Red Soul | Eddie Munson

𝕏𝕍𝕀. ℂ𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕜𝕖𝕕 𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℂ𝕠𝕕𝕖

"Is it the end of an era?
Is it the end of America?
No, it's only the beginnin'."
╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯

"What are you doing home, sweetie?" Joyce asked as I walked into the kitchen in the early hours of the morning. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I lied. I could feel how puffy my face was from crying all night. She raised her eyebrows, waiting for the real answer. "No. Eddie and I had a fight."

"About what?" She poured me a cup of coffee and set it in front of me. I wrapped my hands around the warm mug.

"He doesn't trust me," I started, "because he doesn't know where I disappear to sometimes. Which I get, but..."

"And you haven't told him about everything, right?" She sat down next to me, sipping her own coffee.

"I could never," I sighed. "He can't be roped into all of this shit like we are. He's too... innocent, Joyce. I don't know if he could handle the truth. It's not like I'm allowed to tell him anyway."

Eddie truly was innocent if you took away the drug dealing. He was just a happy guy excited to listen to music, play his guitar, and play Dungeons and Dragons.

"He loves you, Julie," Joyce said, patting my arm. "Things will be okay."

"Yeah. I'm sure they will be."

★・・・✘✘・・・★

By the time I arrived at Scoops for my shift, I felt more angry than sad. Why did all of us have to deal with this bullshit? Just... Why us?

"Where's Harrington?" I asked Robin. He was supposed to be at work too, but he was nowhere to be seen.

"Dingus One and Dingus Two are scoping out the mall for spies," she told me.

"Right." I nodded.

I went about my day quietly raging, scooping ice cream and cleaning tables off as usual. At one point, Jason Carver and his friends came in. He thought he was some hot shot the whole time I was in highschool with him. Now he was about to be a senior and I could tell his ego was worse than ever just by looking at him.

"Isn't that the girl that freak Munson is dating?" I heard him ask. He chuckled. "She is way out of his league. Just look at her. She's fucking hot."

My hands balled up into fists. I didn't care if we were fighting, no one talked about Eddie like that.

I walked over to their table and sat on the edge of it, picking up Jason's banana split and taking a bite.

"Well, hey there," Jason smiled at me.

"Hey," I flashed him a dazzling smile back. "I overheard you guys talking. You think I'm hot, huh?"

"Sorry, that wasn't exactly something we wanted you to hear," he said. "But I mean, yeah, you are."

I leaned down a little. "You probably didn't mean for me to overhear you talking about how my boyfriend's a freak either, did you?"

"He is a freak," Jason said with no shame. "Fucking weirdo is in some satanic cult that the school just lets him put on."

I licked my lips. "Alright. Let's get one thing straight. That 'freak' is much better than you could ever hope to be with your big ego, little dick self. Talk about him like that again and you'll see just how psychotic a hot girl like me can get it." I let spit dribble out of my mouth onto his banana split and slammed it back down on the table. "Enjoy."

Robin ran up to me as I walked away from Jason and his followers and almost knocked me down. She grabbed my shoulders to steady me. "Silver cat!"

"What?" I asked. "Silver cat? Like in the message?"

Dustin and Steve returned to Scoops during her freak out.

"You're not gonna believe who Dustin thought was a Russian," Steve told us, ignorant to what was going on.

Robin ignored my questions and ran through them into the middle of the mall. The guys looked at me with confusion. "Yeah, I don't know. She just kept yelling 'silver cat' at me and now this."

The three of us walked over to her as she turned in circles on top of a bench, looking at the stores.

"Robin," Steve said, getting her attention. "What are you doing?"

"I cracked it."

"You cracked the code?" I asked.

"Yes!" she yelled. "It's about the deliveries!" She pointed at the giant clock on the wall. "The clock hands are blue and yellow. A trip to China sounds nice if you tread lightly is about the Chinese food place and the shoe place. So when the clock hits 8:45, there are deliveries being made for those two stores!"

"There's an entire secret code just about food and shoe deliveries?" Steve questioned. "What's the point in that?"

"No, you idiot!" Robin sighed. "They're obviously delivering something else, they're just using those boxes."

"So..." I crossed my arms. "How do we find out what's being delivered?"

★・・・✘✘・・・★

The three of us were on the roof of the mall above the delivery deck, waiting for the delivery trucks. Rain poured down on us as we sat there. There were men surrounding the whole place with large guns. I couldn't tell if that or the rain was more chilling.

"Look for Imperial Panda and Kauffman Shoes," Robin said as a delivery truck pulled up.

"They're with that whistling guy, ten o'clock," Dustin pointed. He had the binoculars.

"What do you think is in there?" I asked.

Dustin shrugged. "Guns, bombs—"

"Chemical weapons," Robin added.

"Whatever it is, they're armed to the teeth," Dustin said.

"Great," Steve sighed. "That's great."

One of the men opened up the doors. "What's in there?" Robin asked.

"Just more boxes," Dustin told her.

"Let me check it out," Steve said, trying to steal the binoculars from Dustin. They struggled over them for a minute before they were dropped, sending out a loud thud, alerting the men with the guns.

We all dropped down, hiding behind the ledge.

"We need to go now," I demanded.

We crawled to the door on the roof and sprinted down the stairs, somehow managing to not run into any of the scary Russian men.

"Well, we found your Russians," Robin said as we scurried down the hallway.

We decided that we would have to give another try spying on them in the morning once everything would be calmed down and hopefully not still raining.

I went straight home instead of going to Eddie's. In my mind, I knew I had nothing to apologize for. And if I apologized for anything it would most likely just be a lie to appease him. I would wait it out.

I had bigger things to worry about anyway.