Revenge(9)

Amanda snaps her fingers at me. “What?”

I close the wallet and pull the olive green jacket tighter around me. There’s no way I’m going to tell her that my mugger made a huge donation to my wallet. Then she’d think I’m the liar.

“Nothing,” I say casually. “Just a little shaken up.”

She slides off Caleb’s lap and points at me, grinning. “Stay out of trouble. Don’t go wandering around without me until you know the neighborhood.”

“Okay.” I nod obediently.

She tugs on Caleb’s hand and pulls his skinny body off the chair. “Come with me,” she says. “I have a shelf in my room that I need a man to help me put up.”

He follows along behind her, out of the kitchen. He says, “That’s what you said last night, but there was no shelf.”

I shake my head and smile, even though my cheeks are flushing again. How can someone talk about sex right in front of their roommate?

Eventually, I’ll get used to Amanda in all her Queen Bitch glory. I hope.

Now that I’m alone in the kitchen, I open my wallet again and carefully count the cash.

My money has magically doubled.

I know how it happened. Either the mugger or the street musician must have put money in here.

That’s the how, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why.





Chapter 5


It’s Monday morning.

I could hardly sleep last night, because I was worried about my alarm clock not working. I kept waking up to check the settings.

Aside from the lack of sleep, the day starts decently enough. My skanky roommate Amanda hasn’t come in to share the bathroom with me.

Mainly because I locked the door.

My injured eye is only slightly swollen. I’m able to cover the bruising with makeup. I change outfits three times, which isn’t too bad, then I leave the house.

The sky is blue and the weather is nice, the same as yesterday. I still can’t believe it’s winter back home. California is amazing.

There’s a spring in my step as I walk to the bus stop. The bus I plan to take shows up right on time. The way people talk about LA being such a car-oriented city, I was expecting the buses to be much worse, but the one I get on is just fine.

I arrive at the building twenty minutes early for my first day as an intern.

Unlike Sony, Universal, and the Warner Group, my employer isn’t big enough to have its own building.

Morris Music is one of the so-called independent labels. If you put all the indies together, they make up a good chunk of the music industry. I’d love to work for one of the big guys some day, but everyone has to start somewhere.

I walk up to the big, glass doors, and prepare to meet my destiny.

Walking inside, I frown at what I find. The lobby is different from how it looked on the company’s website. In the photo, I saw marble floors, a huge open space, and a grand staircase curving up to the second level of the lobby.

What I see before me in reality is a big wall of security and metal detectors. This is like what I went through at the airport on my way to California.

People in suits push by me from behind. They’re annoyed that I’m standing in their way like a country hick who’s never seen anything like this, except on TV.

I approach a man in a uniform and ask, “Who should I see about one of those keycard pass thingies?”

“Thingies?” He looks at me warily and pulls out a tablet.

“Yeah. Um. Keycards?”

“Keycards.” He taps his screen, holding the tablet at an angle so I can’t see anything. “Nope. You’re not on the list.”

“But I haven’t even told you my name.”

“Miss, I very much doubt you’re Harold Chow. He’s the only one on the visitor list for this morning.”

“I’m not a visitor, though. I’m an employee. Well, technically, I’m an intern. But I am getting paid, so that makes me an employee of Morris Music. They take up five floors of this building.”

He narrows his eyes at me. His upper lip twitches from side to side, making his mustache move in a comical way that almost makes me laugh.

“I’ve heard of them,” he deadpans. “One minute. Wait here. Don’t touch anything.”

I wait.

Time passes. Ten minutes, and then twenty.

They haven’t forgotten about me, because I glimpse Mr. Mustache occasionally, and he nods my way.

I’ve got a bad feeling about today.

Now I’m late for my first day on the job.

A grouchy-looking man with an even bigger mustache than the first guy comes up to me.

“You should have come in last week,” he says.

“Last week, I wasn’t even in California. I just flew in Saturday.”

“We’re here on Saturdays.”