The Vigilante's Handbook (Misfits #1)

Twenty Six: Be Kind to Your Waiters

The thing about having your RV/home away from the Academy destroyed by your ex-boyfriend and his gang is that you need a new house/RV for your gang which is not something I thought I would ever say. And a house requires money. And getting money requires either a job or committing crimes.

The vigilante gig took committing crimes off the table. We would be hypocrites if we continued helping the small Summerville Police Department while stealing and robbing every night. Although made strong cases for becoming our own arch nemeses to score vigilante points with the Academy. Unfortunately, our new relationship with the police was too fragile to gamble on.

And unfortunately being a part-time superhero did not pay the bills. In fact, we were paying out of pocket for it. With almost the last of Lucia's money stash, we bought scarves from various shops around town to cover our tracks. With a pair of scissors and some lopsided cut holes, we had homemade superhero masks. It was better than smearing soot on our faces every night. That stuff took forever to scrub off in a stream.

It was difficult for seven strange teenagers with no life exorcism to find jobs in a town a small as Summersville. For a while, we tried living off the land, but the nights were still cold and our food supply was running low. Eventually, it was up to Ariana and me to find jobs to put a roof over the heads of the Misfits, as we were now being called in the local paper.

Why Ariana and me? Because we were the least suspicious. Ariana had some experience in the real estate business after her internship with a group of vigilantes who worked as realtors in their downtime. She couldn't use them as contacts because of secret identities and all that, but she could throw around enough realtor jargon to prove that she was qualified enough for an entry level job. And there was the bonus of her knowing which seasonal rentals were vacant and where the spare keys were located.

Okay maybe being an unthanked and unpaid band of superheroes required a little law breaking.

Each night we squatted in the worst of the rentals, places so sketchy and broken that even the most desperate tourists didn't want to rent it. But it wasn't a motorhome. My minimum level of comfort was at an all time low, and I had lived on the streets before.

As for me, my job didn't come with an apartment or a twelve dollar an hour starting wage. It was minimum wage for me, but Tacos El Jefe had a help wanted sign and I had an in with the waitress Diana. Getting the job was easy once I told her the son story about dumping my boyfriend and needing to find my own place in this world. She ate the story up and didn't even questing my lack of job experience.

Between Ariana and I, we raked in enough money to feed our team and save a little up so we could get our own apartment when tourist season came in full swing in a few weeks. The apartment would likely have to be even worse than our current rotation, but it would have to do.

Our newly established lifestyle gave the other five Misfits plenty of time to perfect their vigilante work. Cody was surprisingly good at establishing contact with the local police department. To say they were grateful for us would be an overstatement, but they agreed not to press charges as long as we didn't obstruct any justice. Miguel and Stitch played the behind the scenes workers, tracking the rise in crime as more tourists filtered into town. Lucia was, as always, our leader. Ariana and I worked back up as often as our schedules allowed.

Life in Summersville became so normal that I almost forgot we had been abandoned by our school and sent into the wilderness by the school board to die. But the one thing I didn't forget was the other team. Slowly they had faded from being the enemy to being simply 'the other team,' but it was said with as much dislike.

Because no matter how nice it was to have electricity and a heater every night, there was a part of me that still missed our cold, bug ridden RV. The cover of the woods would have been a nice asset for our vigilante team, as we often retreated there after we had turned our purse snatchers and shoplifters over to the authorities.