Chapter 16 #2
“Come on, Megan,” Bellamy said. “You know Wolf isn’t the dating type. He’s more the fuck-and-chuck type. Again, as you know.”
“You’re not making it any better, Bell…” I mumbled. I could feel her crazy eyes burning into the side of my face, probably willing my head to spontaneously combust. I looked at her just as she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the girl’s entitlement. “That you’re batshit crazy,” I said, watching a guy sign his name to the roster.
“Fuck you, Wolf!” Megan stormed around the side of the table in a flash of peroxide-blond hair.
Bellamy looked at me. “Seriously, dude. What in the hell were you thinking with that one?”
I wasn’t going to comment on that.
A group of guys approached the table, asking Petey a litany of questions.
Rogue passed the cashbox to Bellamy. “Take this.” He clawed at his arm again, which was getting redder by the minute. “I got to go to the clinic.” He stood up, grabbing his backpack. “I know it has something to do with those rats.”
Bellamy chuckled. “Pretty sure that’s Cassie’s doing.”
“Why?”
“There was a bottle of itching powder in my bathroom trash can.”
She really needed to get better at hiding evidence.
“I told him to expect hell from them.”
“Yeah, well…he’ll figure it out.” He clasped a hand to my shoulder. “Just like you’ll figure out whatever the hell is going on between you and Jade.”
“Nothing is going on between us.”
“Whatever you say, man. Whatever you say.”
After class, Jade met me at my truck. She was on the phone with her mom for most of the drive, and while I tried my best not to eavesdrop, it was nearly impossible.
From what I picked up on, her parents were worse off than I’d thought.
Pick-pocketing wasn’t going to cut it, and I had a good feeling she would be absolute shit at stealing cars.
I could have just gone and stolen something by myself, but I knew Jade.
She’d never take the money if she wasn’t involved.
Which meant, I needed to come up with something that would be easy, quick money. Something a ten-year-old could manage.
Jade had just hung up when I turned off the highway into the Wal-E-Mart parking lot. “Why are we going to Wal-E-Mart?”
“To get rat traps.”
Her expression blanked. Jade had always had a soft spot for animals.
Back in high school, she nearly wrecked her Jeep to avoid hitting a possum.
When she asked if it was okay, I’d checked the rearview.
The tire must have skimmed its hind legs, because it was dragging itself across the road.
When I paused before answering, she pulled over and tried to catch the damn thing to take it to an animal shelter.
If she were willing to save one of God’s ugliest creations, she’d want to save a rat.
I swerved into a spot. “Don’t worry. There aren’t any rats,” I said, and threw open my door. “It’s just to make Rogue calm his eccentric ass down.”
Jade got out and rounded the back of my truck. “Seems like a waste of money then.”
“Trust me. Five bucks is worth my sanity.”
We headed across the lot toward the automatic doors. They slid open to ice-cold air and the scent of fish displayed at the front of the store.
Mrs. Seaton stood at the entrance in her blue greeter’s vest, placing a sticker on a kid’s shirt.
When she noticed me walk in, she smiled and shuffled over to give me a hug.
“Well, ain’t this a pleasant surprise?” She stepped back, her attention drifting to Jade.
That weathered smile deepened. “And who’s this you’ve got with you, Mr. Wolf? ”
“Jade.”
“Well, it’s mighty nice to meet you. I’m Bernice. I watch Mr. Dog for Wolf from time to time.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Mrs. Seaton’s attention was back on me. “Speaking of. When do I get to see that rascal again?”
“Maybe next week?”
“All right. I’ll make sure to have all the treats for him.” She glanced at the entrance, already fishing in her vest pocket for more stickers. “Gotta get back to work.”
“She seems nice,” Jade said as we headed toward the buggy corral.
“She is.” And, with my dad and mom gone, the closest thing I had to something that felt like family.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and snapped a picture of the blue-and-white logo behind the shopping carts, then sent it to Hendrix in a text with a middle finger emoji. He responded immediately.
Take a shit on the condom aisle in my honor.
Like a stamp, Hendrix was here in spirit.
“Hendrix still banned?” Jade asked over my shoulder.
