Bummin' It
status: novel in progress
length: 65,000 words

The girl was standing in the doorway with black tarp parted around her. After I'd seen so many filthy men, my mind couldn't handle the undeniable hotness factor of her small athletic chest under that black tank top. And apparently she didn't mind the way her shorts didn't cover her legs.

I didn't either.

Her dark brown hair was coiled close to her scalp in pigtails intertwined with thin white ribbon. Light blue makeup shadowed her light blue eyes.

Her lips twisted from half-open shock to spitting anger. “What do you think you're doing?” Her right hand reached behind her back. “Get out of here.”

“I'm sorry. I was just—”

Her hand flashed out at me faster than I'd ever seen a girl move, and my hands moved too slow to block anything. Her finger was poised at the trigger of a black pepper spray can with glaring white nozzle. Why she hadn't crippled me already, I didn't know.

"Get the hell out." The girl gritted her teeth, “If you think I'm joking, ask the last guy about his eyes.”

I stared into the white circle nozzle and hoped a stream of death wouldn't shoot my eyes out. “Your dad seems like a real caring guy.”

She sidestepped toward the suitcases. “You've got three seconds to tell me who the hell you are.”

Blood and hormones raced through me. “We got off on the wrong foot. My name's Eli.” Nerves rattling my every movement, I extended a closed fist for her to pound. “Sorry if I scared you.”

She stared at my face instead of my fist, like she was scanning a high-resolution fingerprint of my soul for danger. “You bought yourself three more seconds. Keep talking.”

I withdrew my fist and glanced back at the white nozzle. “I'm just your normal seventeen-year-old guy who's gonna show up so late his friends will think he died.”

While I was talking, she lowered the black can, dropped to her knees, and zipped open her backpack. “You didn't take anything, did you?

“Nope.” It was the truth.

She wiped the corner of her eye. “What do you want then?”

“How about your name?”

“I don't just give out my name.” Her eyes still faced the corner. “Especially to some cleanclothesman like you.”

She zipped her backpack shut and re-stowed both bags in the corner. She rocked upright, knees still crouched under her, and pinned her palms high up on her thighs. The black can was in her right hand.

She was wearing tennis shoes without socks. Around each ankle, brilliant tattoos of bright green branches twisted into each other in an infinite circle. Above the ball of one ankle, was the funkiest looking caterpillar worm thing I'd ever seen. Its back was brown with lime green ovals, and one of the ends could have been one of those makeup powder brushes that Lilith uses. From the ball of the other ankle hung a vivid green droplet that looked like an elongated snail shell.