Tangled Thing Called Love: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance)

by Juliet Rosetti

  “Okay. I just hope the poop doesn’t stink up the barrel.”

  “What are we aiming it at?”

  “That sheet on the clothesline.”

  “Want me to go strangle them?” Ben asked.

  “Yes. Later. Scroll.”

  Ben wrapped an arm around Mazie’s shoulder and pulled her closer to him.

  Saturday, February 3

  All I want to do is sleep! Jody and Tiff asked me to go to the mall with them but I’m too pooped. Have been working from 3 to 6 every night at the garage and worked all day today. We were so busy. My job is typing up the work order invoices and boy oh boy is it fun trying to decipher Buzzy’s scribbles! Then I have to look up how much a part costs and how much the labor per hour is and then total it all up and enter it into Buzzy’s Stone Age computer, which is slower than drying paint. Also I have to file papers, wash windows, and try to keep the grease scrubbed off the doors. Plus I have to make coffee. Buzzy drinks like fifty cups a day—he’s a total caffeine tripper. The very worst job is cleaning the johns, and holy frick—you wouldn’t believe what pigs some guys are! When the drive-in opens this summer I’m going to apply to work there because nothing could be worse than this crappy job.

  Katie Maguire appeared at the screen door and looked out. “Oops—sorry, didn’t mean to disturb your canoodling. Just wanted to let you know there’s fresh strawberries in the kitchen. Help yourselves.”

  “What’s canoodling?” Ben asked when Mazie’s gran had left.

  “I don’t know, but it sounds kind of dirty,” Mazie said.

  “Then why aren’t we doing it?”

  Oh, how she wanted to canoodle with Ben Labeck.

  He kissed her bare shoulder, slid his hand up under her skirt, and discovered that she was wearing cheekini panties.

  Reluctantly, she slid his hand off her thigh. “We have to finish the diary.” She picked up the tablet, and held it so they both could see it.

  Wednesday, March 7

  I’ve got wheeeeels​!!!!!​!!!!!​!!!!!​!!!!!​! Buzzy gave me a truck!!!!!!!!! It’s old, it’s butt-ugly, but it runs and it’s mine, mine, mine bwa​ha​ha​ha​ha​ha​ha​ha​ha! He got it free from some farmer who just wanted it towed out of his shed. It was all covered in chicken shit, but somehow Buzzy got the engine running and said I could have the truck if I didn’t mind spending a fortune on oil.

  I think Buzzy feels a little sorry for me, how I always have to wait around after the garage closes for Pop to pick me up. Half the time he doesn’t remember and I end up walking home in the dark.

  Back to the truck. It’s a GM—about thirty years old, dark green, and the best thing is it’s got this kind of double cab thing—a big bench seat up front and then a cramped rear bench seat. There’ll be room for all the monkeys at once! Tonight, for our first official ride, we’re going to the Dairy Queen and I’m treating everyone to sundaes. Pop says I’ll spend every penny I earn on gas and oil but I don’t care. I’ve got wheee​eeeee​eeeee​eeeee​eels!

  Mazie looked at Ben. They both started to laugh.

  Friday, March 23

  The ice and snow have mostly melted off the roads around here, leaving heaves and potholes all over the place. Bad for cars but good for Buzzy. He’s got so much work he can’t keep up—we did $3,699 this week, and that’s just in cash. I have to store the cash in this old safe in the back—it looks about a hundred years old and has a combo lock so simple the dumbest burglar could crack it.

  Things got so busy Buzzy finally hired a new guy to work for him. Well, actually, Bodelle hired him. His name is Derek Ralston, but he calls himself Duke or the Dukester. Retch! He’s already hit on me and when I knocked his hand away he called me a bitch. He’s tall and not bad-looking, but he’s still a complete asshat-pig-jerkoff!!! He was a couple of years ahead of me in school, but he got expelled for beating up a teacher.

  Channing has been hanging around the garage a lot lately, crushing on “the Dukester.” I’ve always admired Channing—she’s an awesome athlete and went to state in tennis and swimming. She’s always nice to me, brings me a Coke or cupcake sometimes or asks to borrow my English notes because I’m so good at it. But how can she like Duke the Puke? She calls him “Dukie.” Eww! Excuse me, gotta go hurl.

