Page 20 of You're so Bad

I almost laugh, but I’m too tired. “Or, you know, text. I’m going to put that deadbolt back in tomorrow.”

I’m not enough of an idiot to offer him a key.

I look out the window before heading upstairs. Because if the kid were ballsy enough, he could have lied about the truck, hoping he’d get a chance to go through my things and find the key so he could grab it and adios.

He was right, though. It’s gone as if it never was, another piece of my life that was taken from me. I shake my head, a slight smile escaping. “I hope she gives you half as much shit as she’s given me,” I say under my breath as I go upstairs.

That truck’s a hunk of junk, so bad I thought it was thiefproof, but I’d become fond of it. Still, I meant what I said. I won’t call until morning.

They’re never going to find it anyway.

When I get up in the morning, the kid is gone, and so are my shoes.

Goddammit.

ChapterSix

Leonard

As predicted, the police officer who shows up at the house doesn’t give a borrowed fuck about my stolen truck. But hedoesfind it “very interesting” that I’m staying in Mrs. Ruiz’s house. Officer Murray is pale and blond and looks like he doesn’t get out much, so I guess he’s hoping for something interesting to happen. Like catching a vagrant who’s stupid enough to call the cops.

“You’ll have to verify that,” he says with a hearty amount of suspicion after I tell him about my living arrangements. So I call Mrs. Ruiz up on FaceTime so she can flash her license at him and confirm my story. She gives him a chewing out that I verymuchenjoy listening to.

Before Officer Murray leaves, he flashes me a photo of Reese on his phone.

“You seen this kid around the neighborhood?”

“Why?” I ask.

He lifts his pale yellow brows. “It’s a yes or no question, son.”

He’s at least five years younger than me, but I don’t want to end up in lockup for pissing him off, so I settle for a simple “no.”

Maybe Reese is full of shit, but I’m not about to turn the kid in. Even if he did steal my shoes.

Seeing as he left behind a pair of falling-apart Nikes, I’m mostly glad he took them.

When I can see the cop’s taillights out of the window, I text the kid:

You forgot my wallet.

Those little tell-tale dots appear, then his message:

I’m sorry about the shoes.

I’m not. Come back later if you need a place to stay.

You should be more careful with your things, man.

Quit it with the sticky fingers, kid. You could get in serious trouble. You need somewhere to lie low for a few weeks, I can help with that.

I think about telling him the cops are asking around about him, but I don’t want to scare him off. If someone had told me a thing like that when I was his age, I’d’ve been the next state over by lunchtime. My last text was probably pushy enough.

So I call Mrs. Ruiz back instead. She doesn’t look too pleased by all the calling, but when I ask if she knows a kid named Reese who hangs out in the neighborhood, she nods sharply. “I let him mow the lawn sometimes. He does a terrible job, but his foster father’s a bad man. He wears a mask for other people and turns his rage on his family.”

“They live around here?”

“He’s never told me, and I haven’t asked,” she says. “But I know he speaks the truth about that man. I can see it in his eyes.”

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