one thing a nine-year-old boy would think to buy: candy. The most candy I could get for five bucks from the dollar store was an old bag of assorted Halloween candy. I put the candy in my backpack and sold it for fifty cents apiece. It was a fifty-piece bag, so I made twenty-five bucks. I went out and bought two more bags, sold the candy for seventy-five cents apiece, and made almost seventy-five bucks. Bought three bags, and sold the candy for a buck a piece.” I chuckled. “I was a ruthless little shit, now that I think about it.”
“So you found a five-dollar bill and turned it into more than a hundred dollars by reselling candy?” She sounded impressed. Which I admit did feel pretty good.
“Yeah…until I got shut down by the principal. She said if she caught me selling anything else on school property, I’d get suspended.”
Torie laughed. “Let me guess…you found a loophole?”
I shrugged. “Sort of. By that point, my client base was sort of tapped out. I mean, little kids can only scrounge up so much loose change, and I’d gotten greedy, charging a dollar apiece. I spent some time collecting bottles and cans around town, and even tried setting up a system where I would pay neighborhood kids to collect for me, but that was too much to keep track of: who I owed, how much, and how much to pay them and still make a profit.”
She snorted. “You’re a real natural-born entrepreneur, huh?”
“I mean, we were dirt poor. I was stuck wearing my dad’s old six-sizes-too-big boots and my sister’s old jeans cut off into shorts. So yeah, if I wanted to buy lunch at school, I had to find money, because god knew my parents could barely afford rent with them both working two jobs. They often had to decide between keeping the lights on and buying food every month.” Out of habit, or instinct, I’d wandered over to the Nova and started tinkering with it; Torie followed, leaning against the side of the hood and watching.
She was watching me mess with the radiator, and circled around to the toolbox, rummaged through the sockets with what seemed like a knowledgeable eye, and handed me the correct size socket.
I eyed her. “You’ve worked on cars.”
She shrugged. “Sort of. My dad liked to tinker in the garage on the weekends. He had an old…oh what the hell was it? Two letter name. English, I think.”
“MG?” I suggested.
“Yeah, that’s it. It was little two-door convertible he bought for cheap from a neighbor. I’m not sure what he was doing on it, honestly. He’d go out there early Saturday morning after breakfast and I’d go with him, and he drink coffee and putz with the car, and I’d hand him wrenches and sockets, and sometimes if there was a spot too small for his big old sausage fingers to get to, he’d have me try. I got to know which size bolt was which, and I made it my job to keep his tools organized, because on his own he would just lose everything.” She laughed at what was clearly a fond memory. “That was my special time with Dad, those Saturdays and Sundays in the garage.”
“Did he ever finish it?”
She grinned. “I don’t think he was really doing anything important to it. Replacing hoses or something. Just…tinkering. It ran, and it always did run. We’d spend a few hours tinkering, and then we’d go for a drive. ‘To test it out,’ he would always say. Maybe he was just making sure what he’d done worked, or something.”
“Sounds like a lot of fun, honestly.”
She nodded. “It was. Probably among my favorite memories.” There was a wistfulness to her voice.
“I, uh. Don’t want to bring up anything bad since you’ve already had a bad day, but…it sounds like you’re talking in past tense, here.”
She smiled at me. “Yeah, he died a few years ago.”
I winced. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks. It was sudden. Pretty rough on all of us, but Mom most of all.”
“I bet. You guys were all close, I take it?”
She shrugged again. “I mean, early on, yeah, I’d say so. By the time I got to high school, things were a little…strained, I guess. He wasn’t healthy, and it was a sore spot for Mom. Then he died, and she ended up moving to Alaska to start over and it seems like all my sisters are gradually ending up there. And now I have to