  Monday, April 9

  Channing is entering the Miss Quail Hollow contest. She came to the garage after school today and told me I ought to enter it too; she even handed me an entry form, said I was cute and might even make third or fourth place. I tossed the form in the garbage, but later I fished it out. The winner gets a $3,000 scholarship. What the heck? Maybe I’ll enter after all. All I have to lose is my pride.

  Thursday, April 12

  Today while I was scrubbing the toilet I saw Derek the dipstick, who was supposed to be tightening the brakes on a Ford Explorer, sneak off to the Winnebago. A couple minutes later Channing sneaked in there too.

  They were in there for about an hour. Pot fumes seeped out. I could smell them even above the gas and oil stink of the garage. I could also hear the bedsprings squeaking. My face got all red and I tried to get away from there as fast as possible because I can’t stand the image of those two doing you-know-what.

  Can’t write any more now. Must study for big physics test tomorrow. Wish me luck!

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ben and Mazie were up to April 20 when the tablet’s battery ran out of power and the screen went blank. Immersed in Fawn’s life, they hadn’t noticed the battery warnings or the fact that it was getting dark. Fat, winged beetles were flinging themselves against the porch light, moths were patchworking the screen door, and out on the lawn, the boys’ voices had reached a hysterical pre-bedtime pitch.

  Scully yelled at the twins to get in the house and they did, complaining every step of the way. Mazie untangled herself from the hammock and went inside, but Ben had to wait for a while for his erection to subside. Lying next to Mazie was sweet, slow torture.

  Inside, everyone was sitting around the kitchen table. Scully, who’d probably experienced a few cases of blue balls himself, gave Ben a knowing grin when he walked in a few minutes later. Mazie handed Ben a bowl of strawberries, lightly brushing his hand as she did so, which started up the seismic activity all over again. Ben sat down hastily at the table, grateful for the draping tablecloth. He liked the Maguire family a lot. They reminded him of his own family; Katie Maguire could have been a clone of his own Grandmere Claudette. The twins were a handful, and they’d nearly driven him insane on the fishing trip yesterday, but they were a ton of fun. Plain strawberries weren’t enough for Sam and Joey. They had to add chocolate syrup, green cookie sprinkles, breakfast cereal, and peanut butter. They drowned the entire atrocity in milk, then ate it using pretzel sticks as chopsticks.

  Mazie wiped strawberry juice off her mouth and made her announcement. “I’ve decided to be in the pageant.”

  “Well, good for you,” said Gran, sounding delighted.

  “Thought you weren’t going to be dragged into that thing by wild horses,” Scully said.

  “I wasn’t—until Bodelle Blumquist told me I couldn’t be in it.”

  “She what?” Gran, who’d been pouring Ben a mug of decaf, slammed down the coffee carafe.

  “On account of being an ex-convict.”

  “Oooh, that woman! I’d like to tell her a thing or two!” Pink splotches rose in Katie’s cheeks. “You just wait until I get the word out, Mazie—we are going to bulldoze that bullying bossy-britches straight into the ground, mark my words!”

  Ben grinned. It was easy to see where Mazie got her feistiness from.

  “I am personally going to raise a mountain of money,” Gran said. “I’ll start contacting people tomorrow.”

  Still bristling, Gran marched off to the west wing. She’d probably be up at five o’clock phoning relatives, Mazie thought. Gran had been a Scully before marriage, a family so large Gran claimed to have seventy-nine first cousins. The Maguires were almost as numerous
, and both clans would rise if it meant a shot in the eye to Bodelle Blumquist.

  “I’ll get the boys to bed,” Mazie told Scully, who’d done all the farm chores, gone to the hospital to visit Emily, and looked ready to drop from exhaustion.

  Easier said than done. Even though she let them skip baths, Sam and Joey found ingenious ways to put off bed—having spatter fights with their toothbrushes, playing kickball with a sock puppet, and experimenting to see whether they could drink upside down from their water glasses. Answer: no.

  They had twin beds in the corner bedroom that had once belonged to Mazie’s brothers. Naturally, the boys couldn’t just climb into their beds; they had to cannonball into them from the bedposts. Then they retrieved video games from beneath their beds, propped themselves up on their pillows, and started blip-bleeping away.

