The Nightlife: San Antonio
Page 18
Now this fourteen year old girl won’t leave me alone. I sorta let her sneak in my window when she needs a place to crash.
I have a double life: daytime at school, Anita, skating, and then my nights with Nadia. She's my secret friend, gives me money and listens to my problems when nobody else will.
My world is spinning out of control. Old friends have turned enemy, my grisly visions of death won’t quit, and Anita’s intentions make my head spin. Even with all that, I’ve got bigger stuff to worry about.
Nadia’s hiding something.
˃˃˃ “I could not put this book down. All I keep thinking about is what could possibly happen next. I felt as if I was back in high school with them!”
˃˃˃ “It's almost a love triangle of epic proportions or so you think....Travis blew me away with this book, I never saw what was coming.”
˃˃˃ “Amazing, I loved Mike and Anita. The characters that I didn’t feel could redeem themselves did in ways I never thought possible. I loved the ending and so not what I thought would happen. I love the element of surprise.”
Sharp, witty, dark and gritty, The Shepherd is the must read YA paranormal thriller of 2013. Get your copy now!
Chapter 1
Thursday, September 9th, 5:15 p.m.
Shit happens, life happens, but for some reason it happens to me a lot.
I was kinda hoping life would give me a break – maybe crap on somebody else for a while.
Yeah, right.
I mean, look at Justin Shelby. I’m sitting here in my car, in the McDonald’s drive through, and what is he doing? He’s climbing up the side of the damn playcenter. Probably faded on prescription pills he stole from his mom. This guy is begging for life to hit him upside the head. But it never does.
And then there’s his buddy, Tommy Schroeder, goading him on.
“Do it man! You’re almost there!”
One of the wrestling elite of Moses Lake High School, Tommy’s mere presence inspired Justin to new heights of idiocy. Justin scaled the side of the outdoor playcenter like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.
Justin skated religiously, a regular at the downtown Moses Lake skatepark across from the Aquatic Center. Like most of us skaters, he was thin, moderately athletic, and had a strong sense of balance from endless hours busting his ass on the concrete. Climbing the playcenter wasn’t any more dangerous than the skate tricks we recorded and posted to YouTube.
He quickly reached the apex, damn spider monkey. He stood exalted atop the dome of the airplane-shaped plastic toy. An elementary kid inside gawked up at him from the Plexiglas window.
“This is classic!” Tommy whipped out his cell phone and started recording.
Looked like a good idea to me, so I did the same. You never know what folly you might catch on video. I mean, this was live action stuff. I could be ten seconds away from a viral Youtube video, Gangnam Style.
Tommy encouraged Justin’s antics with loud catcalls. Justin proclaimed his status as king of the hill, arms held high.
“Yeah bitches, hell yeah!” Justin yelled and hooted at the top of his lungs, pumping his fists in the air.
I narrated to my potential audience of millions, “This is a flagrant violation of the rules.” I panned my cellphone camera over to the placard by the entry gate and zoomed in to catch a clear shot of the playcenter rules. “There it is folks, rule number three: No climbing outside the playcenter. And we can’t forget rule number four: No children over the age of fourteen allowed. For the record, Justin is sixteen.”
Returning to the action, I caught Tommy’s upturned face lit with excitement, and then slid the view up the playcenter to Justin. “There’s the big man, putting on a show for his new best friend.”
It kinda stung in a way I didn’t like to admit, that Justin was doing all this for Tommy. A couple months ago, Justin was my best friend, my idiot. Or so I had thought.
But Tommy was cool. Popular and wealthy, he also happened to be one of the biggest arrogant pricks in my class, and Justin’s ticket into the ‘cool crowd.’
“Always trying to prove something.” I shook my head.
Tommy and I don’t get along so well. It’s a Rachelle thing. One of those life things that happens to me so often.
I should just keep my mouth shut and catch some choice video, but you know what they say, the observer always affects the observed …
“Hey ass munch, get down before you break your neck!”
Justin’s head whipped around to the sound of my voice, causing his body to sway with the sudden movement. As soon as he spotted me parked in the drive-through a nasty smirk bloomed across his face. In a moment of sublime inspiration, Justin dropped his pants with a show of lily-white butt cheeks. He obviously hadn’t seen me recording with my cell phone.
Tommy noticed me too. “How about a double McAss burger Mikey?”
He loves to call me Mikey. He knows I hate it. No one but Tommy calls me Mikey.
The girl delivering my cheeseburger held her hand over her mouth to cover her braces as she giggled and snarfed at the sight of Justin’s naked rump shaking back and forth while he taunted, “It’s a full moon tonight Mikey. Hope you enjoy the view!”
Perfect. Now Justin’s calling me Mikey. God I hate that name.
“It’s Michael, asshole! And thanks for the killer video. Goin’ straight to Facebook.” I held my cell phone out the window for him.
Justin looked back over his shoulder in surprise, attempting to pull up his pants at the same time. The knee-jerk reaction caused him to lose his delicate balance atop the apex of the plastic airplane. He fell onto his right side, and slithered down the side of the playcenter. His hands shot out across the smooth surface, clawing, seeking a grip. There was nothing to grab.
I watched him slide inexorably down the outside of the playcenter, pants and underwear still down around his thighs. He tried rolling into position for a feet-first landing. The maneuver would’ve worked if not for the fence being so close to the playcenter. The bright yellow, powder-coated aluminum fence that had aided his climb to the top now blocked his landing on the way down.
Justin’s momentum came to an abrupt halt as he hit the top of the fence ass first.
I cringed and almost ruined the shot. “That’s gotta hurt.”
Justin’s blood-curdling scream of agony made my skin crawl. He sat there, squealing like a stuck pig. The top section of fence tubing had impaled him where the sun don’t shine. Pegged in the holiest of holies, he had two inches of aluminum post going in through the out door.
“Oh my god this is insane!”
I saved the ninety-three second video clip of Justin on my smart phone and posted it directly to my Facebook timeline. I had a momentary twinge of conscience. I mean, he was still crying, and Tommy was trying to climb the fence to help him. It looked really painful.
“I can always delete it later …”
I was gonna call for help, but Tommy already had his phone out as Justin yelled in his face, “Call 911!”
I only had a few minutes to get to work. As I drove off, I thought about taking that video down. I probably should have. But it only took fifteen minutes for my video clip to find its way to over 200 students at Moses Lake High School, shared over and over to dozens of Facebook profiles. My first ever viral video.
I guess life happens to Justin Shelby too.
* * * *
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Travis Luedke is a husband, father, and author of Urban Fantasy Thriller, Paranormal Romance, Contemporary Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction, and Sci-fi. He is currently catching a third degree sunburn in San Antonio, Texas, and loving every minute of it.
As the author of the Nightlife Series novels, Travis lives very vicariously through his writings. He invites you to enjoy his macabre flights of fancy, but be warned: The Nightlife Series is violent, sexy, and occasionally violently sexy.
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