Joyride

 

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

Thank you for buying this

Feiwel and Friends ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

 

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

For email updates on the author, click
here
.

 

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.

 

To my husband, Jason, who has been my partner in crime since high school

 

One

Mr. Shackleford shuffles in the front door of the Breeze Mart, jingling the bells tied to a velvet string on the handle.

Please don't die on my shift.

Please don't die on my shift.

Please don't die on my shift.

He's one of my regulars—maybe even
the
regular—and one of the only customers to come in past 1:00 a.m., which is why I wait to sweep and mop until after he leaves. I glance at the clock; 1:37 a.m.

Right on time.

The other reason I wait to mop is because Mr. Shackleford is the human version of stale bread. He's moldy—seventy years old with a white flaky exterior, crusty around the edges, especially in the eyes where the cataracts congregate. On the inside, slow chemical reactions decompose what's left of something that used to be soft and pliable and probably pleasant (I say probably because where old people usually have frown lines, Mr. Shackleford has smile lines). The only thing that keeps him alive is the alcohol, due to what I imagine is a pickling effect. And due to the alcohol, he sometimes mistakes aisle four for the men's bathroom.

As he passes the front register where I've got my calculus splayed, he gives me a slight nod, which tells me he's fairly lucid—and the odds of him peeing near the beef jerky are slim tonight. He doesn't even fidget with the zipper of his camouflage pants, which is usually the first sign that I should direct him to the bathroom immediately.

I hear him scuffle down the last aisle and back again; this time the sound of a sloshing fifth of vodka accompanies him. I try to clear my books before he gets to the counter but I'm too late; he sets the bottle on my scrap sheet of graph paper, magnifying the graph lines I drew ten seconds before.

“Evenin', Carly,” he says. I know he's been drinking, I can smell it, but his words aren't slurry yet. He appraises the books and papers in front of me. “Math. That's good. Math'll take you a long way in life.”

He's gearing up for the Question of the Night, I can tell. No matter what stage of inebriation he's in, he goes all philosophical on me before he pays for the vodka. I know he thinks I fail at the answers, but that's okay. I live in the real world, not in an alcohol-induced euphoria. Last night, the question was “Is it better to be sick and wealthy, or healthy and poor?” Of course, I had to clarify a few things, like how sick and how wealthy and how poor. Very sick, very wealthy, very poor, he'd said.

So I announced that it would be best to be very sick and very wealthy. That way you could afford the best health care imaginable, and if you died, you could leave your loved ones something besides broken hearts and a funeral bill. In this country, to rise above healthy and poor is just an ideal. An ideal that most poor people don't have time to contemplate because they're too busy trying to put food on the table or keeping the lights turned on.

Like me and my brother, Julio.

Yes, it sounds like a pessimistic outlook on life blah, blah, blah. But pessimism and reality are usually mistaken for each other. And the realists are usually the only ones who recognize that.

Mr. Shackleford thumbs through his dirty camouflage wallet—which is always full of hundred dollar bills—and pulls out a twenty, probably the only one he keeps in that fat thing. I give him change, the same change every night, and he pockets the bills but leaves the seven cents in the got-a-penny tray in front of the register. I put his new bottle in a brown paper bag and gear up for the Question.

He tucks his purchase under his arm. “Is it possible to be truly happy without ever having been truly poor?”

I roll my eyes. “It's not only
possible
, Mr. Shackleford. It's more
likely
.” Okay, so I like these debates we have. Mr. Shackleford is easy to talk to. He's not judgmental; I don't think he's racist either. Most people don't even say anything when they check out at my register. I know I look Mexican through and through—not even mixed Mexican—just straight-up Mexican, fresh from the border. But that's where they're wrong. I'm not straight from the border. I was born right here in Houghlin County, Florida.

I am an American. And so is Julio.

Mr. Shackleford has never treated me like anything but. He acts like I'm his peer, which is both a little weird and a little cool, that I could be a rich old guy's sixteen-year-old peer.

Mr. Shackelford purses his lips. “Money can't buy happiness.” This is the root of all our discussions, and his usual comeback.

I shrug. “Being poor never delighted anyone.”

He chuckles. “Simplicity has its merits.”

“Being poor isn't the same thing as being simple.” And surely he knows how hypocritical it sounds, coming from him. After all, he's about to hoist himself into his brand-new colossal pickup truck and drive away to his family's plantation house. He'll probably watch some TV before drifting off into his nightly vodka coma. Sounds like the definition of simplicity to me.

But he sure as heck isn't poor.

