Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69069 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69069 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
The cop did kick me that time.
Tears were now pouring out of my eyes as I prayed I would stop.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Inwardly, I pleaded with my brain to stop.
Please, please, please.
But the more scared I got, the worse my Tourette’s became.
I couldn’t help it.
My brain was just wired wrong.
I did things, said things, and ultimately made a fool of myself at the worst, most inopportune times.
It’d been that way since I was a kid.
On my first date with Tule Ross, the head tuba player in the band, he’d leaned in for a kiss and I’d shouted in his face.
On my first time trying to have sex, I screamed at him and made inappropriate comments.
Needless to say, I was not in a good frame of mind right then.
I was unable to control it.
Trust me, I’d tried.
And there were only a few things that were able to calm me down.
Sadly, none of those things were options at this moment in time.
I couldn’t sing a fuckin’ song.
I didn’t think he’d like me running, either. Which was one of the things that I did when the anxiety got too bad, and my Tourette’s started to act up.
“Lady, give me your purse.”
I wouldn’t give her my purse.
I couldn’t.
My hands physically wouldn’t allow me to let go.
And that was when my mouth started to take over.
“Listen here, you little dirty whore fifteen-year-old girl,” I found myself saying. It was as if I was having an out of body experience. “You will back off. You will take your dirty drugged up boyfriend, get out of here, and never look back. You will kick him to the curb the first chance you get, and you will take a fuckin’ shower, because bitch, you stink.”
The words weren’t even past my lips when she reared back and tried to punch me.
But my daddy didn’t raise no fool.
I may have Tourette’s, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t know how to protect myself.
After the first schoolyard bully tried to beat me up in fourth grade because I was different, I’d learned to protect myself. At least, from kids—which this girl most certainly was.
I couldn’t give her my purse.
I had a gun in there.
It wasn’t loaded.
The bullets were in a separate compartment than the gun itself. The magazine was even in a different zippered area.
Altogether, it would take a lot for me to get it going.
But the cop next to me on the other hand?
He could do what he needed with it.
I unzipped my purse and pulled the gun out and placed it on the ground.
The cop’s eyes that were watching me with barely contained anger flicked down, something like understanding rolling through him, causing his face to become blank.
“Get her under control, kid!” the druggie bellowed.
“I’m trying!” the girl snapped. “She’s mean.”
I wasn’t mean.
It wasn’t mean to fight for your life.
What was mean was that she was there in the first place.
“You’re a despicable excuse for a human being,” I snarled as I unzipped the second compartment, pulling out bullets.
The last thing to go was the magazine, and then I pulled my hand back out of my purse and flipped her off.
I couldn’t help it. And if you didn’t notice, I couldn’t help a lot of things.
Like, I couldn’t help the way that my hands latched onto the display case of magnifying glasses that I’d nearly run into earlier when I’d seen the hot cop. I also couldn’t help the way that I pulled them down and pushed the entire case at her all in one go.
She went back quickly and fell flat on her ass beside the old lady, luckily not hurting the old lady any.
The druggie cocked his shotgun and threw an unused shell down onto the ground.
“Fuckin’ A, Darcy!” the druggie snapped.
In the confusion of the magnifying glasses hitting the ground, I used the confusion to shift the gun, bullets, and magazine to the cop on the ground.
It took one move of his big paw-like hand to cover the gun.
It was a tiny little gun. The magazine only big enough to hold five bullets. Six if you counted one in the chamber.
To add to the confusion, the man beside me hooked his foot underneath the closest rack of chips and dips and tugged, causing it to go down, too.
People started to scream as bottles crashed to the ground and broke open.
And, just like that, the shotgun was going off.
But, just as quickly, the shotgun was falling to the ground, as was the druggie, as the police officer shot the man in the arm that was holding the shotgun.
The shotgun fell to the floor next to a construction worker that looked to have a broken foot. Seconds later, he was up on his one leg, hobbling to stand, and he had the shotgun aimed at the druggie who was staring at his arm as if he couldn’t quite process what had happened to him.