Chapter 1
As I pulled the worn out tire off of the rim I was working on, my coworker Richard yelled out the lyrics to the “number one song of the day”, horribly off tune and grinning while he did it. Everyone knows how bad a singer he is, including himself.
“Honestly, I don’t know why you’re not famous Richard.” I yelled over the sounds of impact guns and music from the radio, which always seemed to be blaring through the shop, and grinned back at him. After working at the local tire shop in town, Budget Performance, for just over a year and a half now, this was my comment every single time Richard started singing.
My assistant manager, Mark, popped in and belted out the current lyric right after Richard, and everyone groaned while I laughed and said, “You two should start a band. Your sound could be ‘The Sounds of Dying Animals’. It would be revolutionary.”
They ruffled my hair and pushed me around, laughing while they did so. “Don’t be jealous. One day that mouth is gonna get you in trouble, Nova.” Richard says to me while pulling off his own tire and mounting a new one, seating the bead with a single push.
“By that day I will hopefully be a famous boxer.” I reply with fake confidence while dancing on my toes and throwing a couple fake punches at an imaginary opponent. He just laughs and we work while listening to the music.
As we finished up the Ford F-150 we were working on, I took the paperwork to the front counter and saw that there were a lot of customers in the showroom with no front counter staff to be seen.
I stepped up to the counter and helped a few of the customers. They just had generic questions, like “What kind of tires will fit on my vehicle?” and “What kind of winter tires should I get?” or “What kind of rims do you carry?” And the answers to those are “Stock size, Nokian all the way, and we don’t carry a lot in store, but we can order in anything you want.” In that order.
The last customer had pissed me off before he even got in the door. First of all, he parked right in front of the doors. There is parking ten feet from where he parked with concrete blocks titled, ‘parking’. Second of all, he was driving a fucking white Hummer. And lastly, I was still the only counter worker in the front. Which meant - damn it all - that I would have to help him. I couldn’t even fake a smile as he walked in with an air of superiority and a gross smelling expensive cologne, with a name probably along the lines of, ‘Enrique Iglesias in a Sharknado’.
I took a deep breath, trying to keep my voice calm and even as I said, hopefully politely, “I can help you down here.”
“I am actually looking for someone to take a quick look at my tire and hopefully get a quick repair.” He said, acting as if I don’t even work here. That just made me breath heavily out of my nose in anger.
“Why don’t we get a workorder started, and I will pull your vehicle in.” I said trying so, so hard to be polite to this arrogant idiot.
“Um… Actually, I would like one of the guys in the back to do it.” He said, trying to look around and find someone else, probably male, to help him. But of course, only Kathy, the boss's daughter, came back to the front.
“They’re actually all working on something in the back.” I spoke through clenched teeth now, definitely not appreciating the tone he was using with me. As if I haven’t worked here for a year and a half.
He breathed through his nose deeply and sighed out a “Fine.” and handed his keys over like I was the one with the problem.
I took his keys and went to the back to get a seat cover, because his vehicle looked like it was kept pristine. As I walked towards the large white Hummer, I see now that it is jacked up about a foot and a half, with offset wheels and tires that are so big that they really shouldn’t be on this vehicle. Whatever. If his parents want to spend this much money on their spoilt child, then it’s really not my problem. I pull the dumb Hummer in and jack it up; as I pull the rim and tire off the vehicle, I can see the outside signs of the tire being runflat, just another problem with driving a douchemobile. I rolled it towards the breakdown bay as Kathy brought the paperwork and put it on the clipboard above the bay that the Hummer was in.
“Fuck!” I yelled at Richard after taking the tire off the stupid aftermarket wheel, which is way too large for actually being on a Hummer, it was totally runflat.
“Oh, what a fucking idiot.” Richard said in a mutter, pulling some shredded rubber from the inside of the Hummer tire.
I groaned loudly and threw the tire to the ground angrily, trying to work out some of the aggression I felt towards the dumbass who drove this problem vehicle to the shop. I grabbed the workorder off the clipboard, grumbling in agitation as I took it up to Kathy quickly scribbling down RUNFLAT and my name at the bottom of the page before handing it to her.
