Megaballs

  Table of Contents

  Front Matter

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Erin Noelle

  Erin's Books

  MEGABALLS

  © 2016 Erin Noelle

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, copied in any form or by any means. Electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author/ publisher, except by a reviewer that may quote brief passages for review purposes only. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each participant.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, is entirely coincidental.

  All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

  Cover Design by Cassy Roop with Pink Ink Designs

  Editing by Kayla Robichaux

  Proofing by Virginia Tesi Carey & Jill Sava

  Formatting by Jill Sava, Love Affair With Fiction

  “Sometimes it’s the princess who kills the dragon and saves the prince.”

  -Samuel Lowe

  Twenty Years Ago

  Teague

  FRIDAY EVENINGS ARE always my favorite part of the week. Settling in the back of Grandpa’s ’56 Ford pickup, I watch the dust swirl behind us into the endless rows of corn we’d been working all day. The breeze helps to cool me off, and aside from that, riding in the back of a truck is always fun. I don’t really like working in the fields from sun up to sun down, but Grandpa seems to love it, and that makes it enjoyable for me.

  Grandpa does a quick and totally unnecessary brake-check, temporarily throwing me around in the bed of the truck. “Ha ha! Gotcha again, boy,” he laughs out of his permanently rolled-down window. “Gotta keep ya on your toes.”

  More like my butt.

  Grinning, I tuck myself back in tightly against the cab, directly behind where he sits. I don’t know how he always knows when I start daydreaming or not paying attention, but he does. Occasionally, he even lets out a girlish scream as he brakes mercilessly. My grandpa, always the practical joker.

  It’s the last day of summer vacation, and as much as I want to keep hanging out at the farm with Grandpa every day, he won’t let me quit school in fourth grade. No matter how much I pester and plead.

  The moment the old clunker pulls to a stop at the Dyersville Co-op, I hop down off the tailgate and go find my usual barrel to sit on, where I always wait for Grandpa to handle his ‘adult’ things before we head over to Rudy’s convenience store for our weekly treat.

  “Your grandpa in there begging off his bills again, Teague?” a familiar kid’s voice calls out from the corner of the building.

  “I bet he is,” a second voice chimes in, “and I bet Teague… I mean, Corn Nuts here, has nothing in his pockets except for corn.”

  Turning to face them, I watch as the Bingham brothers, Bobby and Billy, stalk toward me with no-good scribbled all over their faces, their younger sister Becca watching from a few feet behind. My stomach twists into knots as my mouth dries up, and I say a quick prayer for Grandpa to hurry up. I’m sick and tired of being bullied by the Bingham boys and their friends, but I’m too small to ever do anything about it.

  As soon as they reach me, Bobby, the older one, lifts me off the barrel, while Billy, the younger, meaner-looking one, rifles through all my pockets, unfortunately finding exactly what he was looking for.

  “I knew it!” Billy yells, holding up the few pieces of corn that had fallen into my pocket throughout the day. “They think that corn is money! Silly, Corn Nuts. No wonder you’re poor.”

  With all of them laughing hysterically and pointing at me — even little Becca, who I thought was my friend — Bobby starts to pry my mouth open just as Grandpa exits the store. He rushes over to us as fast as he can, grasps both boys by the backs of their necks, and gives them a light shove away from me toward their sister.

  “You kids go on and get out of here before I march back in there and tell your mama what y’all are up to. And don’t let me catch you picking on anyone else neither,” he warns, wagging his finger in their faces.

  He stands me up on my feet, straightening my clothes and shaking his head. I want to talk to him as we silently make our way to Rudy’s on foot, but I can’t just yet. I’m still too shaken up.

  “Are we poor, Grandpa?” I finally squeak out, as we step inside the small corner store, welcoming the cool blast from the air-conditioning.

  I see the wheels turning in his head as he grabs two root beers and two packages of red licorice straws — our weekly treat we never stray from — but he doesn’t answer right away. Up at the counter, he and Lucille, Rudy’s wife, chat for a few minutes about the weather and the upcoming Labor Day parade, then she hands him his lottery ticket with ‘his’ numbers, 05-06-09-12-14-25, and checks us out at the register. As we walk outside, he quietly moves toward one of the benches right outside the door.

  “Teague, come here, son,” he instructs, as he sits down, patting the empty space next to him. “First, let me tell you. Those kids back there… they don’t have a lick of sense between any of ‘em. Don’t you pay no attention to anything they say. Second, and most importantly, you don’t need money to lead a rich life. Wealth is not what you have in your bank account, but what you have in your heart.”

  Confusion pinches my eyebrows together. “Then why do you buy a lottery ticket every week?”

  “Well,” he chuckles, then thinks a minute before continuing, “even though money can’t buy happiness, it sure can buy a root beer and licorice straws for every day of the year.” He winks at me and takes a long drink from his ice-cold bottle.

