“Like what?” Elliot asked.
“Mopped floors and cleaned bathrooms for a gas station before I was old enough to sell the beer or cigarettes. Washed dishes for the cafeteria in my dorm.”
“That all you did before starting work on crime scenes?” The question was causal, just making conversation.
“God, no,” I told him. “I bagged groceries, stocked shelves in a couple different places, did some office janitorial work, was a bouncer for a couple different bars, and pulled more than a few night shifts at gas stations after I was old enough to sell beer and cigarettes.”
Elliot’s eyebrows had gone up. “That’s quite a few things before working crime scenes,” he remarked.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “To be fair, I did some of them at the same time as other things.” Making enough to put food on the table and cover expenses sometimes required more than one job. “What about you?” I asked, both to deflect interest away from my somewhat storied job history and to find out more about Elliot. Also because it’s polite to ask people about themselves, although I felt like Elliot rarely wanted to talk about himself.
He settled a little in his chair. “I worked for Marsh Hart for a little while,” he said. “And for a framing company. But it’s all been carpentry-adjacent.”
“Even in school?”
He shrugged. “Pop hired me when I was in high school, and then I kept working for him in the summers. I had a scholarship that covered part of my tuition, so I didn’t actually need to work during the academic year.”
I had a momentary flash of jealousy that I hadn’t had a more normal childhood and youth. Not that I begrudged them to Elliot, but it was a reminder that my life wasn’t normal and never had been. I’m sure Elliot had dealt with more than his fair share of shit over the years, given that he was a gay Indigenous shifter. But Noah and I had been home-schooled in the ass-endof nowhere by ultra-conservative evangelical parents. We’d left home at fifteen, finished high school in the Richmond public school system. We’d both worked the whole time—shit jobs that would hire teenagers and gave us a little bit of money to spend or save, depending on the week and what we needed. We’d worked through our college degrees, as well.
And I, at least, was still struggling.
Elliot clearly wasn’t. He might not have been rich—I didn’t think he was—but he also clearly wasn’t worried about the cost of feeding a second shifter, while I was worried about budgeting to feed just myself. It would easily take me months of working at a restaurant, or a grocery store, or a gas station for me to be able to afford an apartment, much less rent and food.
After dinner, I sat down with my laptop and applied for literally everything I could find in Shawano, Bonduel, Slab City, Cecil, Lunds, Thornton, Adam’s Beach, Embarrass, and Clintonville. I even checked Green Bay, Pulaski, Seymour, and Antigo.
Bars, restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, county sheriffs’ departments, city police. Even a veterinary clinic that needed a receptionist and a couple of retail stores that were hiring full- instead of part-time.
It was late by the time I finished, and Elliot had gone to bed, telling me not to stay up too late.
I did anyway, and by the time I dragged myself off to bed, my knee had stiffened, so I limped the whole way there, grimacing as I rubbed at the joint. It was an unwelcome reminder that anything that would require me to be on my feet all day was going to be brutal.
I felt like I didn’t have a lot of choices. I was going to have to take whoever took me.
5
Elliot Crane
I could use your help, if you’re not busy.
Seth Mays
I’m not busy.
Where are you?
Garage.
I’d been fillingout more job applications—things I really didn’t want to do, but would if I had to and things that would require a two-hour commute from Shawano that I realistically wouldn’t make because I’d have to get an apartment wherever that job was. I didn’t exactly want to move out of Shawano and away from Elliot, but I was starting to think that maybe that would be easier—a cleaner break, anyway.
We’d probably still text, given the fact that he’d just texted me from the garage, when I was literally feet away from him.
I stood up from Elliot’s old office chair, then padded down the hall and opened the interior door to the garage. “What do you need?” I asked him.
Elliot heaved a bag of dirt onto a stack of other bags of dirt. “A willing pair of hands and a strong back,” he replied, then grinned at me.
“As long as you don’t need two good knees, I can do that.”
“The Lyme?” he asked me. “Or some sort of injury?”
