Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 98264 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98264 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
There had to have been at least ten dollars’ worth wiggling around. That would have been enough to feed me and Ramsey like kings. I could pick up burgers on the way home. Maybe even splurge on Cokes and fries. Heck, if I ordered off the dollar menu, I could afford to get some for Thea too. God knew she fed us enough to be owed a burger or fifty.
But as good as all of that sounded, it wouldn’t be my money.
I was a lot of things: Broken. Sad. Angry. Confused.
But a thief wasn’t one of them. Sure, he’d given me those worms, so it wasn’t like I’d stolen them or anything. No matter how much it sucked, they were his.
There was no way I was showing up the next day owing Camden Cole anything.
Sighing, I grabbed my bucket, laid it on its side, and used a stick to scrape up the pile. I couldn’t keep them, but there was no point in letting all his hard work go to waste. I’d cash them in and give him the money tomorrow—assuming he showed at all.
The rest of the afternoon was quiet. I found a few more worms in the dirt and then hit the jackpot around an old tree stump. I assumed it was somewhere similar to where Camden had gotten lucky earlier in the day.
I mean, not that I thought about Camden or anything. That would have been stupid. He was probably never going to speak to me again. Which was fine. I didn’t need friends. I had Ramsey and Thea—by default, but whatever. There was also a girl who occasionally wore mismatched shoes and always stared at me on the bus. I didn’t know her name, but we were practically BFFs.
Okay, so I could have used a few friends, but it was something I could worry about later. For the summer, I just needed a job, a paycheck, and not to lose my mind.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
“Camden Cole, get your ass back in here!” my grandpa shouted as I took off out the door.
The screen door slammed behind me, and even with as mad as I was, I flinched. I’d pay for that later.
Dear God, I’d only been there three days and my head was already about to explode.
Camden, sit up straight.
Camden, real men look you in the eye when you talk to them.
Camden, don’t forget to wash behind your ears.
I swear my grandma acted like I used my ears as a second set of feet. How my mom had survived her youth without throwing herself off the barn roof, I would never understand. The only thing that boggled my mind more was why my parents had thought it was a good idea for me to spend the summer with these people.
Oh, right. The fight.
The fight I hadn’t started. The fight I’d had no interest in having when my Neanderthal cousins had come to our house for a weekend. Coincidentally, the very same fight I’d lost.
Yet, I was the one who’d gotten sent to my grandparents' house for the summer in what had to have been the family equivalent of boot camp. Yeah. Made perfect sense.
“Camden!” Grandpa roared again.
I didn’t let it slow me. He was going to be mad no matter what I did. At least this way I could get some space to clear my head before listening to an hour-long lecture on what a screw-up I was.
When I’d finally made it through the grass, the toe of my sneaker caught on the pavement. The height of my athleticism was my ability to sometimes remain upright. If I’d really thought about it, that was possibly my biggest problem of all. My dad, a six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound former college athlete who had worked at the papermill since he was old enough to sign the back of a paycheck, was not the type of M-A-N who had a kid who tripped. It didn’t matter if the sidewalk was broken, cracked, and a total safety hazard. I was Camden Donald Cole’s son; I should have been born with hair on my chest and a football in my hands.
Instead, I liked books, science, and taking apart old electronics just to see how they worked. That last one would have been great if I liked putting them back together. Fixing shit, as he called it, would have been a worthy hobby for his son. But the tedious process of finding parts and making repairs wasn’t nearly as interesting to me. I did it sometimes though because I could sell whatever clock, radio, or DVD player I’d been working on to make enough to buy more books, supplies for my science experiments, or more junk to pry apart.
Mom used to help me sneak stuff into our garage when Dad wasn’t looking. She wasn’t all too thrilled about having a scrawny klutz for a son, either, but she was much more tolerant than my dad, so we got along okay.