Reclaim - Aly Martinez Page 0,11
on his ankle for decoration. Hmm, okay. Maybe Camden Cole wasn’t one of the rich kids after all. Those were Alberton socks if I’d ever seen a pair. “Oh, that reminds me.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out a soggy ten-dollar bill, and extended it in his direction. “Here.”
He stared at my hand, his baby blues sparkling in the morning sun while a single drop of water hung on a perfect curl in the middle of his forehead. “What’s that?”
“Your money for the worms yesterday.” I shoved the cash in his direction again, and he leaned away as if I were trying to hand him a grenade.
“Why are you giving it to me? You just said you need the money.”
“Uhhh, because it’s your money? Don’t worry. I took all the credit with Mr. Leonard. He told me if I kept doing such a good job he’d give me a two-dollar bonus each week.”
That got his attention. “Two dollars? He didn’t offer me anything extra and I had the same amount you had.”
I batted my eyelashes. “Yeah, but I’m a girl. I’m not allowed to play football or pee standing up, but every now and then, it pays off.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he muttered.
“I know. I think I would be really good at kicking field goals too.” When he made no move to take the money, I bent over and tucked it into his discarded shoe. “Anyway, I’m sorry for yelling at you yesterday.”
Barefoot, he stood up, his wet shirt clinging to his bony chest. “You don’t need to apologize. I did my fair share of shouting too.”
I dropped into a squat and got back to work, momentarily forgetting that my ears were once again at risk of kamikaze beetles. “Yeah, but you only shouted after I yelled, so I think it’s still my fault. Anyway, it was a rough day and I kinda took it out on you.” I kept my head down as I finished with, “Sorry.”
His toes shuffled into my peripheral vision. “Why was your day bad? What happened?”
“I’m currently blaming it on a mild heat stroke, but I did have to spend the day touching worms. So maybe it was a real stroke too.”
“Today any better?”
I sighed and kept scooping and sifting tiny piles of dirt. “I survived a heinous beetle attack, but I’m soaking wet now, so I’m not sure yet.”
“What about now?” His bucket suddenly appeared in my line of sight. And Holy. Cow. Worms. All the freaking worms.
My breakfast hadn’t even digested yet and he already had like twenty bucks’ worth.
I tipped my head back to catch his gaze. “Where do you keep getting all these worms?”
His smile nearly split his face. “Promise you won’t tell?”
“I told you I’m not a tattletale.”
“That sounds exactly like what a tattletale would say before running off to tattle on me.”
“Look, I gave your ten dollars back. That has to mean something, right? Give me some credit. I could have easily kept it.”
“You should have kept it. But okay, fine. I believe you.” He sank down beside me, crisscrossed his long, skinny legs between us, and began stripping a leaf from its stem. “So, fun story, on my way home from church yesterday, I found a ten-dollar bill on the sidewalk.” He stopped and looked up at me. He was so close I could see the dark flecks of sapphire peppered through his baby blues.
He stared at me for a long second, smiling like I should be able to magically read his mind.
Completely unnerved by the fact I could feel his exhales, I prompted him with a drawn-out, “Okay?”
He plucked another leaf off the ground and slid it between his fingers, stripping it bare. “Like, what are the chances? I was on my way back here to work, to hopefully make ten bucks and there it was just sitting on the sidewalk, begging for me to pick it up. I’m not really religious or anything but I did manage to make it through Reverend Lyon’s sermon without falling asleep, so I feel like maybe this was God’s way of paying me back.”
What in the actual hell was this kid talking about?
“Uh huh,” I said instead of what I really wanted to say, which was: Get to the damn point. I forced something that I hoped resembled a smile. “I’m not sure church works like that. God probably has bigger fish to fry than paying you for staying awake. But okay, sure. Can we get back to the worms now?