Read Online Tweaked by Katherine Holubitsky - Free Book Online

pay off your debt.”
    â€œOf course I am. Do you think I want Ratchet coming after me the way he went after you?”
    I feel my cheeks burn. But there is no point in correcting him—Chase is so out of touch with reality, he probably really does think that Ratchet was after me for something
I
had done. I scan the next customer’s items. “Later, Chase.”
    â€œIt’s for a down payment.”
    â€œLater.” I hang up. I try to smile at the next person in line. It isn’t very natural, though, and I probably just look like a guy who is suffering from gas.
    The phone rings again.
    â€œBusy place,” the customer says.
    I shrug in apology before glancing at the call display. It’s my home phone number again. I ignore it. It rings eight times before Ralph, all red and sweaty from moving boxes, emerges from the storeroom.
    â€œAren’t you going to answer that?” He pushes a shock of gray hair aside, leaving a smudge of dirt across his forehead.
    â€œIt’s a wrong number.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œThe same guy phoned a few minutes ago.”
    Ralph cocks his head a little as the phone continues to ring. I hate lying to him. Ralph always answers his phone, he listens to his customers, and that’s how he’s run his business for thirty-five years. The man in line takes the bag I hand him and leaves. Ralph returns to the storeroom. Chase doesn’t give up until the twentieth ring and I am ready to reach through the phone and wring his scrawny neck.
    Traffic in the store has slowed down when the phone rings half an hour later. This time, it’s Jade calling from the hospital. She had taken her mother to emergency that morning. Her lungs had become filled with fluid, and Jade was unable to help her. She sounds shaken and a little uncertain, not her usual positive self.
    â€œYou go.” Ralph waves toward the door when I tell him. “It sounds like she could use a little support. I’m fine. The rush is over.”
    Jade is waiting for me in the front lobby of the hospital. Holly is asleep with her head in Jade’s lap. Jade looks tired and drained, like she has barely enough energy to get up from the row of chairs. She gently moves Holly aside and gets to her feet. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she says.
    It’s instinctual to hug her. It seems to be what she needs most right then. Besides, I can’t think of anythingto say. I can’t tell her it will get better because I know that with her mother’s disease that won’t happen. So I hold on to her until I think I feel her gain a little strength. But then she begins to really cry. I pull her closer.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just...well, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I’m supposed to be at work. I’m supposed to be studying for an exam. I had to tell my friend Laura that I couldn’t go to the mall to see the sweater she said would look perfect on me. I never have even two seconds to myself.” Wiping her cheeks with the palms of her hands, she backs away a little. “I know all that sounds so selfish.”
    â€œNo, it doesn’t,” I tell her. “It sounds normal.”
    Jade takes another moment to collect herself. “They’re going to try some new antibiotics. The ones she’s been taking don’t seem to be doing much good anymore. The doctors want to keep her for a few days to see how it goes.”
    â€œAre you ready to go home?”
    She nods. “Can you wait with Holly while I make sure there’s nothing else she wants?”
    â€œOf course.” I sit down next to Holly on the row of chairs. Holly’s small body rises and falls in sleep. I’m amazed that she can sleep at all under the bright lights and with the door opening and closing, but I guess she’s probably used to being shuffled around. I pick up a six-month-old copy