wasn’t ‘of age’ yet. Luckily, my little brother was sixteen to my seventeen, and honestly wasn’t going to be too hard for anyone to take care of. Thankfully, his mother was able to take emergency retirement from the military, meaning that he was no longer forced to live in a foster home until she got home.
He was a smart little do-gooder, and I had no doubt in my mind that he would always have his head on straight.
I was just glad that no one treated him like shit like the home that I had been in before I’d emancipated myself did. Through a weird set of circumstances, I was now officially on my own, in a great big house, in the middle of a fancy neighborhood.
The same fancy neighborhood where she happened to live.
Right. Next. Door.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I muttered as I side-eyed the girl. “Are you walking to school?”
She nodded. “My parents don’t believe that I should be given a car. They feel that I should have to work for it. So that’s what I’m doing. Working for it.”
“It looks like you’re walking, not working,” I commented as we fell into step.
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But I can’t work right now. With volleyball practice, volleyball games, and homework, I just don’t have time to work. I have a job at Coffee Time in town, though. I work there on the weekends, and whenever I can get a spare day off.”
“Coffee Time,” I said. “That’s over by that garage. Toon’s?”
She looked at me with almost hopeful glee in her eyes. “Yes, why?”
“Because I started a job there,” I told her.
“Isn’t Toon’s an airplane mechanic?” she asked. “I’ve always wondered.”
“It is,” I said. “Toon’s is the only specialized airplane mechanic in the area. He used to be in the Air Force. He and my dad served together. My dad was a fighter pilot, and Toon was a mechanic on the same planes.”
“Wow,” she breathed. Damn, she was cute. “I don’t know many fighter pilots.”
I grinned down at her.
“That’s what I want to do… as long as I keep my head on straight this year, anyway. That may prove to be impossible,” I grumbled.
“Why?” she asked.
I looked down at her to see her hair bouncing in her high ponytail.
I’d never seen anyone with so much fuckin’ hair before.
“Why what?” I asked, losing my train of thought when I looked into her eyes.
“Why will it prove to be impossible?” she explained.
I sighed.
“Because I seem to cause trouble everywhere I go. I guarantee, the biggest bully in Kilgore will clock me the moment I walk in through the doors. Wanna place a bet?” I teased.
She blinked. “Um, sure. What’s the bet for?”
“If I win, you have to show me around town. If you win, I’ll stay away from you.” I kicked a rock. I didn’t like that idea at all.
“That sounds like I should throw it just because I don’t want you to do that,” she mused as she looked up at me with curiosity. “Why would you say that?”
She gestured for me to take a right, and I did, causing us to cut through a side entrance to the playground. “No wonder you beat me the other day.”
“You’re not answering my question,” she grumbled.
I sighed. “I’m a bad bet, babe.”
“You’re not a bad bet. You’re a kid,” she corrected me. “You’ve only been told you’re bad, so you believe it.”
I snorted. “You keep telling yourself that, Curly Fry.”
“Curly Fry?” she asked. “Very original.”
I reached out and touched a curl that’d strayed close to her eyes and tucked it back behind her ear.
“I like your hair.”
Why had I said that?
“That’s nice, because it’s my hair, and I can’t change it. I’ve tried straightening it before, but within an hour the curl is back. I have my dad to thank for my curly hair,” she admitted.
I was glad that it was curly.
Everybody always straightened their hair. All the fake bottle-blonde popular girls looked the same with their flat-ironed hair. It was rare to see a girl with her hair anything other than straight.
Since apparently that was ‘popular.’
Whatever.
I liked a little originality.
“Now, this is the fastest way to school, but sometimes that gate is locked. If it’s locked, you have to go the long way around like you did yesterday,” she said. “This way cuts off about ten minutes, but you have to walk through a grassy field. But a lot of the times the field is wet thanks to the dew in