Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз. Страница 7

A lot of it.

Trust me, the amount matters. Lylee didn’t wig out because she feared for my life and health. She would have been cool with a little line here and there. It was the fear of being caught with so much of the shit in her house that made her squawk to my father, the shithead who left when I was young enough to still feel like a dad might be a good idea. Lylee wasn’t about to give up her bourgeois whoring and partying and her cushy professor job because I was being fruitful and selling enough of the shit to get attention from the bigger city dealers (another bad thing that was about to get a whole lot worse). So dear old Daddy came down and slapped me around a little and threatened to take away the only thing that can still make my granite heart skip a beat; my inheritance.

Hey, it was blood money, but it was fair and square blood money. Jake would get his, I’d get mine, and so would the two dozen or so other Maclean cousins and grandkids and whoever else is a direct descendent. It was old money, it was my due, and I’d take it happily.

But Daddy told me no money unless I cleaned up my act, and he wasn’t about to take my word for it. I was put in the back of Jackie’s hideous purple Mazda with a duffel bag of necessities and sent somewhere that was pretty much going to be tailor-made hell for me.

I was being sent to work in a diner.

I had been to rehab. Twice, actually. It was all idiotically kind, dumb therapists who always acted like there might be secret VH1 reality show cameras documenting every deep, heart-string-pulling conversation. There was usually a lot of nature (ocean, mountain, trees, whatever) and a lot of meetings with other losers. It was like a very lame vacation.

And I had been out of the country. Lylee spirited me to Paris, which was only made bearable by the company of Brenna Blixen, Jake’s hot girlfriend. We spent a lot of time kissing and twice as much time pissing each other off. It was clear to me from the beginning that I was a reluctant experiment at best. She’d been in love with Jake since the first second she met him. He was always a good-looking guy, and I could admit that honestly because our spectacular genetics couldn’t be denied.

Jail would have sucked. That was probably next, or maybe juvenile hall. But eighteen was coming up quick, and any sane judge would have wanted to teach me a real lesson about the harsh realities of drug use and dealing.

But I escaped the slammer.

I got indentured service, family style.

Daddy’s family owned all kinds of random shitty businesses, and one of them was this queer diner that played oldies and had girls skate out to your car with food like some shitty Happy Days’ episode. I got to be a dishwasher, lowest of the low men on the totem pole. And I would have to shack up with some geezer great-aunt of mine who used to babysit me and Jake and was living off her paltry Maclean stipend in her piss-stinking, shag-carpeted, doily-decorated house.

As if this shit storm wasn’t bad enough, Aunt Jackie was blaring Celine Dion. Who the hell listens to Celine Dion willingly?

“Can you turn this crap down?” I asked as nicely as I could manage.

Aunt Jackie glared at me and turned the knob on the stereo up a little. Celine’s ferociously annoying voice filled the inside of the car and battered against my eardrums.

“You are not here on vacation, Saxon,” she lectured. “This is not about you enjoying yourself. You have been stripped of all privilege and comfort for a reason. I am certainly not playing one of the greatest singers and divas of all time to punish you, but knowing that it irritates you is a bonus.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You are supposed to be thinking about why you are where you are instead of enjoying your summer with the family in New York like your brother Jake.”

I groaned at his name. “If I hear about your damn golden boy one more time, I’m going to hurl.” I reached instinctively for my cigarettes. Damn! Those were gone, too.

“Jake is someone you should look up to,” Aunt Jackie droned. “He’s making a real effort to fit in and he knows the value of hard work. That’s a Maclean gene he seems to have in abundance, even if it did manage to skip right over you.”

“I work hard,” I drawled, keeping my voice irritatingly lazy. “Do you know how much effort it took to turn potheads into cokeheads? No easy feat.”

Aunt Jackie blew a long breath through her flared nostrils and cranked Celine even louder. When I closed my eyes and moaned at “My Heart Will Go On,” Aunt Jackie punched the repeat button. I had to smile a little. Sly bitch.

Finally we were at the diner. Aunt Jackie pulled in and turned to me. “I’m not letting you get dumped on poor Aunt Helene so you can sit on your laurels while she gives you coffee and cookies. I’ll drop your bag at her house. You work here, and you can walk to her place. Tony has directions for you, and there are a few other kids who live in that area, so you won’t be walking alone. Go ahead. It’s time to get to work.”

She looked as prim and sour as some old English governess. “Thanks for the ride,” I said and got out of the car.

I hated feeling trapped. I hated not knowing what the hell I was doing. I hated working for anyone, especially someone who knew that I was in a shitload of trouble and couldn’t leave or cause any shit. I stood looking at the double back doors, the ones for employees. I was that. An employee.

Even if the word made me want to choke myself with my own tongue.

It wasn’t that I needed to gather the courage to go in. It was more like I needed to suppress the need to break something or swear up a storm or just generally bring more bad shit down on my head.

Then I heard a weird sound, a clack and roll, clack and roll. I looked behind me and saw a girl. A damn pretty girl.

She was long and curvy in every place that it’s perfect for a girl to be curvy in. Then I realized that she might have just seemed long because she was on skates. Roller skates. Her face was wide-eyed and fine as a Russian model’s. She had green eyes, real green like a Halloween cat’s and jet black hair, pulled back off of her face in a high ponytail. And the outfit. Mmm. A short red skirt, something like a cheerleader would wear and a white shirt, nice and tight against the generous swell of her breasts.

“The entrance is around the front, sir,” she said, her voice sweet and polite.

I smiled, a smile I know for a fact melted girls into puddles. “I’m not here to eat, baby. I work here. I’m Saxon Maclean.”

“The coke head?” Her voice changed instantly, suddenly snappy like the crack of a lion tamer’s whip. I realized that the honeyed-up voice must have been solely for the customers. “Well, what are you doing out here? This isn’t a drug den, dumbass. In through the double doors and to the back. I assume you’re too stupid to do anything but wash dishes? You’ll find the sinks. They’re big and metal and lots of water goes in them.” She made her voice high and unnaturally sweet, thick with sarcasm. “I have my eye on you, asshole.”

“Nice to meet you, too.” Something electric tingled through me. “I didn’t catch your name.”

The girl was already skating away, and I had a nice view of her curvy rear end.

“Cadence,” she called over her shoulder. “Cadence Erikson.”

Erikson. The owners of the diner. Had I just met the owner’s daughter?

I shrugged and went in through the double doors, intrigued by pretty, mouthy Cadence and ready to see her again soon.

I walked into a hot, chaotic clusterfuck unlike anything I had ever seen. People in white aprons were running baskets of sizzling fries and spatulas with hamburgers and hotdogs covered in sauerkraut back and forth, setting them on red trays and beating on a silver bell until it looked like it was going to explode.

A balding man with bulgy eyes noticed me.