Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,51
“I’ll call you back.”
“Wait, where are you—“
She hangs up the phone and watches Tressa ‘The Cooch’ Kucharski go into the U.S. Gas.
* * *
First she thinks, I’ll go in after her. Baton-whip the candy bar or whatever she’s buying out of her hand, knock her teeth down her throat, make a real scene. But there might be cameras in there. She can’t see any out here, and so instead she decides to wait. Standing next to the phone booth, extending and collapsing her baton anxiously.
Tressa’s in there for five minutes, but it feels like five hours.
When she comes out, girl’s got a pack of American Spirit cigarettes in one hand and a Monster energy drink in the other, with a bag of what looks like beef jerky under her one arm. The Cooch checks her cell phone, pops it in her back pocket, then begins tapping the cigarette pack before sliding one out and screwing it between her dark sluggy lips. Thumb on lighter. Flick. Flick. Flick.
Atlanta steps up. Pokes her in the back with the baton.
Tressa wheels, dropping her Bic in the process. The unlit cigarette hangs from her lip, stuck to the inside of her lip way a kid’s tongue might get stuck to a frozen goalpost.
They stand that way for a while. In silence. Atlanta pointing the baton at her like it’s a gun.
Tressa speaks first, and when she does, the cigarette falls and handsprings into a puddle. “Atlanta.”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
“What’s your deal?” Tressa swallows hard. Looks left, looks right. Nervous. Finger tapping and scratching the top of the energy drink can. “I don’t mess with your shit.”
“No, but I’m about to mess with yours. Lemme ask you—you like torturing animals? You one of those fucked-up people likes to burn ants with match-tips or stick firecrackers up a cat’s ass? Make you feel all big and powerful when in reality you’re just small and sad?”
“It’s not like that.”
“So tell me what it is like.”
“I don’t torture the dogs. It’s not a… torture thing.”
“Sure it ain’t.” She thrusts the baton forward, gets it under Tressa’s chin. Gives it a lift.
“Before tonight, I, I, I didn’t even touch the dogs. It’s not my thing, I’m just there with—“
“With who?”
“Bodie and Bird.”
“Who the hell are they?”
“The Haycock boys? Brothers. Irish twins.”
“They’re Irish.”
Tressa shakes her head. She’s getting more nervous, now. “No. Kids born so close together they might as well be twins. Born nine months apart. They call them Irish twins.”
“Whatever. They go to school with us?”
“No, they’re uhh, they’re ‘home-schooled,’” When she says it she makes little air quotes, and in doing so, the bag of jerky drops from under her arm and plops onto the asphalt.
“So they’re the ones like to hurt the animals.”
“It’s not like that, I told you—“
Atlanta scowls. “You banging one of them?”
Tressa tightens. Doesn’t say anything. Atlanta almost laughs.
The girl tries to change the subject—“So it’s true, right, you shot the junk off your—“ but Atlanta has little interest in letting the girl finish her statement.
“You’re banging both of ‘em?” Atlanta asks.
“I… I was with Bird but then Bodie wanted me and…” She suddenly looks confused. Maybe even a little sad. “I still sometimes get time with Bird. But mostly it’s Bodie.”
Atlanta’s about to ask another question when Tressa’s gaze jumps like a leafhopper from her to behind her. Next comes the dingling bell tied to the top of the convenience store door.
“Hey!” barks a man in a strong… well, Atlanta wants to call it an Indian accent but for all she knows he’s Pakistani or Arab or—are Iranians Arab or something else? No time to worry about that. She turns, sees the little man with the dark caterpillar eyebrows brandishing a broom like he’s an American Gladiator. “You stop messing around outside my store or I call the police! I call them!”
Atlanta scrunches up her face, gives him an incredulous look. “You just sold this underage girl cigarettes. So go on, now. Give ‘em a ringy-dingy. I’ll wait.”
The man fake-laughs (“heh-heh-heh”), eases the broom by his side. “Oh! Oh, I think I, ah, hear a customer.”
Then he ducks his head back inside. Ding-a-ling.
“That was cool,” Tressa says. Kneeling down and feeling for her lighter. Atlanta jabs her hard in the chest with the baton, bowling her over into a jagged wet pothole. “Hey!”
“You don’t get to tell me what’s cool. I don’t care to be admired in the eyes of a dog-killer.”