“Yep.” Laughing, I crammed the device back into my pocket and wrangled one of the beat-up shopping carts free.
“You know, there are levels, and getting banned from Wal-E-Mart really is rock bottom,” she said.
He’d had a good streak, though. Ten straight years of shoplifting random shit from his favorite store, and he didn’t get caught until he got cocky. “You know, when it happened, he cried for a week.”
“Well, that’s what he gets for stealing a yard flamingo he didn’t even need.” She headed into the store.
“It was his pride and joy.” That idiot had it on display in the living room for half a year before Zepp decapitated it during a party. “He even buried it in the backyard after its untimely death.”
“You really need to start surrounding yourself with sane people.”
I maneuvered the buggy around a display of diapers. “Sane is boring.”
“So, I’m boring?”
“Hendrix didn’t call you Weirdo in high school for no reason…”
“We both know he thought I was weird for not wanting to screw him. Apparently, that’s all you have to do to qualify.”
Thank God she had never given in to that crap. I would have hated to castrate one of my best friends.
The wheel on the buggy squeaked as I pushed it past the produce section. “Where do they keep rat traps?”
“I don’t know. The garden section?”
We made our way to the back of the store in silence. When I stopped in front of the traps, I grabbed a wooden one with a metal spring.
Jade snatched it out of my hand and put it back. “You can’t kill them.”
Why did she assume there was more than one? I cut my attention to her. “Them?”
“Rats are social creatures. They live in colonies. Why would there only be one?” Her lips flattened, her cheeks going slightly red.
“You know, they laugh when tickled, and in war-torn countries, they train them to find mines. They save lives! I don’t even know why Rogue is freaking out.
They’re really clean. They groom themselves all the time… So, yeah. You can’t kill them.”
That was a guilty Jade ramble if I’d ever heard one. I swore to God, if this was her and Cassie’s doing… “Right…” I turned back to the traps. “Well, then what the hell else am I supposed to do with them?”
“No poison, and no brutally snapping its spine and leaving it to die a long, painful, awful death.” She scanned the shelf and picked up a big plastic box. The packaging had a picture of a rat in someone’s hand, like anyone would want to pet a feral rat. “Look, catch and release.”
I lifted a brow. “Catch and release?”
“Catch it, and release it in the wild.” She tossed the trap in the buggy. “Or, by a trash can or something.”
I glanced at the price on the shelf. “That’s twenty bucks. The other ones are three!”
She frowned into the buggy, then up at me. “So, steal it.”
“Do you see the size of that thing?” I waved a hand at the massive box in the back of the buggy. “Where the hell am I supposed to put that? Plus, I’m not shoplifting when Mrs. Seaton is working the door.”
“ That’s your line?” She looked at me in disbelief.
Sighing, I tossed the expensive, humane trap back to the shelf and tossed the three-dollar one in.
Of course, Jade plucked it right back up with an angry frown on her face. “So help me, God, Wolf…” She put it back. “Let’s just not get a trap. We should all pretend we don’t hear or see the rats! Rogue will think he’s going crazy.”
Her and her bleeding fucking heart. “I am not becoming roommates with a rat.” I made a compromise and grabbed a glue trap for seven bucks. “There. No snapping that diseased thing’s spine. Happy?”
“No! That’s even worse. Its little feet stuck there while it starves to death.” Huffing, she glanced down both ends of the aisle before meeting my gaze. “Look, if I tell you something, you have to promise you won’t tell Rogue.”
There it was. “Let me guess. You put the rat in the house?”
“I didn’t say, guess.” She folded her arms across her chest.
I knew she was going for stern, but all I could focus on was her tank stretched across her tits.
“I said, promise.”
“I already know the answer, Jade.”
“Fine. Cassie did—unbeknownst to me—and you can’t tell him, or he’ll kill them. And her. Besides, did you not hear the part about them clearing minefields? They’re like hero rodents.”
The woman Googled too much shit. “Can’t be inhumane to hero rodents…” Shaking my head, I put the trap back and picked up the hippy-save-the-earth, tree-hugger one. “You and Cassie are a pain in the ass, you know it?”
And I was a fucking sucker.