  “No games,” Mazie said firmly. “Go to sleep.”

  A chorus of whining greeted this announcement.

  “Why don’t you read instead?” She scanned the shelves in the room. Most of the books were old—Jim and Scully’s old Hardy Boys mysteries, The Hobbit, Holes, Treasure Island. There were dozens of books up there, looking as though they hadn’t been touched in years. Mazie plucked out Caddie Woodlawn. “Try this one.”

  Sam took one look at the cover. “Girl book,” he said dismissively.

  “Then why was it in your dad’s old room?” Mazie plopped down next to him on his bed. “Your dad stole it from me and never gave it back because he liked it so much. It starts with Caddie and her brothers stripping butt-naked to swim in a river.”

  Leaning back against Sam’s pillow, she started reading out loud. The boys bent over their video games, pretending not to listen, but by the fourth paragraph they were hooked. Sam dropped his game and came to lean against her. Moments later Joey was cuddled against her other side. The boys listened with the same intensity that they brought to their playing, often interrupting, but with thoughtful questions that indicated they were thinking about the story. Mazie began to feel a warm, maternal glow. This was really kind of nice. The boys could be awfully sweet sometimes. Their eyes grew heavy. Joey’s thumb crept to his mouth, a habit of which he was deeply ashamed, but which resurfaced when he was tired.

  “Don’t stop,” they whined when she closed the book.

  “Tomorrow night,” Mazie promised.

  They each gave her bashful hugs. Still feeling glowy, she turned out the light and went downstairs.

  “Saved you a spot,” Ben said, patting a spot next to him on the sofa. He’d recharged the tablet. Mazie sat down next to him and made no move to draw away when he pulled her close.

  They plunged back into Fawn’s diary and were soon immersed in her teenaged world.

  Wednesday, April 25

  I absolutely cannot believe it! I’m shaking as I type this! I just won the swimsuit competition!

  Bodelle Blumquist, who’s the coordinator for the pageant, calls this thing an achievement pageant, but trust me, no girls ever get into it on the basis of their science scores. The girls all complain about the sexist piggery of the pageant, being judged on the shapes of their bodies and all, but I think a lot of them secretly like showing off. Rachel Deering bought her bikini at a store in Chicago and paid $200 for it. If she was paying by the square inch, she got a raw deal.

  I don’t have a swimsuit because Pop never takes us swimming. But now that I’ve got wheels I can take the monkeys to the beach every day this summer. Aunt Rose, who’s about my same size, lent me her swimsuit, a one-piece Jantzen that started out bright red but faded over the years. The best thing is it covers my butt cheeks, although I think it’s too low in front. When Candace Dahlke saw me in my suit she snickered and said, “What’s that you’re wearing—Kmart’s new spring line?” Candace’s bikini has enough padding to stuff a sofa cushion and underwires to give her mosquito bites some cleavage, but I don’t need underwires or padding. I’m a natural 34B! My boobs beat the crap out of your boobs, so eat worms and die, Candy!

  Thursday, April 26

  Miss Peterson has sort of taken me under her wing. She was an America’s Junior Miss one time and she said it doesn’t make one bit of difference what you wear on the runway. You just wear your attitude. Like you’re happy to be up there and are waving hello to a lot of friends. That’s what I tried to remember when I was onstage for the swimsuit competition, and it worked.

  So I went by the same principle when it was time for the personal interviews with the judges today. I had to arrange to take time off from my job because the interviews were right after school. Bodelle made a big fuss about my “lack of work ethic” even though it’s only like the second time I ever missed work. I was scared to the point of puking before I went into the interview room, so nervous I bumped into a chair walking up to the judges’ table. The judges were three women and two men. They were really nice and made me feel at ease. They asked about my family and somehow I got to talking about Mom dying and me being responsible for my younger brothers. They asked what my goal in life was and I said I wanted to be a book editor and live in New York.

  Afterwards I felt like slapping myself because I talked about myself so much and probably sounded like a conceited twit. But the scores just now came out—they were posted on the school website.

  I GOT STRAIGHT 10s! Poise, personality, and all that other stuff. Straight 10s!!!!!!!

