CHAPTER 1
DANNY
“Hey!”
Harlan Whittaker was a pain in my ass. He was old and cranky, and he shouted at us any chance he got. This morning was no exception.
I hunched my shoulders up around my ears, kept my gaze fixed ahead of me, and quickened my steps, ignoring my neighbor’s shout. I just needed to make it to my truck.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” Harlan waved a set of pruning shears wildly in my direction from where he was standing on the property line.
Six in the morning was too early for this shit. I bit back a sigh and turned my head in his direction, pretending I’d only just noticed him. Neither of us was fooled for a minute. “Hey. I’d love to talk, but I’m running late for work.”
“Y’all need to get your yard in order!” Harlan made a sweeping gesture with his shears in the general direction of my front yard. To be fair, it was a mess. Straggly weeds spilled out of overgrown flower beds and combined with the patchy, overgrown lawn—and the occasional dead spot—to give the place an air of neglect. The oil stains on the driveway from myold truck added to the whole post-apocalyptic feel. What could I say? I wasn’t a yard guy, and neither was any of my roommates.
Now Harlan,hewas a yard guy. He was forever watering and fertilizing and mowing and pruning, and his front yard looked like it belonged on the cover ofBetter Homes & Gardens. There was a definite line between where his yard ended and mine began, marked by a perfectly manicured lawn that came to an abrupt halt, and the difference between the two was stark. Our yards were like a before and after photo. His yard was a guy all dressed up in a blazer and tie for a job interview. Mine resembled that same guy ten hours later, stumbling out of the backstage area at a rock concert with no shoes, no shirt, and a brand-new nipple piercing, swigging Jack out of the bottle and passing out in the parking lot.
Harlan was forever on my case to clean up. And I did feel kinda bad about the mess, except every time I was about to organize the guys to pitch in for a weekend and restore some order, he’d come over and waggle his shears at me and grumble at me like a stereotypical boomer as he reminded me that my house—my grandma’s house, technically—looked like shit. So obviously whenever that happened, I was morally obliged to ignore him, just so he didn’t think I was caving in to his demands. Like, the last time we’d started to pick up the trash, he’d stood out there watching us with his arms folded, staring at us like we were on work release or something, and it had been super weird. So we’d given up, gone out back, and had some beers instead.
The power struggle was real, y’all.
Harlan stared at me expectantly, and I fell back on my usual excuse. “You know the guys work shifts, Mr. Whittaker. I can’t start a mower when Cash has just come off nights.”
Not that there was any guarantee the mower would even start. Last time I’d looked in the shed where it was stored, it had been covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.
Harlan scowled. “Don’t need a mower to pick up your trash,” he snapped, “or to get rid of that.” He pointed at a long, craggy branch that had fallen a few weeks back from the towering red maple that sat on our side of the boundary line and cast a giant shadow over both properties. “Your yard’s a disgrace, and someone needs to do something.”
I ducked my head and scurried toward my truck without answering. I needed to get to work, not get caught up in a shouting match with my cranky neighbor. As I opened the door and climbed into the driver’s seat, the roar of a dirt bike shattered the early morning quiet. The rev of the engine and the echo of faulty exhaust pipes got closer and louder until Chase, one of my roommates, pulled around the corner and into view. He gunned it up the street and parked in the driveway next to me, cutting the ignition. The bike sputtered into silence.
Harlan glared at him and opened his mouth, no doubt to complain again, but Chase just gave him a cheery wave, dismounted, and ambled into the house without even taking his helmet off. I guessed that was one way to avoid a conversation.
I took the opportunity to make my escape while Harlan was distracted, backing the truck into the street before heading toward Goose Run Gas, where I worked. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, but I didn’t hate it and it paid the bills for now. One day I was going to have enough savings that I could afford to study to be an EMT, but that day was still a ways off.
I drove the ten minutes to the gas station on autopilot, and I was only five minutes late when I slipped in the door. Wade, who I was taking over from, looked pointedly at the clock—an ugly goose-shaped thing with wings for hands, because our bossbelieved in finding a theme and sticking with it—and shot me a look.
“Sorry,” I said, hanging up my jacket and hurrying to stand behind the counter.
He grunted and stood and stretched, a huge yawn escaping him. I wasn’t sure why we even bothered staying open twenty-four hours—I could count on the fingers of one hand the times someone had actually stopped for gas while I was working an overnight—but the owner of Goose Run Gas, Bobby Merritt, insisted that we kept at it and said that it gave Goose Run a cosmopolitan feel.
I was pretty sure he didn’t know what cosmopolitan meant, but hey, who was I to argue? Especially when it meant I got enough extra hours that I only had to work one job.
Wade wandered over to the coffee booth nestled in the back corner of the store and when he came back he handed me a cup of what passed for coffee.
“Renata’s called out,” he said.
I was expecting the coffee to be bad, and it was. But then again, Chase had probably made it just before he left, and he was the world’s shittiest barista. The only reason he even had the job was because Bobby had taste buds made of cast iron, and he insisted that Chase’s coffee was “authentic.” I had my doubts, along with probably every other coffee drinker in Goose Run. But again, who was I to argue with the guy who paid me?
After Wade left we had a trickle of early morning customers that picked up as the day wore on. Chase came back at lunchtime, dragging his feet. He was always dragging his feet, but he looked dog-tired as well.
“You covering the rest of Renata’s shift?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Bobby called, and I figured I gotta pay the rent somehow. My landlord’s a total hard-ass.”
I threw my empty can of soda at him, and it bounced off his head. “Hey, fuck you.”
Iwas his landlord. Well, technically my grandma was, but I was the one who collected the rent from him and Cash, and from Wilder, our other roommate, and put the money in Grandma’s bank account every month.
Chase smirked and flipped me the bird.
