Page 4 of Dirty Roulette
I bite the inside of my cheek and my voice drops an octave. “What?”
He presses the joint between two lips and pulls out his cellphone, showing me his screen. A video post shows Charlie screaming along with the lyrics of a heavy metal song in the Jeep.MyJeep... that she stole. I glance into the distance where I parked and... yep. It’s gone. I run a hand down my face.
My gaze goes back to Jared’s phone. Charlie’s taking pictures with Payton and the vodka they magically got at a gas station. And since they are being thieves tonight, I bet they stole that too. The cherry on top is her smoking a cigarette and flaunting it like candy.
“Fuuuck.” My head falls back. Freshmen and little sisters mixed have a gift of pushing limits, and Charlie is the queen of them. I’m positive I’ve witnessed the devil himself pocket her soul in a to-go bag.
The funny thing is that before I left for my shift, mom had a screaming match with her about not being responsible enough to move into the dorms. Charlie refuses to follow rules when she didn’t create them. She surrounds herself with stupid ideas and bad decisions.
“I overheard through the grapevine about a house party on the south side of town. You have to bring booze to get in. It’s Roulette dude.”
“I told her to stay home!” I shout and rake my hands through my hair, pacing back and forth. “Brody said he wasn’t gonna make them play.”
Jared scoffs with disbelief plastered on his face. “And you actually believed him?” He licks his lips, shaking his head at me. God, I’m a complete idiot. “You’re her brother, not her parent. You don’t always have to protect her.”
“Well, when neither of your parents wants the job, who else is going to do it?” I gnash my teeth together.
“I’m guessing you need a ride, then?” Jared asks.
“You’ve read my mind.”
“Ryder! Where the hell are you?” Karen hollers outside the kitchen door.
Jared blows out a puff of smoke and mouths the wordshit. He tosses the joint to the ground, smashing the remains with the tip of his converse. We both reek of herbal skunk, and I honestly couldn’t care less. I gotta tolerate Karen somehow. Every other word out of her mouth nags about our crummy night and the receipt machine spitting out another order for her to mess up.
“I swear to God, if one more thing goes south, I’m quitting! Who’s supposed to wash the dishes?” She screams loud enough to rupture an eardrum. A distant crash bangs around. “Someone clean these!”
She doesn’t realize that every half hour she needs a fifteen-minute smoke break. When I take one, the world is ending. “Get your ass in here before I write you up!” My capillaries are about to burst. It doesn’t help that the kitchen looks like a homeless man’s tent.
“Are you smoking behind that dumpster again? Get back in here!”
“I’ll wait for you.” Jared lifts his chin and dips.
“Okay,” I say.
I step out, staring at Karen’s fat fingers clenching her hips, and the one hair on the mole of her nose glares at me.
“What the hell is taking you so long?” She pushes back greasy blue strands of hair. “Who said you could have a smoke break?” She grumbles.
“I did,” I say.
“And I didn’t. It doesn’t take half an hour to throw out the trash.”
Huffing, I head back in and make a sharp right to the storage racks away from her high pitch voice badgering me. I roll out several large black bags and she storms behind me as I replace the trash bags in all the bins. “People here would like to leave on time, and you’re eating the clock. Where the hell is your deposit?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say.
I wrap up my closing duties and finish my shift. Karen collects my money, and I’m clocking out seconds later.
I walk along the sidewalk with orange streetlights guiding me to Jared’s hand-me-down Ford, sitting alone in the parking lot. The neon Taproom sign lights up the lot, while the P in Pizzeria flickers.
I crumble into the passenger seat with the door hanging open and the dashboard blaring its annoying beep. “You know where we’re going?” Jared asks, with his hands resting over the steering wheel.
“Yeah, give me a second.” I scroll through my contacts, knowing Payton is never three feet from Charlie, and she sucks at turning off her location.
“Are you stalking Payt again?”
I scoff. “Yep.” I don’t define myself as a stalker, but I can watch her every move by simply zooming in and out on my maps and finding her avatar. It pins her down on the south side of town, where the theme song is always police sirens.
