CHAPTER THREE (8)

“You know what you owe me, Dev. Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You know the deal.”

No response.

Ryan stamped hard on the ground with his feet to let Devin know what was his impending doom. He turned stepped past the corner of the building, past the ivy, and without looking at Devin, thrust his hands into his pockets and looked up at the sky. They were standing equally next to each other as Ryan pulled out a joint and stuck it between his thick, wet lips. Pulling out matches, he struck one along his thumbnail and proceeded to hold the flame underneath the end of the joint. As the white paper caught fire, he quickly took the joint out of his mouth and blew repeatedly on the flaming end, the other between his black thumb and middle finger. Satisfied that the joint had been properly lit, he breathed deeply in and proceeded to stare at the sky.

“You got my money?” He said without any eye contact.

“No, man. I told you, I’ll have it after I work on the weekends.”

Squirley finally blew out his hit and took his sunglasses off. He refused to look at Devin, and squinted in the face of the sun.

“You got daddy’s credit card?”

“I mean… uh… I’m only supposed to use that for emergencies,” Devin said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

“Looks like you got yourself an emergency.”

He reached to Devin’s neck and instantly had him in a headlock.

“And this here situation requires yo’ daddy’s credit card.” The joint remained in his mouth as he said this, flopping wildly up and down between clenched lips and even more clenched teeth.

“Alright, alright. Let’s go, then!”

Squirley walked behind Devin as they made their way through campus to Devin’s car. They approached a silver Nissan and Devin pulled out keys, unlocking the doors mechanically from a distance, causing the tiny convertible to respond with two high pitched beeps. He opened the driver’s door and got in. Squirley waited outside of the car with is arms folding across his chest and thought, There ain’t no way in hell…

“Are we going or what?” asked Devin feebly.

“Gimme the damn keys.”

Devin popped out from the car faster than Squirley had expected. This wife-beater really has some charm to it, he thought. But keeping cool, he nodded for Devin to get into the passenger seat.

The brand-new Nissan felt smooth on the road as he used it to full capacity. They were silent in the car as Squirley drove him to the bank, all of this for a measly hundred and thirty dollars. He shifted into third, eyeing Devin peripherally noticing that Devin was somewhat scared. Good. A hundred and thirty big ones is a hundred and thirty big ones, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let a scrawny white boy from California driving his daddy’s attempt as fatherly-connection get away with stealing some pocket money to him.