A small laugh escaped me at the panic in her eyes as she saw that she was going to have to cause some conflict between her and the absolutely annoying customer. Maybe she shouldn’t be so spineless.
Leaving Kathy to deal with the problem that was supposed to be ‘a simple repair’, I went to the back to buff and seal the bead on the wheel for when the Hummer driver decided what he wanted to do with the vehicle.
I found out pretty quickly when Kathy came in the door calling my name and handing me the new workorder with a set of fucking four brand new tires, and of course they are the most expensive tires in the shop. Why not when you can afford a vehicle that costs the equivalent of a decent sized house?
“Jack it up, Richard! He wants four fucking new tires!” I shouted, agitated as I went to the showroom to find the tires.
I found the tires, but of course they had to be on the top shelf. Damn I hated being the shortest person in this shop. Huffing out an annoyed breath, I crumpled the workorder to put it in my pocket so I had both hands free to pull the tires down from the top. As I was attempting to pull one down, by pushing it and pulling it back down towards me, I heard someone behind me. I turned around expecting to see Richard, but instead see the problem customer who doesn’t understand that not everyone who works in a tire shop is fucking male. I shoot him a fake smile and finally manage to pull a tire from the rack before throwing it down to the ground, almost catching the customer in the shins. Smugly, I smirk and reach for the next one.
“You might want to take a step back, people actually work here.” I told him with a plastered smile on my face.
He didn’t look impressed and moved to the side of me to reach up to pull a tire down with one hand, dropping it at my feet. I glared at him, and not so subtly pushed him aside as I pulled another tire down with both hands and dropped it to the floor beside the others without looking back, then reached for the next one before he could even try.
I backed away from the shelf and stood two of the tires up and began rolling them towards the door of the shop. I heard him do the same and rolled my eyes before ramming the shop door to bounce it off the tires and open it without having to awkwardly stand to the side, and try to push both tires through the door. The Hummer owner did the awkward tire-door shuffle before following me into the breakdown bay to drop off the tires. He tried to stay and watch us work as I shot glares at him for being annoying with his atrocious vehicle. Richard, on the other hand, was not so subtle.
“Hey man, you can’t be back here without steeltoes and safety glasses. You gotta go wait in the waiting area or outside the bays.” Richard said in a firm, but not rude way. I admired that.
The Hummer customer nodded once and went to just outside the bays and watched us work. We tried to ignore him as Richard and I sang horrendously off key to pop music that was playing. The set of four took us about 45 minutes to finish, which wasn’t bad for a changeover, but annoying because we were now 15 minutes past closing. I changed out of my work clothes and got in my truck. I let out a long sigh,deciding that I didn’t want to go home just yet so I went out for dinner and drove around trying to decide what to do.
I was sitting on the tailgate of my old pickup truck later that night, watching the stars dance at The Point, and relishing the last night of freedom before my final year of school. I contemplated the last few years of my life. No boyfriend. Ever. Can't exactly say that's a negative. Only two friends total. Again, not a negative. One parent, my mum. Shitty job and shitty pay, but at least I still had a job in this small town. Even with the abundance of people moving to town to work here with all the businesses going up, our small town still had a shitty economy.
So many people moved here this year that over the last year and a half, a new high school went up. Not that it matters. Only one more year before we are sent off to not know what we are going to do with the rest of our lives.
Aftermarket high beams from a jacked up new pickup flashed in the parking lot of The Point, jarring me from my thoughts, and making me roll my eyes in annoyance. Taking that as my cue to leave, I sighed and packed up my homemade quilt and Stanley thermos, before hopping down and closing the tailgate. My old Dodge rumbled to life as I put it in gear and pulled out of the parking lot, just as a bunch of idiots hopped out of the truck, something a teenager with a minimum wage job obviously doesn't pay for. Dodged a bullet there.
