Slipping - Book 1.5 in the Swans Landing series

Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

“Blackjack,” Luis said, slapping his cards down on the counter with a satisfied grin.

I tossed my cards down. I’d had only eighteen and wasn’t brave enough to try to draw another card to get twenty-one. “How do you always win?”

Luis just smiled at my question. “I’m lucky,” he answered.

I rolled my eyes. Luis was the head chef at the Sand Dollar Inn and Restaurant, the place where I had worked for the past two years. He was young, only in his late twenties, but he knew his way around a kitchen.

Except that there wasn’t much going on in the kitchen at the Sand Dollar today. We hadn’t had any customers all day. The off-season was usually slow, and so Mr. Jasper, the owner, usually cut the kitchen staff down to just Luis and me until things picked up again in the late spring. But this year, things had been even slower than usual and so Luis and I spent most of our time playing cards in the kitchen.

Luis shuffled the deck. “So what’s been going on with you? How was school?”

I shrugged. “Same as usual. It’s just school.”

He laughed. “It’ll get better, trust me. In a few years, you’ll realize how important your senior year was.”

Luis wasn’t a native Swanser. He was from Texas and had moved to Swans Landing three years ago. He didn’t know a thing about growing up on an island as tiny as this, where everyone knew almost everything about you and secrets were hard to keep.

I had never asked Luis if he knew about the finfolk yet. He had to by now, he’d been here long enough to have lived through many Song Nights. And he must have heard the whispers or at least noticed that relationships weren’t always very friendly around here. But I could never get myself to ask him just how much he knew. I couldn’t risk letting him find out the truth about me.

“I doubt it,” I said. “High school pretty much sucks.”

The kitchen door swung open and Mr. Jasper walked in. He looked at us, his bushy gray eyebrows furrowed in a scowl.

“I’m closing up,” he barked. “No use sitting here all day waiting on nothing.”

I bit my lip, wondering if Mr. Jasper would still pay us for the full day, but not wanting to ask.

Luckily, Luis had no problem asking the question I was thinking. “What about our pay for the day?”

Mr. Jasper’s scowl deepened even more. “Why should I pay you when you ain’t working? I run a business, not a charity.”

I tried not to let my disappointment show on my face. I needed the money from my job. The electricity bill was due soon and our bank account was too low.

But I knew it was no use arguing with Mr. Jasper. He marched out of the kitchen before either of us could say anything else, the door swinging back and forth behind him.

“Great,” Luis muttered. “Don’t know how I’ll make the rent this month.”

I gave him a sympathetic smile. “I know what you mean.”

He stuck the cards back into their box and then frowned. “How is your mom?”

I shrugged as I reached for my black hoodie and pulled it on over my bright blue waiter shirt. “No change,” I said. “About the same as she always is.”

Luis stood, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “I’m really sorry, man. If there’s anything I can ever do to help, just let me know.”

I didn’t know what kind of help Luis could ever be, unless he suddenly developed a cure for whatever was wrong with my mom’s mind. But I nodded, giving him a smile. “Thanks. See you tomorrow.”