Besides that, things can get real complex when you're just poor enough to have to choose which utility bill to pay and which one to let go. When you can't send enough money along to your family without missing a few meals yourself. When school makes you buy a calculator that costs one hundred something dollars just to take a calculus class—and if you don't take the calculus class you don't qualify for the scholarship you've been working for since Day One.

Being poor isn't simple.

“How is it complicated?” he presses. He counts to three with his fingers. “Work. Eat. Sleep. The poor have time for little else. There is a kind of peacefulness in that simplicity. A peacefulness that the wealthy will never know. Why? Because of the drama, Miss Vega. Higher taxes. More ex-wives. A cornucopia of lawsuits. Lengthy, tortuous family vacations with stepfamilies of stepfamilies. Slavery to hideous fashion trends—”

The list continues to escalate in ridiculousness. Not to mention, I doubt Mr. Shackleford has ever found himself the victim of a fashion trend. In fact, it doesn't look like he's even acknowledged fashion since somewhere in the vicinity of 1972—and the extent of that acknowledgment appears to cover what was hot among rednecks back in the era of starched flannel.

“Surely this exhaustive list of rich-people issues has a point,” I cut him off, unimpressed.

He grins. “I haven't heard your counterargument, Miss Vega.” He pulls the package from his armpit and slides the paper bag off the bottle. Fixing his eyes on the cap, he slowly unscrews it. “I require of you a list to match my own. Prove that a poor person's life is so terrible.” He takes a swig and waits for my answer.

And suddenly I don't want to talk about this anymore.

I know Mr. Shackleford is wealthy. Everyone does. And he knows that I'm not working the graveyard shift at a gas station because my family uses hundred dollar bills for toilet paper. This conversation has become personal. Hasn't it? I mean, his list is full of things that everyone already knows about the lives of the rich and famous. All the drama they create. It's public knowledge.

But the poor people list? That's a different story. The media rarely covers the glamorous life of poverty. It's this hidden gem of truth that only the impoverished get to polish. For the list to be genuine, it can only be created from firsthand experience.

So Mr. Shackleford isn't asking what I know about poor people. He's asking me about me. He's asking how bad my circumstances are. Mine, personally. At least that's what it feels like. And I don't like it. Before, it felt as though we were equals in these conversations. I doubt it will ever feel that way again. Have they been personal all along? Have they all been an attempt to … what, exactly? Get me to admit I'm poor?

Or am I being weird?

I just hope he doesn't want to make me his charity case or something. I could never take anything from him. How do you explain to someone that you were born with the need for self-sufficiency? And anyway, Mr. Shackleford should recognize this.

Just ask him if he wants help getting to his truck. Nooooooope.

“I have to get back to work,” I say.

A glint of disappointment passes through his eyes, a reaction slowed by the liquor swimming in him. I've never spurned the Question of the Night before.

“Of course.” With shaky hands, he finagles the cap back on the bottle and lowers it into the now-crinkled brown bag. “Some other time then.”

No other time,
I want to say.
Anything theoretical, but nothing personal
. Instead I take the bag and twist the top of it for him, as if doing so will keep the bottle from falling out or something.

“Thanks.” He taps his fingers sloppily on the counter. I think he's going to say something else, and I'm gearing up to cut him off, but after a few seconds he says, “You have yourself a good night, Miss Vega.”

“You too, Mr. Shackleford.”

The jingle bells at the front door knock against each other violently when he leaves. I watch as he one-handedly fumbles in his pocket for his truck keys. I vacillate between going outside to help him or picking up where I left off with my calculus. Going outside might mean getting him out of here quicker, or it might mean another attempt at conversation suddenly gone awkward.

Calculus wins.

After about two minutes of not hearing the engine to Mr. Shackleford's truck roar to life, I glance up. And I wish I hadn't. But some things can't be unseen.

I swallow my heart as I take in the sight of Mr. Shackleford pressed against the side of his truck. His hands are in the air, shaking almost as badly as his knees, which lean in against each other in a need-a-restroom sort of way. The man pointing a rifle in his face is tall—or maybe the cowboy hat he's wearing is meant to make him appear that way. He's wearing an old blue T-shirt like a bandana around his face, nose to neck. I can't even see the guy's ears. Whatever he's saying to Mr. Shackelford, he must be whispering; I haven't heard a word of exchange yet. All I can see is the bandana moving—and Mr. Shackleford's corresponding responses—to the synchronization of a very serious conversation. And Mr. Shackleford's mouth quivers as he talks.