  I lean back on the bench and mimic his actions, rolling his thoughts through my nine-year-old mind. “Grandpa, one day I wanna buy us a whole barrel of root beer and more licorice sticks than we could ever eat.”

  He laughs and shakes his head, patting my knee. “One day, boy, one day.”

  Even though I know he’s just pacifying me by agreeing, I vow to myself right here and now that one day I’ll have more money than anyone in Dyersville, especially those stupid Bingham kids. One day, I’ll make sure my grandpa has a full bank account. And heart.

  And one day, I’ll never eat corn again.

  Current Day

  Finley

  MY MOUTH HANGS open at the precise angle necessary to keep me from blinking as I swipe the black wand across my eyelashes, careful to avoid any globs or smudges.
Putting mascara on is an art, one that unfortunately makes you look like a stroke victim while you do it. But for a girl with blonde lashes such as mine, it’s a necessary evil so I don’t end up looking like I’m squinting all the time.

  For school, I usually don’t bother with makeup or fixing my hair — hell, I rarely change out of my pajamas before catching the bus to campus —but work is a different story. I’m a cocktail waitress at Impasta, a trendy, upscale Italian restaurant and bar near San Francisco’s financial district. Most of my customers are white-collar businessmen who wear cufflinks worth more than my entire wardrobe, and my job, other than to serve them food and drinks, is to squeeze every last penny I can from their wallets in the form of a tip.

  As sexist as it may sound, truth is ninety-five percent of them are more apt to tip a pretty girl significantly higher than an attractively-challenged one. There’s a reason we’re required to wear nearly transparent white shirts with tight black pants, and it has nothing to do with uniformity or professionalism. We’re really no better than Hooter’s girls, except our clientele prefers veal parmigiana with a dirty martini, instead of buffalo wings and a cold Budweiser. And as a college kid living with my sister and her six-year-old daughter, trying to help out as much as I can with the always increasing cost of living in the Bay Area while still doing and buying things that most twenty-one-year-olds want, I’m not too proud to play the game. Plus, my lingerie drawer is in dire need of upgrading. Most of my panties have been washed so many times that they’re sheer, not by design, and the underwire in my one bra that actually supports the girls is starting to poke me in the armpit.

  So as I lean over the counter of the bathroom I share with my niece, Fiona, accentuating my light blue eyes with a smoky charcoal pencil, I ignore the Pepto-Bismol pink walls and mermaid-themed shower curtain, and think about the hundreds of dollars in tips hopefully awaiting me this Friday evening. Reminding myself why I’m going through the trouble with this whole beautifying process.

  That is until the smoke alarm suddenly begins blaring out its warning at ear-splitting decibels throughout our townhome, startling me so that my arm jerks and I jab myself directly in the retina. A swimming pool’s worth of tears immediately flood my vision as I drop the pencil in the sink, afraid I may be permanently blind in my left eye.

  “Aunt Finley, Aunt Finley! Help! The microwave is on fire!” Fiona yells, as she flies into the bathroom, swinging the door open so swiftly that I don’t have time to get out of the way before it slams into the back of my head.

  “Owwww!” I cry out, rubbing the knot that’s already forming under my long blonde hair with one hand, while keeping the other covering my injured eye that’s gushing like Niagara Falls.

  Hastily grabbing my elbow with her little fingers, she tugs me out into the hallway and hurries down the stairs toward the kitchen, the damn alarm squawking the entire time. “Sorry about your head,” she calls out, glancing back at me, “but we’re gonna have lots bigger problems if I burn the house down! Get the stingisher from the pantry! Hurry!”

  I can barely hear her tiny voice over the blaring noise, but as the black smoke thickens with every step we take, the sharp pain in my head dulls and I focus on holding my breath while making a beeline for the pantry, still unable to see from the left side as even more tears spill over. When I see the bright red and orange flames licking from the sides of the microwave, panic officially sets in. Moving on instinct, I rush to snatch up the fire extinguisher, pull the pin, and squeeze the trigger as Fiona uses an oven mitt to open the microwave.

  It takes less than ten seconds of me dousing the fire in the white powder-like substance for the flames to die out and the fear of possible death to subside, but as my pulse slows from borderline heart-attack level, the smoke alarm continues to go off, reminding me of the throbbing in my head and the fact I can still only see out of one damn eye!

  “You open the back door, and I’ll get the front!” I shout instructions at Fiona, as I take off to the living room, slinging the front door open before swinging it back and forth to help fan the thick smoke from the house.

  Thankfully, the technique works pretty quickly and the air clears out in a couple of minutes, but just as the deafening noise finally ceases and my chest finally stops heaving, a brand-spanking-new cherry-red convertible Camaro with temporary tags pulls up in front of the house, a chick who looks a whole helluva lot like my sister gets out of the driver’s side, and she races up the front walkway. Please just let it be my blurry vision that makes it look like her, and this is just some stranger who is stopping to check on the fire situation.

