Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 68066 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68066 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
By gardenin’.
Daddy said I wasn’t allowed to garden until I was fifty years old. It was okay, cuz I didn’t wanna garden anyway. Boys were stupid.
Except for my very best friend in the whole wide world, Cash McGraw. But I still didn’t wanna garden with him.
Momma said Cash had been my best friend since the day I was born. He hated Jackson, too. Not as much as I hated him. No one hated him as much as I did, but Jackson hated Cash, too. They didn’t like each other cuz Cash knew I was better than Jackson and always stuck up for me. Even though I didn’t need him to, I could kick Jackson’s butt, and I showed Cash...
All. The. Time.
I still remember a few years ago when Jackson said his willy was bigger than Cash’s willy. It all started when Cash ran out of the bathroom naked at one of his parents’ parties cuz the lights went out in his house from the thunderstorm.
“Cash,” I breathed out, looking at him. “What’s that?”
“What?” he replied.
I nodded to the stuffed animal coverin’ his privates, and he looked down at what I was starin’ at.
“Oh, that’s just Nemo. Ya know, from Finding Nemo.”
“No, silly, behind Nemo.”
“Oh...” He shrugged. “That’s just my willy. One day it will be as big as my dad’s.”
The whole room busted out laughin’, besides Daddy. He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, grumblin’ somethin’ ‘bout puttin’ little shits to ground.
But on the way out of the room, I heard Jackson shout, “Oh, mine’s already as big as my dad’s!”
And the room exploded into more laughter.
Til’ this day, I didn’t know if what they said was true or not. It probably wasn’t for Jackson, cuz I kicked him in the nuts a lot and I never felt his willy. Not that I wanted to.
Yuck.
One of my favorite things to do with Cash was to close my eyes and dance around to his music. I felt the songs in my heart and really deep in my bones. Like super deep, almost touchin’ my insides.
Cash always had his guitar on him, singin’ and playin’ music for me. He was gonna be super famous one day and buy me a pony I was gonna name Buttercup. Cash even made me a song with a bluesy beat he sang and played for me all the time. Cash could play the blues better than anyone on this entire planet and that was a lot of people.
His daddy, Dylan McGraw, was a detective in North Carolina and one of the good ol’ boys like my papaw, Lucas Ryder. Cash never said his daddy was better than mine like Jackson did. Our daddies were tied for awesomeness.
My other best friend was a girl, like me, and her name was Shiloh Foster. Shiloh was my cousin cuz her momma was my Aunt Lily, who was my pawpaw’s sister. Her dad, Uncle Jacob, was a lawyer for super important people, and he was one of the good ol’ boys, too.
Everyone always called us the good ol’ kids cuz our daddies were the best. They were all tied in awesomeness. There were other good ol’ kids our age, like Bentley Taylor. His daddy was Austin Taylor, who owned the greatest tattoo shop in North Carolina.
Bentley was my friend too, but not my best friend. All the other kids were older than us by a lot, especially my Uncle Mason and Giselle, who was Cash’s older sister. They were the oldest.
I once heard my pawpaw say the good ol’ boys were only good for screwin’. Which made sense, cuz he was a contractor and screwed a lot of things.
Shiloh was actually the secretary of our Hate Jackson Pierce Club, and Cash was the Vice Prez. I, of course, was the President.
We had church like Daddy did with his club, where we talked about how much he sucked.
“Hey, baby,” Daddy said, kissin’ me on the tip of my nose like he did every day when he got home from work.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“How’s my girl?”
“Eh.” I shrugged. “Ain’t as happy as a pig in poop.”
Daddy smiled. “Now we can’t have that, yeah?”
“Creed, she’s in trouble at school, again. This is the fifth time this month.”
“Better than last month.”
I smiled.
See, Daddy gets me.
“Creed... I’m the one having to answer to her teacher and principal.”
“That’s on you, Pippin. I’d gladly go tell that motherfuc—”
I smiled again, wider that time. Daddy almost said the really, really bad word that got him in trouble too. It must be a doozy since everyone always got in trouble for sayin’ it.
Anytime I cussed, it got me grounded, forever, again. But it wasn’t my fault. I was around bikers my whole entire life, and that was a really long time. Those were the words they used, bad ones.