Page 26 of Wild Card
Bailey took a bite of his Zaco, cheese stretching from the folded dough shell to his lips. Loki yipped, reminding me that he wanted some of that goodness.
I pinched a piece of sausage from mine and fed it to him, then did the same for Sugar.
“No Banshee today?” Holden asked, clearly wanting to change the subject.
“Nah, we’re working on her separation anxiety. She’s getting underfoot when I try to work, so I figure small breaks will help her build trust that I’ll come back.”
“Makes sense,” Holden said. “It’s not so different from how we handled you back in the day.”
Oh, I remembered. My foster mom got me into therapy, and trust exercises were Dr. Shepherd’s favorite strategy. I’d hated it, mainly because it made me confront all the ways my parents had fucked me up. It helped, though. Each week, month, and year that my family continued to be a steady presence in my life, I believed a little more that they wouldn’t abandon me.
At least, until my foster mom died and Gray got run off by the old man. That’s when I learned I could never really keep the people I loved, not forever. It was better to accept that truthbeforethey inevitably left me.
“Were you pretty young when you got fostered here?” Matteo asked, looking curious.
“I was ten,” I said. “I was the last one to get here.”
“I would have thought Bailey came last,” Matteo said.
Bailey swallowed his bite of Zaco. “Well, I’m the youngest, but I got here when I was three. I don’t remember it, but apparently, I got fostered a few months before Axel.”
“And what happened—” Matteo started.
I cleared my throat, ready for a subject change. “Do you think since Matteo’s eating veggie Zacos, that makes them a salad?”
Holden recognized my pivot for what it was and jumped in, probably no more eager than me to visit memory lane. “It makes them veggie pizza.”
“No, no. It makes them saladtacos,” Bailey said.
“But they’re made of pizza,” Holden insisted.
“And shaped like tacos!”Bailey shot back just as emphatically. “What do you think, Matteo?”
Matteo looked like a deer caught in the headlines. “Uh, well, the name is more like tacos than pizza, I guess…”
“Yes!” Bailey crowed. “Matteo agrees with me!”
Holden scowled at me. “Now look what you started.”
“You’re just cranky because you’re losing the debate. But that shit Matteo is eating is not pizza or tacos,” I said to rile them further. “It’s all veggies and, therefore, salad.”
Matteo laughed. “Whatever it is, it’s delicious.”
Loki barked in agreement, reminding me to toss him another bite, the beggar. Sugar looked at me with soulful eyes until I did the same for her.
The debate raged on for a few more minutes—until the rev of a motor and squealing tires caught our attention. I leaned sideways to look out of the open garage bay. A red car fishtailed as it took a fast turn back onto the highway.
“Who the hell…” I muttered.
There was no reason for a car to be on our road unless it was coming to the shop, the junkyard, or our house. They were all connected by a single access point off the highway.
“Huh,” Bailey said, head craned to look out the doorway. “Maybe they got lost?”
Something about that red car struck me as familiar. “Maybe.” I balled up my Zaco wrappers and shoved them into the bag. “Or maybe they wanted to go by the junkyard. I better get back before Banshee loses her shit.”
I whistled for Loki and Sugar to follow me. They reluctantly gave up their begging post as Holden, Bailey, and Matteo finished eating.
Normally, I just walked over to the shop, but today, I’d driven my junkyard clunker, a puke-green El Camino with rust accents, so I could haul over the parts Bailey wanted. It had come to the junkyard as a piece of junk, but Bailey had helped me get her running enough to give me a set of wheels that weren’t attached to a tow truck.
