Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73817 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73817 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
There will be no negotiating with Ice. No explaining. No getting through his narrow view of the world. I used to feel bad for him when I knew no one around here. Just like anyone else, he has a story too—a story that led him down a long path to right here. But he refuses to live honorably. He despises good intentions. He treats people like stepping stones and tools. Ice is quick to remind me of all the times he protected me, but fails to remember the times he snapped at me, used me, and took advantage of my naïveté.
I wonder if he’s the one who stole my backpack.
He probably sold it for drug money for all I know.
“C’mon, why are you still thinking about it?” The man is growing more irritable by the second. “Let’s go down to his house right now and you introduce me. I got the whole script worked out, don’t gotta worry about a thing. Thought up a backstory and everything. Let me handle it. We’ll cash out on this guy once and for all. You just sit back and—”
I turn around, fetch the sandwich bag and drink off the bench, then offer them to him silently.
Ice stares down. “Huh? The fuck is this?”
“Dinner,” I answer simply. “Yours. My gift to you.”
He wrinkles up his face. “I don’t want a sandwich. I want you to take me to Cooper’s house.”
“We’re not going. You want me to share? I’m sharing what I’m willing to: my dinner.” I extend the bag again.
He smacks the bag and drink straight out of my hand, sending them flying into the street. “I said I don’t want a motherfucking sandwich.”
Fear lances my heart. I take a tiny step back, only to be reminded the bench is behind me when my heel hits it.
He grabs hold of my shirt, startling me. “Don’t be a scared little bitch. Just do what I say, take me to him, and you and I can get the hell off this island.”
“Ice …”
From the bench comes another voice: “There goes the second drink I bought, splat, to the pavement.”
Ice looks at the guy, as if just now noticing he’s been sitting there. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Just an asshole on a bench.” He crosses his legs, then makes a funny face at Ice. “But I might also be the asshole who’s about to ruin your day. Can you do me a favor and look up at the stoplights?”
Ice frowns, annoyed, then glances up.
“Right there, right on the corner, up high. See it? That, my angry little friend, is what they call a security camera. You are on that camera. Someone is watching the feed on that camera. Someone is watching you grabbing the shirt of a guy whose food you just knocked out of his hands.”
Ice doesn’t let go. He only scoffs at the camera, lifts a middle finger to it, then sneers at the guy. “You think they actually pay attention to that shit?”
“Maybe not always. But they certainly are right now.” He lifts his phone and gives it a wiggle. “See, my dad is the police chief here, and I just sent him a text as a concerned citizen of Dreamwood Isle. Now he’s got your face. Your plan. Your act of aggression against my friend. And if there is anything my dad hates, it’s a stain on the reputation of a lovely paradise like this.” His face goes flat. “My dad deals with stains quicker than that Laundromat across the street.”
Ice doesn’t look across the street at any laundry place. He just stares challengingly at the guy, as if the two are playing a game of chicken, revving their engines, ready.
Then Ice’s fingers slowly uncurl.
My shirt is released.
His eyes meet mine. “You’re a pussy, you know that? You’re a fucking pussy. Turned as soft as everyone else on this stupid island. I don’t need you,” he suddenly decides. “I don’t need this place.” Then he starts marching away.
Even after him grabbing me like that. After all his ugly words. After his threats. I still find myself seeing a human being trapped in a living hell, whose terrible habits were bred out of necessity, out of desperate survival instinct, out of fear. Maybe my emotions do make me weak sometimes.
But I don’t want to become him.
I don’t want to kill everything inside me that’s good.
“Ice,” I call out.
He stops halfway down the street and turns.
“You can be better than this, y’know,” I shout at him. “You can make something honest out of yourself instead of doing what you’re doing, always leaving something behind after taking it for what it’s worth. Paradise isn’t just for the rich and the soft. It can be yours, too. It’s not too late.”
He stares at me for a while.
I wonder for a moment if he heard what I said.