It had been a month since Fat Daisy started giving Carlos and Radley free comics for their delivery work that day. Although Radley didn’t know it, Carlos had since been making deliveries for Fat Daisy on weekends and after half-days at school, all of which he did with the understanding that he would be paid in either money or comics, whatever he felt like, at the end of the month. This was in addition to the two-a-week bonus he got for not telling anyone what he was doing, even his mother, who only knew he was doing some odds-and-ends work at Fat Daisy’s. (His mother, of course, had been beaming with pride after she found out her son got a job.)
“Hey, Nance, check this out!” Peter bellowed. He had spent most of the day at the newsstand sales counter, reading the newspaper. After about 9:30 A.M. things usually quieted down enough for him to catch up on the news. Today’s paper left him wide-eyed.
“What is it?” Fat Daisy yelled back. Nancy Dayton, who now wore a ring which told the world she would soon become Mrs Nacny Langston, had spent the entire morning putting together packages for the Internet orders which were supposed to by five o’clock. “Shipped by the end of business day,” was one of her promises. Doing this not only pleased their customers, it also cut down on the number of cancellations.
Peter walked in, newspaper folded to feature a small story on page B-3. He put the paper in front of her and started reading: “’Police have arrested Plantation resident Rhea Cummings on narcotics possession and distribution charges following an investigation which revealed her to be at the center of a massive drug ring. Police first began investigating Ms Cummings following an investigation into the dealings of convicted child pornographer Uriel “Mr Funland” Franco.’” He pulled the paper back and asked, “Isn’t that Radley’s mom?”
“She sure is,” Fat Daisy said in a disbelieving tone. She grabbed the paper and continued reading. Peter said something to her just as he returned to the newsstand, but she didn’t catch it. She only stared at the paper. And then she smiled.
Just scrolling down to the comments to let you know I will definitely start reading this over the weekend 😉
I’m starting to think I should have paginated this…
I just read this, and I was actually telling the kids “Be quiet! Go away!” You definitely had me hooked. One thing, though, the boys seem much older than 8. I would peg them at around 11 . . .
Glad to hear you liked it! As for the boys, everyone’s been telling me the same thing, 11 or 12. Guess I should go hang around with a few more 8 year old boys. (Writing this has taught me that I need to work on my research a bit more. It’s also taught me that not everyone appreciates extremely multifaceted characters.)
I’ll be doing a major rewrite of the story to incorporate some of the critiques I’ve been getting. They include (1) the boys’ ages/actions (and their innocence, which is more akin to 6 year olds) (2) the character of Peter, who to many has seemed to amble around sort of pointlessly, (3) the elimination (or re-construction) of the first chapter, which both sets up the expectations of the story as being a comic book tale and feels like I’m still trying to feel my way around. There are other things, but these are the major points.
By the way, would it tick anyone off if I now mentioned Carlos is gay? I kid! I kid!