Chapter 3 – Vocab Lessons

Ever since Mama had grown the barest hint of a backbone, she'd achieved a special sort of deviousness. When most people wanted something, they tried to get it with orders and demands. Maybe whining. But Mama just smiled sweetly, meekly, and projected the fragility and timidity that'd kept her and her daughters alive for years under the heel of a tyrant. It made folks bend over backward to help her and give her whatever she wanted, even if that was a year's supply of a controlled substance.

"With all this unrest, uncertainty," she simpered tearfully to the sympathetic pharmacist, "I just have to make sure Stevie doesn't run out of anything. It's so vitally important that she keeps up with her meds. We finally have her seizures down to less than one a month. The last thing we need in the midst of this crisis is for her condition to worsen."

She wasn't wrong, but she was also laying it on a bit thick.

Still, Stevie knew the drill: Project the brave but battered survivor of horrific abuse. Flash the scars.

Chicks dig scars. If Stevie were into chicks, she would've been set for life. Alas, she could only aesthetically enjoy the female form and thus only exploit her scars for material rather than sexual gain.

Rats.

"God bless you. In a world gone mad, I'm so comforted to know that good people still exist."

Ok, Mama, take it down a notch. Jeez.

Stevie wasn't entirely sure why her mama was bothering with the act; they were just going to come back later and rob the place. (Or was it burgle? Loot? She'd never grasped the difference.)

In a world gone mad, the woman with the pharmaceutical stockpile was queen.

xxXxx

Stevie's sister was pretty gullible, and so was her little friend Carl, especially for a cop's kid.

"You can't be tried for grand theft auto if you don't have a license."

Stevie didn't have one, although she'd been sixteen for an entire week. The frequency of her seizures had dropped sharply over the years, but the fact that she had (and likely would never not have) a recent history of seizures left her little hope of being issued a driver's license.

Well, once the government fell (and the situation certainly seemed to be heading in that direction), there'd be no one to do any issuing or any caring about whether said issuing had occurred.

Hey, silver lining.

As gullible as the preteens were, they both stared at her in disbelief, Carl opening and closing his mouth several times as though struggling to put the absurdity of her assertion into words.

Before he could, however, Stevie insisted, "These are life skills I'm teaching you. Better than any damn home ec class, for sure."

"I'd rather learn to sew," the boy grumbled.

Stevie's sister lamented, "I'm gonna end up sewing her body parts back on."

"Y'all are terrible lookouts and even worse accomplices," complained Stevie. She hadn't meant to bring the brats along on her crime spree, but her window for unsupervised larceny (petty theft? grand theft? why were there so many different words for stealing shit?) had been crashed by the pair. Well, it was more that Mama had volunteered Stevie for babysitting duty and that Mrs. Grimes hadn't been in any position to refuse, despite how much she detested Stevie's entire existence.

The snooty woman held a grudge like most people held their bladder: instinctively and stubbornly.

Unfortunately, her husband, who Stevie found dopey and bland and overly nice but far more tolerable, was languishing in a coma after being shot on duty. It was a real shame, if only for the fact that it meant increased interactions with both the man's wife and his cop partner, Shane, who was easy on the eyes but had only three personality settings: patronizing asshole, controlling asshole, and raging asshole.

Lori didn't like letting Carl hang out in the hospital for long stretches of time. Hell, she didn't like hanging out at the hospital at all and seemed to do so only when someone offered to go with her, thus ensuring that her grief and doting had an audience. In the yearish since Stevie's family had moved into their house on the block over from his, Carl had never lost his fascination with Bruno and thus his tendency to follow Stevie and her faithful mutt around the neighborhood when they were out and about. That had naturally evolved into friendship with Stevie and her sister, and it was no longer unusual for the teen to end up babysitting both kids from the time school let out until well after dinner.

She'd be a little less salty about it if she were getting paid, but she sure as hell wasn't.

And because she wasn't getting paid, she had no qualms about dragging the munchkins with her to ransack the local stores before all the good stuff was gone and to hijack a suitably large getaway vehicle to haul said bounty.

If Mr. and Mrs. Married Too Young wanted a babysitter who wouldn't bring their kid along on a felony, she reasoned to herself, Then the jerks should've slipped me a twenty once in a while.

xxXxx

"Stevie, why is there a Humvee in the garage?"

"Because the idiot soldier driving it left it unlocked and idling and then literally got himself killed for a Slurpee. If that ain't a sweet sixteen present from the universe, I don't know what is."

". . . And the trailer out back?"

"That one was like a bad joke. A cop, a priest, and a boy scout walked into a grocery store-"

"Stevie."

"Right. Whatever. Long story short, the morons teamed up to hold up that small shop over on Willow Street and then turned on each other the second they were done loading the trailer. The boy scout was the last one standing, but he got his stupid ass killed going back inside for cigarettes, beer, and condoms. Apparently, one of the assholes had killed the little old lady who owned the place, and she got to exact some instant karma from beyond the grave. I can't say I wasn't rooting for her, but after the dust settled and I'd put her down for good, I was left with all the loot, including three handguns courtesy of the three dead morons."

". . . And where were your sister and Carl in all this?"

"Around the block, guarding our new Humvee. We hadn't been out long but came right back after I hooked up the trailer. I figured it was better to quit while we were ahead."

" . . . Just don't do it again. I need to be with you whenever you go out. It's too dangerous for any of us to be out there alone."

"Yes, Mama."

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How many different words for stealing shit did you spot in this chapter? Hint: I couldn't be bothered to actually count.