People in general are awful, but those spoilt brats take it to a different level. Their 'life problems' are ‘different’ than those of us in the real world. For instance, I know for a fact that that vehicle isn't cheap. And that attracts what I like to call, 'The Bunnies'. The Bunnies are girls who peak after middle school, their whole lives leading up to being popular in high school for a couple of measly years. In all honesty, it's not the most important thing in the world for most people, but on the other hand, it's the only thing in the world to others.
My headlights lit up against the wall of my old house as I pulled into the driveway. It looked like my mum was home, and so was my older brother. I cut the engine and took a deep breath, breathing out slowly as I pulled the pins from my freshly dyed, ombre purple hair. Examining the ends, I admired the deep rich colour, and enjoyed how soft it felt even after the treatment. I took another deep breath and hopped out of the truck, then slammed the squeaky old door of the cab shut.
It was quiet in the house when I got inside. No surprise there. My mom had lost her job about a week ago and spent most of her time on the computer, playing online games, while my brother was probably sleeping off his high from this afternoon.
I heard my small dog, whimpering from my room as I approached it and grinned as she bolted out when I opened the door. She ran past me in a furry ball of blonde, and wiggled her way to the door to be let outside.
"Alright Pixie, you ferocious animal, let’s go outside!" I coo at her to get her riled up, and even more excited.
She shot out of the door and down the steps of the porch without looking back. Dumb dog. Just as I turned around to close the door on her, I heard them, coyotes. They got closer and closer every night. Last year we had some howling right against the house. Today they were just across the field. Perks of living out of town, all sorts of animals wanted to eat you. Not coyotes, but they were annoying little buggers. Howling through all hours of the night. Recently though, I could have sworn that they aren't coyotes but something bigger; wolves maybe. My mum says it's all in my head. That there are no wolves in our area. To which I said “Alright mum, let me know when you start actually listening to the howling.”
I went back outside to watch Pixie, just in case, and as I was about to call her back in, she started barking like crazy at something in the fields.
My heart started racing and she came running up the stairs to my side. As I peered out into the darkness, all I saw was our old green house and overgrown garden beside it. I could make out hints of the forgotten pool through the dried out alfalfa. But there was nothing there.
I breathed out and looked down at Pixie, who looked up at me with her happy little dog face. I rolled my eyes and motioned for her to go inside. I turned to go inside, but took one last glance out toward the field and almost had a heart attack when I saw two blue eyes from just past the fence that separates the field from the yard, glinting with the light cast through the open door.
I stumbled back into the house, slammed the door closed, and locked it. No way in hell was anything getting in here. Fucking hell, living out here is creepy.
I had to calm down. With the first day of school tomorrow, I just knew that I was going to lose sleep over that damn coyote, because they creep me out. I blew out a breath at Pixie, who was doing her happy dog dance, and went to my room. She followed me around the house as I got ready for bed. I had just laid down and closed my eyes when those damn coyotes started howling again. My eyes flew open as I stilled in my bed, completely freaked out.
“Come on, Nova... Pull yourself together.” I whispered to myself as I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep after listening to the eerie howling of the coyotes.
As I closed my eyes once more, sleep was finally creeping in. I tossed and turned all night. not really excited about school, but it was an event that was happening, so it was a restless night. I woke up when my alarm went off at 6:30am, not really wanting to get up yet I rolled over and started reading for a few minutes before I should start the day.
Getting ready for the day took way too long, and I knew I was going to be late. Sending a quick text to Sam saying I was going to be late, I asked her what we had to do when we got there. Like the beginning of every year, there was an assembly talking about the expectations for the year and what happens now that we are seniors.
The parking lot was packed when I got to school, that's to be expected when you are the last person there. I jogged to the gym and stood by the door not really listening to the droning on of the principal, but rather scanning the crowd for Sam and Nevada. I did not see them first, however. The first person that caught my eye was the fucking Hummer owner from last night at the shop. I glared at him instantly even though he wasn't even looking at me, but talking to some other fuckboy looking idiot in the stands. The principal had just finished his speech when the Hummer idiot looked up and caught my eye. He smirked and did the stupid nod thing. I glared, flipping him the bird and walking out of the gym with the flow of people, towards homeroom to get my class list, hoping that would be the last I saw of that headache for the rest of the year.
