The Rules of Survival (Mercer #1)

RoS Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Mr. Jacobs pulled back after our chat.

Something told me he was satisfied he'd gotten his point across, and I'd soon have an epiphany that would redirect my focus away from my delinquent ways. Yeah, right. If everything could be solved with a few simple words I'd be swimming in cash, Teresa would undergo a personality transplant, Tanner would be speaking a mile a minute, and Raphael Hernandez would be rotting in prison where he belonged.

Unfortunately, my luck would never be that good. I spent the next two days skipping school to job hunt, something that turned out to be a big fat waste of time. The same statements of rejection dogged me at all twenty three establishments I ventured into.

"We need someone with experience."

"Have you got a high school diploma?"

"You don't meet the minimum requirements for the job."

My personal favorite that kept cropping up after a critical once over of my appearance was, "I'm sorry, but we're not currently hiring."

Yeah, okay, why don't you take the sign down before you say that to my face?

I admit I wasn't dressed to the nines and my jeans and shirt were borderline ratty, but that was something I couldn't help. Maybe if one of those stuck up pricks deigned to give me a job, I'd eventually be able to afford better threads.

With that avenue coming to a dead end pretty quickly, I was forced to regroup. A minimum wage gig wouldn't pay enough to support us; I'd be lucky if I could afford to pay rent alone with one of those paychecks. I couldn't risk working hours outside of school. For one thing, I wasn't willing to leave the kids alone with Teresa for any length of time. Knowing her, she'd abscond with them while I was hard at work.

The tightness in my chest was a relentless reminder that I had to come up with some sort of compromise, and fast. I'd blown through the seven hundred Justice had given me thanks to our landlord showing up Thursday evening demanding money.

Stanley was a pain in the ass to deal with under normal circumstances. But I discovered when one of his tenants was three months behind in rent with the following month due in a week, he was one tiny step from having a psychotic break. I shouldered all of his jumping up and down and screaming without complaint, and to stop him from whacking an eviction notice to our front door, handed over all of the cash I had.

I wasn't completely stupid, making him sign the back of an old receipt on which I wrote down I'd just paid him $520 towards rent arrears, and promised I'd be making steady payments until we were in the clear. How we were even behind in the first place was a mystery. If Kalen hadn't been paying rent, what the hell had he been spending his money on and why hadn't he said anything to me?

Panic was beginning to set in when I woke up Friday morning thinking about what I'd have to do once more to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. The idea of being $3080 in debt to our landlord had my heart galloping in my chest, and that wasn't even including the $1200 I had to cough up for rent this month. Stanley had made it abundantly clear we'd be out on our ears if we fell any farther behind.

I was hiding in the bathroom, in the middle of psyching myself up – after the dismal results of my previous stealing spree I wasn't optimistic about a second attempt – when Scout barged in without bothering to knock. Scowling at her reflection in the streaky mirror, I was about to tell her how rude it was to interrupt my self-motivational moment when she held up a blank white envelope.