  Too tired to write more. TTYL.

  Friday, April 27

  Ever since the scores were posted and the other girls saw I was in first place, they’ve been complete bitches. Not just snarky comments but physical stuff too, like Grace Patchett sticking out her foot when I came offstage after rehearsal and tripping me. She pretended it was an accident. Yeah right. My knee swelled up, but I iced it and it should be okay.

  Coulee trash like me aren’t supposed to win pageants. Cheerleaders and student council officers are supposed to win.

  “How did Fawn Fanchon get those high scores?” Candace asked. She was in the locker room while I was in the bathroom, and she used a stage whisper so I knew she wanted me to hear her.

  “I guess she just blew those judges,” Annabelle Lutz said, then giggled. “Oops, did I saw blew? I mean she just blew them away.”

  Titters from the other girls. The same girls who wrote “Fawn is a whore” and “Did the judges like your blow jobs?”on my locker today.

  My cheeks burned. At first I thought it was because I was blushing, but then I realized it was physical pain, like a bad sunburn. I checked out my blusher and saw tiny specks of dark red in it—it looked like the cayenne pepper my aunt uses in spaghetti sauce. I quick washed it off with wet paper towels, but even after scrubbing, my cheeks were wet and raw-looking. It’s been two hours and they’re still burning.

  Ben set down the iPad, looking disgusted. “Do girls really do these things?”

  “You’re the one with all the sisters, you ought to know.”

  He shook his head and turned back to the diary. There were only a few entries left.

  At least Channing has been decent. She told the other girls to lay off me and they did, because they’re afraid she’ll report them to Bodelle. Maybe sticking up for me is her way of thanking me for keeping my mouth shut about her and Dukie getting zooted in the potmobile all those times.

  I was so nervous during my talent number I was shaking inside. I sang “Summertime” because Mom used to sing it to the monkeys when they were little. Besides, it stays in one octave and I can hit all the notes. The judges seemed to like it—maybe because they’re all old people in their 40s and 50s who don’t know any newer songs. Score: 9 out of 10!

  It’s 1:30 a.m. and I’m too exhausted to sleep.

  Typing this, I’m looking at my gown, hanging on the back of my door. It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever owned, and I made it myself! I spent hours sewing it. It’s beaded pink polyester that looks like silk. I had to rip out the whole bodice because one shoulder didn’t fit right and I spent three days trying
to get the hem perfect. But now it’s done and it’s worth every hour I put in on it—it looks just as good as those thousand-dollar jobbies some of the other girls are going to wear. Tomorrow (Sat.) is the big day and I just know I won’t be able to sleep a wink tonite.

  Saturday, April 28

  Am writing this on a school computer because my laptop’s at home. So mad I can barely type so xcuse the misspellings. If I don’t get this out I’ll xplode!

  They think I stole money from Buzzy! A police officer arrived at school this afternoon. He came in and talked to Mr. Henderson, the principal, who’s here on Saturday because of the pageant, and Mr. H called me down to the office. The cop took me in a conference room and started asking me questions.

  He said that Bodelle opened the garage safe because she needed to deposit the cash in the bank, but then discovered $2,000 was missing. Bodelle said I was the only person who knew the combo and could have taken the money. The cop asked me what I knew about the missing money. Didn’t come out and ask if I took it, but it was obvious he thought so. I’m a Fanchon, right—so I’m automatically guilty. I told the cop he could search my locker, my truck, my backpack—anyplace he wanted because I never stole one stinking cent!

  The cop said he couldn’t search a minor’s property without a parent’s consent unless he first had a warrant or if it involved drugs. By this time I was a complete wreck. I was shaking and crying. Maybe the cop felt sorry for me, because he said I wasn’t under arrest, that they had to get more details of the robbery before they could file charges. He said that I should just try to calm down—tell my parents what had happened—hah!—and that an officer would question me more in the morning.

  My eyes were all swollen from crying. I felt so sick I wanted to throw up. I felt dirty. I felt like everyone must know about the stolen money and think I took it. I just wanted to go home. I didn’t care about the pageant anymore. I just wanted to feel my little brothers’ arms around me because they love me no matter what.