  “What in the great goobly woobly is going on, Finley?” the chick, who really is my sister, demands when she reaches where I’m standing in the doorway, light grayish smoke still wafting out around me, my left eye still shielded by my hand. “Did you leave the iron on?”

  “‘What in the great goobly woobly is going on,’ is a great question, Farrah!” I roar, my stare fixed on the brand new car parked by the curb. “We don’t own an iron, never have, but you wanna tell me whose car that is?”

  She ignores my question and rushes inside, calling out for Fiona, and I follow hot on her heels. She better not have done what I think she did.

  “There you are, Peanut,” my sister calls out, when she finds her daughter standing at the entrance to the kitchen, staring at the mess in disbelief. Dropping to her knees, Farrah wraps Fiona in a tight hug before pulling away and inspecting her. “Are you all right? Are you hurt? Did you break any bones?”

  Some days, I can bitch about my sister until I’m blue in the face, but one thing I can never accuse her of is not being a good mom who loves her kid with everything she has.

  Fiona laughs and pats Farrah on the head. “Of course I’m all right, silly Mommy. Why would I have broken bones in a fire?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you tripped when you were running or something?” Farrah offers, as her attention turns to the disaster area that is our kitchen. “So what in tarnation did happen here?”

  “Foil in the microwave,” Fiona replies, with a nonchalant shrug. “I thought I got it all off, but I guess I didn’t. Oopsies!”

  I ruffle her straw-colored ponytail, which makes her look more like she belongs to me than my sister, who has jet-black hair just like our parents and brother, and I chuckle. “If you’re gonna be the next Masterchef Junior Champion, you can’t be starting fires in the kitchen, squirt. Gordon will have you turning in your apron real quick-like.”

  Her bright, smiling face tilts up at me and she nods. “I’ve got two more years to practice, and I’m gonna be ready for him. But no more fires until then, I promise.”

  Farrah stands to her full height, a good three inches over my average five-foot-five frame, and shakes her finger at me. “Next time, you need to check if there’s foliage or whatever when she’s cooking, and” she scoots closer, narrowing her gaze in on my face, “what in the world happened to your eyes? Have you been smoking weed?”

  “Wh-what?” I sputter, giving her my best one-eyed stare down. “What are you talking about? Have you?”

  Scoffing, she throws her arms up in the air. “Uh, no. I’m not the one with crazy bloodshot eyes and smoky-smelling clothes. Duh.”

  “I’m not the one who brought a brand new car home when we can’t afford another monthly payment, nor do we have any kind of secured parking spot. Not to mention our obvious need for a new microwave and fire extinguisher,” I snap, brushing away the fresh moisture that starts to leak from my eye again with the back of my hand. “And in case you already forgot, genius, the reason my eyes are red and I smell like smoke is because I just got finished putting out an effin fire!”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Oh yeah,” I mock, rolling my eyes. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta run upstairs to change out of these ruined clothes and figure out what to do about my eye that is leaking like a busted faucet, and then somehow get to work in…” I glance over to where the clo
ck used to display the time on the microwave and grunt when all I see are burnt remains sprinkled with a white foamy substance then cut my glare back to Farrah. “Well, really damn soon! By the way, you were late getting home too, and if you expect me to keep this job, I need you to be here when you say you’re gonna be.”

  Fiona wedges herself between us and grasps both of our wrists, shaking her head. “Stop fighting! I’m sorry about the fire and your clothes, Aunt Finley. I’ll buy you some new ones with my savings.” Before I can tell her that’s not necessary, she turns to her mom and glowers. “And what new car, Mommy? You know that’s not in the budget.”

  My sister’s face softens at her little girl’s words, but as she takes her hand and leads her toward the front door, saying, “But wait until you see it, peanut. I know you’re gonna love it,” I know the conversation is far from over. However, I don’t have time to deal with it right now, and I hope it’s one of those deals where you can return it in the first twenty-four hours, because there’s no way in hell we’re keeping that damn money pit. Car payment, parking, gas, and insurance. All expenses we can’t afford. Especially when we have to replace the microwave. And I need new bras and panties.

  I spin around on my heel, dash up the stairs to my bedroom, and tear my clothes off, leaving them in a pile on my floor for now. Digging through my dirty clothes hamper, I find my other work uniform in a wadded ball, still reeking of garlic and tomato sauce from my shift last night, but it’s not like I have a choice. I hurry to the laundry room, where I spray the blouse and pants with Febreze and toss it in the dryer, hoping that will help with the wrinkles and stench while I attempt to fix my face.

  The vision in my left eye slowly starts to return, but it’s still blurry as hell, so I do what I can to clean up the streaks of mascara down my cheeks and then reapply a little bit of powder and blush to cover up the splotchiness. I run a brush through my hair, yelping when I hit the tangle I forgot about in the chaos of the fire, then just throw it in a braid really quick, because it too smells like I’ve been at a bonfire all day.