear in it, but it’s the most structurally sound of all of them.
“We could find out who they are and torch their house!’
“Granny!” I gasp. “Don’t write that down, Mom.”
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on it,” Mom replies.
“What?” Granny huffs, sipping the last of her mint tea. Her dentures clank against the glass. “Why not? It seems like a viable option. If they’re busy worrying about that, then they might forget about us.”
“That’s arson,” Mom points out helpfully. “We can’t do that, Flora Jane. None of us want to go to jail.”
“I could do it. They wouldn’t leave an old lady to rot in jail. I’d be out in a few months on compassionate grounds, or whatever they call it.”
“Mom, we’re not burning anything down,” Dad says patiently to her. He takes my hand in his. “Even if we have to start over, that’s what we’ll do. I can get a second job or talk to the bank about remortgaging the house.”
I bow my head and struggle against the tears burning my eyes. I’ve never been prouder of my family. They should be cursing me out, but aside from my granny’s wild threats that she doesn’t, hopefully, intend to follow up on, they’ve done nothing but try and think of a way out of this and be supportive.
“I could rizz ‘em with my Granny ‘tism.”
“What?” Mom gasps. “What does that even mean?”
Granny shakes her chest, her…erm…low-hanging fruit jiggling this way and that dramatically. “Just give them a little cha, cha, cha, and bam! Problem solved.”
Dad shakes his head and lowers it into his hands.
“I’m sorry, Granny. I don’t think those thugs are going to take flirting as currency,” I tell her.
A sharp pounding on the door has us immediately stiffening in unison.
From her bed in the corner, Booty Sue picks up her head, her eyes unusually wide, even for her. She starts hoooo, hoooo, hooing as another meaty fist launches itself at the door. At least, in my head, it’s meaty. A hand like a battering ram, ready to break, break, break bones.
“Oh my god, it’s them!” Mom scoots back from the table and rushes around the corner of the kitchen into the living room. I get up and follow, setting my hand on her shoulder as she peeks through the blinds. “There are three this time. They’re all dressed in black, and they’re huge!”
Whelp. Gulp. For the love of beef jerky, this is all my fault. I mean, not really, but mostly. I didn’t have to date Reginald. I could have exercised good judgment and broken up with him months ago when I realized things weren’t going to work. At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we’re not all made into jerky.