This Strange Addiction, Julie Steimle [little readers txt] 📗

Chapter Three

Audry woke early and dressed for the wet. She had arranged to be at the beach cleanup for a week with the Green Club, expecting a large turnout, though she knew not all the members could come as regularly as she could. They had school and jobs. When they had time, they would be there, they said. Hogan also could not come the second day, as he had work at the foundation where he was employed as a traveling water quality specialist. So, it would be her, Neil, William, and Jandra Washington among the others she did not know so well.

Her roommate Silva Lewis wasn’t there for breakfast or yoga, again. It was weird. Lately she had been leaving the apartment early and coming home late. Audry knew she came home because Silvia left her notes. Her most recent note was on the refrigerator:

Don’t wait up for me. I am sleeping over at a friend’s this week.

Sil

Silvia didn’t have very many friends, though. Not, at least, among the people Audry knew. Besides being a former practicing witch—a concept Audry found mind-blowing even now—Silvia gave off a dangerous vibe. She used to dress all gothic, but since she had been working in a hair salon in New York City, she had taken on a more quirky persona, the type you trusted to style your hair with skill. She was probably staying at an apartment of one of the other stylists.

So, without any more to do, Audry went out to her car and started it.

Something in the engine rattled. Frowning to herself, Audry knew eventually she needed to take the car into the shop to get it looked at. She just didn’t have the time or the spare cash. Thinking on that, Audry shut off the car and got back out, running back to her apartment to get her box of wolf tee-shirts, which she could sell at the beach to people during breaks. Fundraising was fundraising.

The trip did not take too long. Audry liked the drive, though she was not fond of the traffic. When she pulled to the curb, she saw there was already a Deacon Enterprises truck, the driver waiting outside it, smoking.

Getting out, walking by, Audry glanced to see if there were any cigarette butts on the ground. There was one. Glancing to the driver, Audry shot him a disapproving look.

“What?” he said, raising his hands defensively.

 Lurching to a halt, as she had first intended just to walk by, Audry turned and said, “I happen to know your employer, Mr. Deacon. And I know he would appreciate it if you would not make a mess on this beach.”

His eyes narrowed, questioning that statement. But as the people down below greeted her with waves and calls, he hastily stubbed out the cigarette he was smoking and picked up the butt off the ground, stashing both in the truck’s ashtray.

Neil was already down there, so was Jandra, dressed in rain gear.

Audry joined them.

More people came as the day progressed. That guy Bobo had arrived alone. No Matthew and no Rick, but he joined them all at the shore, looking a little more like he had volunteered for the job this time. He was smiling, but still avoiding human contact. Audry reminded herself what Matthew had said about him. The guy had been abused by an uncle and his family had been murdered. Clearly he hated being touched.

Bobo did not say much, but worked silently with a group near where Audry was picking up wrappers and bags. There was even a barnacled basketball and a pair of spandex swim shorts in the shoreline flotsam. Candy wrappers and potato chip bags were among their sea finds, and they raked out plastic six pack drink rings.

Then some idiot down the shore picked up a jelly fish. They had thought it was a bag.

A person on the beach up from them said you had pee on it to treat the sting, but no one volunteered. Then someone else said you could pour beer on it and it did the same thing. That was when someone was sent to fetch the beer—which was conveniently in his car. Audry wondered if she had to have a word with him. They didn’t need drunken volunteers at the cleanup. They would get in the way.

“Lunch break!” someone from the Green Tree club shouted amid the work.

With a consensus of cheers and calls to do just that, the clusters of volunteers left their half full bags on the shore and heaved up the full ones to the parking lots above. They all gathered up top around their cars to either get food they had brought in, or to go purchase food somewhere nearby. A lot of them had brought packed lunch, like Audry did. She got hers out of the trunk of her car as a pure vegan meal would be difficult to hunt down in that neighborhood—at least one that was truly vegan. Vegetarian options were available, but they were barely vegetarian, mostly with fake meat.

With her trunk open, her eyes rested on her box of wolf tee shirts, which was next to her cooler. Though she wanted to sell them, she had to do it tactfully. A lot of people in these groups were not fond on entrepreneurial spirit—even if it was for fundraising. They were more about petitioning for free money rather than selling a product people might want to earn money, and she had to keep that in mind. So, thinking of a good strategy, Audry’s thoughts went to Bobo again. He had wanted a shirt.

Audry looked for him.

Her eyes raked over the parking lot. It took a bit, but she found Bobo next to what had to be a company car for Deacon Enterprises. It was a sleek sedan, hybrid, perfectly clean, and did not quite match his outfit. He was sitting on the rear bumper eating cold chicken out of a Tupperware container.

“Hey.” Audry approached him, politely ignoring his chicken meal as it did not pay to harass a potential customer over his dietary choices. “Yesterday you said you wanted a wolf tee shirt?”

