The Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander [51]
“I guess you’ll just have to wait and find out,” he finally said.
“Will I? Maybe just the opposite is happening. Maybe I’m taking you down, Staples.”
He smirked.
“Oh, Christian. You’ve got guts—I’ll give you that. You know, I could use a guy with your combination of brains and guts. I suppose I could hold off on destroying your life if you’d like to come and work for me instead? I think we could really help a lot of kids and make a lot of money if we joined forces, don’t you think? Plus, that way, you’d get to live.” He gave me a big smile.
I wondered if his offer was a trick or if he really wanted to work with me. Either way I’d refuse. I didn’t like the sort of business he ran. Plus, he seemed a little too psychotic to be a good boss.
“No thanks,” I said as calmly as I could.
“It’s too bad you have to be so stubborn,” he said. “I guess we’re back to me destroying you, then. You’re going to have paid dearly by the time I’m finished, too. You’ll be wishing that you had never been born. That’s a promise. And I don’t break promises.”
A long silence followed. It seemed like he was waiting for me to crack. Every once in a while he would snatch another cookie off of the plate and put it in his mouth. He always chewed slowly and quietly with his mouth closed. And his almost black eyes never left my face. Didn’t this guy ever blink? After almost a few minutes he spoke again.
“It’s too bad it had to be like this, Christian. You seem pretty smart. You remind me a lot of myself when I was in grade school.”
“That’s too bad,” I said.
He laughed. He laughed for almost a minute while I just sat there.
“See? You’re a funny guy, Christian. It’s hard not to like you.” As he said it, his fist closed around an Oreo he had been holding. It pulverized into a clumpy mess of cream filling and black crumbs.
I wanted him to stop using my real name. I kept looking at his facial hair. He had a beard and tattoos. How did I get involved in a war against this guy? How did I stand a chance?
“Well, I best be off now,” Staples said. “My dog needs to be fed. Hey, did you know that pit bulls eat just about anything you feed them? Cool, huh?”
With that, Staples got up, finished his milk, and walked past me into the living room. I heard the front door open and close a few seconds later. He left me there with a half-empty plate of Oreos and a bunch of questions rattling around in my head like popcorn. Did he know about our plan? It seemed unlikely, but then again the timing of his visit was pretty suspicious. I really hated the thought that he might know more than I did. I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. But I’d find out tomorrow. If my plan worked, it would deal him a blow that he wasn’t expecting.
My mom came back into the kitchen.
“Oh, your friend left. He seemed like such a nice young man,” she said.
I rolled my eyes and reached for the plate of Oreos. If only she knew.
I spent that evening balancing out my Books for the new business we’d taken in that day. That was normally Vince’s job, but I hadn’t talked to Vince much that day. I guessed we were still a little mad at each other, though I still had no idea why he would be mad at me. I also hadn’t really been able to stop thinking about Vince’s answer to my question about our Funds at the lake cabin.
Plus, I was really starting to panic about the Cubs game. It would make me feel better to do a Funds check. To actually hold and see and count that kind of cash makes it feel more real. Usually whenever I’m worried about money for some reason or another, simply doing a Funds check makes me feel better, reminding me that it’s still there, that all we worked for still exists and that a trip to a Cubs World Series game is actually possible.
Once my parents were asleep, I retrieved all of our Funds from the hiding spot in my room and began counting and verifying against the amounts I had in my Books.
It was near the end of counting that I realized something was off. A few days before