Total pages in book: 156
Estimated words: 151044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
“Quiet.” He struggled to open a bag of cheese puffs.
I snatched it out of his hands. “You have to pay for that first or we’ll go to jail!”
“Hey, I’m workin’ ova’ here!” He looked around. “Whoa, it’s daytime in here.” Then he gasped. “I hear Taylor Swift. Come on!”
I followed him to the front of the store and smiled at the cashier, slowly pushing the cheese puffs toward the register. “Hi.”
The clerk rolled his eyes and sighed.
“Is this Tay-Tay?” Barrett asked, looking around for a speaker.
The clerk pointed to the radio by the cash register. “This is The Red Hot Chili Peppers.”
“Oh, man. I was way off.”
I shook my head with the sobriety of an Olympic judge who just witnessed an epic fall. “Way off.”
“Are you guys going to pay for the chips?”
I looked up at Barrett expectantly. “I have no dollars.”
“I have dollars,” he gasped with excitement, as if just realizing his power.
I clapped for him. “Will you buy me something with your dollars?”
“Yes.”
We stood there.
“Guys?” The clerk snapped his fingers. “Hello?”
“Huh?”
“You’ve been standing there for ten minutes. You either have to buy something or leave.”
Next thing I knew, we were leaving the store. “I feel like this was a sound purchase.” I tugged my new T-shirt over my dress. It had the cutest little rainbow unicorn on the front and said I’m fucking fabulous! “You should give me your wig.”
Barrett adjusted the long fuchsia wig on his head. “No way, Jose. I look hot.”
We started walking down the empty sidewalk. “But my shirt has a unicorn. Mine matches the wig.”
“Nope. It’s my wig.” He said all of this while eating a hot dog.
I should have got a hotdog. “You either have to give me that wig or give me the rest of your hotdog.”
“Why?”
“Because those are the rules.”
He stopped walking and sighed. “Fine.” He took off the wig and handed it over.
“Your shirt’s a Harry Potter shirt anyway. You need more sophisticated accessories, like a scarf or a wand or glasses.”
“How do you know it’s Harry Potter?”
“It says Word To Your Muggle. What did you think that meant?”
“I thought it was coffee humor or something about mugs.”
I snorted. “No! We’re muggles.” A large neon light flashed behind him and I gasped, shoving him aside. “We’re here!”
The sign said BEER & 24 HOUR TATS.
“What is this magical place?”
“Dude, your face is covered in cheese puff dust.” I tugged open the door. “It’s like they knew we were coming.”
“Did I get it?” Barrett asked, delicately wiping the corners of his mouth.
I looked back at his orange face. “Sure. Come on!”
The bell over the door rang. Barrett followed me inside and a man appeared from a beaded curtain in the back, next to the long wall of beer freezers.
“Can I help you?” A man with a porn-stache appeared and I smiled at his warm welcome.
“Helloo!” I said with a Mrs. Doubtfire accent. “We would like some beers and tats.”
Barrett stood by the cash register eating his hot dog without a care in the world. I wasn’t sure he remembered where he was or that I was there.
The man pointed to the wall. “Beer’s there. Tattoo options are over here.”
I grabbed a six-pack out of the fridge. “Barrett, pay for this.”
He perked up. “Hmm? Oh.” He dug out his wallet and finished the rest of his dog so he could use both hands to pay. “Are you a fireman?”
“Huh?” The man took his money.
“I thought you had to be, like, a fireman or a detective to have a mustache like that.”
“Or a pornstar,” I mumbled, as I cracked open a beer.
“Yeah! Or that! I thought you looked familiar.”
I snorted. “How hard are you looking at the men in your porn, Barrett?”
“What? I like to compare.”
The man’s mouth formed a flat line that disappeared under his push-broom mustache. “I wasn’t in a porn.”
“Oh. Well, you look like you could be. That stache definitely makes you qualified to swing an ax.”
“Or star in a paper towel commercial,” I added.
“Are you guys getting ink, or what?”
I looked at Barrett. “You totally should.”
“I don’t think I should.”
I sipped my beer and handed one to him. “Why not? The sign says anything on the wall is only forty dollars. That’s a steal.”
He laughed and took the beer. “True. But what would I get.”
I tried to think of everything I knew about Barrett. He liked pretty women, boats, taking off his clothes, tequila, karaoke, and he was a total Swifty. I looked at the beer man. “Can you do Taylor Swift?”
“I can only do what’s on that wall.”
The three of us went to the wall and stared. I pointed to a portrait of Britney. “This is close.”
“On behalf of all swifties everywhere, I’m going to argue that it absolutely is not.”
“Oh, come on, Barrett. This would be hilarious. Tell him,” I said to porn-stache guy.