by Lila Felix
***
She hung up, and I slipped on my pink, gauzy pajama pants with a matching spaghetti-strap top. It was hotter than hell itself in Alexandria this time of the summer. For some reason, the Gulf Coast was a hot spot for the Lucent, and my parents had chosen Louisiana as our stomping grounds when they were newlyweds. We’d been here ever since. Most kids were entering their freshman or sophomore years at my age but I hadn’t been to school since my one-month spell of sporadic traveling. It had totally been worth it.
Instead, I got my G.E.D. at sixteen and immediately began working in ‘special deliveries.’ It was basically the only legal thing we were good at. Some flashers robbed banks, muled drugs—we’d even come across some rogue flashers who kidnapped babies—but the rest of us chose to stay legit.
I opened up my brand new laptop—a perk from the software company—and signed into my email. There were three from new clients and one from him. There was always one from him.
The two from clients were more of the same. They heard about my services. They were in desperate need of my special delivery but couldn’t quite meet our price range—typical. If someone from the outside read these emails, they would probably think I was hustling drugs—or worse. The cheap ones frustrated me. They wanted a one-second delivery that constantly threatened my life and secrecy, but they didn’t want to fork over the necessary cash.