Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 86158 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86158 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
“Than a mini-mart?” I asked with a smile. “Uh, yeah. You know the people around here love a good granola bar. We’ll have way more traffic.”
“You bring lunch?” my dad said, still looking at my mom.
“Subs,” she replied, smiling up at him. “I threw them in the mini-fridge.”
“Good, I’m starvin.’”
By the way he’d said the last few words, I knew that I needed to bail. Quickly.
Gross.
I said my goodbyes and left them smiling at each other like a couple of newlyweds. Since I’d already worked that morning, I had the rest of the day to get shit done—namely cleaning out my car and stopping by the pharmacy for a new bottle of lotion that Molly had recommended. I ran my hand down the new scar on my thigh as I drove back toward town.
Bishop had been right to be concerned about the stupid thing. Less than a week after my graduation party, I’d woken up with it hot to the touch and red as a cherry. Thank God I hadn’t tried to get Molly to stitch it up, because they’d had to debride the nasty thing to clean it out. A heavy duty dose of antibiotics had kicked the infection, but by the time it started healing, I had a pretty gnarly scar to remember it—much worse than the original scratch. The lotion Molly had recommended was supposed to help the scar fade, but I wasn’t super worried about it. I just hoped it would help with the way it itched as the skin healed.
After stopping at the pharmacy and the grocery store for a few things, I ran to the car wash and was in the middle of vacuuming out the back seat when my phone rang.
“What’s up?” I asked, out of breath and still bent into a pretzel trying to reach the back floorboard.
“Are you coming home soon?” Kara asked ominously.
“I was just finishing up the car, why?” I asked, sitting up.
“I’m at the school. I’ll be home in twenty. Meet you there?”
“Is everything okay?” I asked, getting worried.
“I’m fine. Draco’s fine,” she replied.
“You’re freaking me out.”
“Don’t be,” she said, sounding angry. “Meet me at home.”
“Okay,” I said, surprised when she hung up abruptly.
I didn’t bother finishing the car. If she would be home in twenty, I wanted to be there when she got there. I couldn’t think of any reason she’d be so fired up to meet me back at the house, and it drove me crazy. Did it have something to do with Bishop? I’d caught a glimpse of him when I’d gotten to my parents’ house that morning, and he’d seemed fine.
Fine as hell, actually, wearing that fucking tool belt.
I beat Kara home by ten minutes.
“Charlie, where are you?” she yelled as she stormed in the front door.
“I’m on this fancy ass couch you bought,” I replied, looking over the back of it. “What the hell is going on?”
“I was in my last class and we were talking about our favorite coffee places, and I said yours of course—”
“Obviously,” I replied.
“And they started talking about how I shouldn’t go there because you had all of these health code violations.”
“What?” I yelled.
“Yeah,” she said, throwing her bag down. “I was like, I work there and we’ve never had a single violation.”
“What the fuck?”
“They said that someone at this other coffee shop is telling everyone about it and that it’s all over the community pages that when Mal sold to you it all started going downhill—”
“That’s bullshit!”
“I know that,” she yelled back. “I told them that! They were talking about rats and bugs and mold and—I was so pissed I wanted to scream. There’s all this bullshit going around and we had no fucking clue.”
“What the fuck?” I whispered in confusion.
“I don’t know,” Kara said. “I don’t know who would say that shit. Why would people even believe them?”
“Because people are sheep,” I replied, pulling out my phone. “Jesus Christ, this explains it.”
“Explains what?” she asked, dropping down beside me.
“That sales are so bad,” I replied, trying to remember my sign in for the community pages. I’d deleted the app after one too many stop letting your dog shit in my yard posts, and I hadn’t even thought of it since. No one I knew even used it, because we didn’t give a shit. If we wanted to talk to our neighbors we talked to them. If we wanted to know when a business was open, we fucking Googled it.
“Sales are bad?” Kara asked in confusion, taking the phone out of my hand. “What are you talking about?”
“Sales have been shit,” I said with a sigh, falling back on the couch. “Like so bad, we might’ve had to close if I didn’t figure it out.”
“What the hell?” she asked. “Why wouldn’t you tell me that? I’ve been asking for more hours! I feel like an asshole.”