Lifting his eyes, Bobo smirked. He set down his food container of chicken (and apparently rice) nodding. “Yeah. Did you bring one?”

Waving for him to come back to her car, Audry said, “I brought the whole box. You can choose your size.”

Hearing that, Bobo nodded, carrying his lunch with him. They went to her car. Audry reached into the box inside the trunk and pulled out tee shirts, guessing his size. “Large or extra-large?”

“Give me extra-large,” he said.

Peering in, Audry dug down deeper into the box as the top levels were smalls and mediums. She had lots of those. As she examined the labels, the extra larges being at the bottom, her hand felt something hard, roundish and small in with the tee shirts. Curious, she extracted it, lifting it to the light. And she recognized it, though she could not remember what it was.

It was a small jar, the size of a lip balm container. Turning it in her fingers, she looked for a label, but there was none. Then her memory jogged. A rippled of electricity ran through her as she remembered this was the balm that Daisy MacTire—Rick’s ex—had forgotten at the convention booth less than a year ago. Audry had found it left behind then and had put it in her pocket. But after a while she had just tossed it back into the box with the tee shirts again as the idea of putting on a pheromone enhancer to attract men seemed ludicrous. She had entirely forgotten about it.

Shaking her head, Audry pocketed it and delved back for the tee shirt Bobo wanted. Grabbing an extra-large, Audry held it up to Bobo to see if it was the right size. “Try it on and see if it fits. We’ve got larger sizes if you want.”

Taking it, Bobo lifted it up to his chest also, then tugged off his jacket. The air was less misty that day. And being out of the ocean spray, he was starting to sweat.

Bobo pulled the shirt over his current one. It fit fine. In fact, it fit really fine. And the rust-haired wolf on it stared back with strength.

He grinned at it.

“So, you like it?” Audry asked.

Nodding, Bobo then dug into his pocket for his wallet.

And this was where the magic of sales worked. Audry knew others were watching. Neil and Jandra rolled their eyes as they were fully aware of Audry’s fundraising efforts. But those that did not know but were curious, got to witness what an amazing tee shirt Bobo had just purchased. And maybe they could get one too.

“Are you selling those?” someone from Green Tree club asked.

Pretending to be startled by his interest, Audry turned and said, “Well, he asked about my shirt yesterday, but yes, I sell these to fundraise for my PhD. You know how expensive school is.”

He nodded. “Can I get one?”

“They’re twenty dollars,” Audry advised him, in case that sounded too expensive.

He smirked at her, willing to pay twenty dollars for a tee shirt with that wolf on it.

And then others approached her.

Perfect.

Of course a product was only worth as much as people were willing to pay for it. If he hadn’t been such hunted looking wolf, or if she hadn’t chosen a good quality tee shirt fabric, it would be worth a lot less. It also depended on the crowd. This crowd was interested.

Bobo eventually went back to his car and finished off his lunch, quietly keeping to himself. Audry found it rather sad, Bobo’s self-imposed solitude. He looked so lonely. I kind of made her think of Rick. He was like that sometimes, though he had a lot of friends. She wandered Bobo’s way after finally closing her car trunk and locking it, sales done. “Thanks. You helped me a lot.”

Bobo looked up, surprised he was being talked to. His eyes rested on her carefully, and then he smiled, nodding.

But Audry had to ask, as it was on her mind now that she saw him enjoying the shirt, “You know the wolf, don’t you?”

Staring at her with more surprise, Bobo slowly nodded. “But how do you know that?”

Shrugging a little sheepishly, Audry said, “I dunno. All of Rick’s friends, whenever they see this wolf, they laugh and ask me how I got this wolf to sit still for a picture.”

Chuckling deep, the rich sound resonating from Bobo’s chest, he nodded. “Yeah… I thought about it. But then I figured the wolf just likes you.”

Audry blushed. It reached to her ears and made her chest feel hot.

What a notion! The wolf posed for her because he liked her? She shook her head and sat on the car bumper next to him. “No. Uh, that’s cute, but uh, I actually got the picture by a lucky chance. This wolf ran into a den I was in, you know, when I was doing research. To be honest, I was surprised he didn’t attack me. He was wounded.”

Bobo stared, entirely startled. “Wounded?”

Nodding, thinking back on that particularly frightening evening, she murmured, “Yeah. Shot, in the leg. I tranquilized him and the got the bullet out.”

Audry then reached into her shirt collar, extracting the bullet she always wore on a chain. She had put it on a longer chain than her earlier one so it could tuck deeper into her shirt to keep it from slipping out in mixed company. She had long learned that some people should not hear her wolf rescue story. Too many people were prejudiced against her wolf, as a lot of ‘monster-hunting’ kooks assumed it was actually H. Richard Deacon III as a werewolf. And of course that was all nonsense. But she held up the bullet for Bobo to see. He would understand.

“I dug this out of his leg.”

Bobo reached for it and turned it gently around in his long fingers. He read the name off the side,