As the Pizza Burns by Nick Powers

Author:Nick Powers [Powers, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MadWood Entertainment
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The night went by quickly. Although it was game night, it never got overbearingly busy. Before the rush kicked in gear, Reece jumped in from one of his deliveries with his guitar and started to sing, but I stopped him. George wasn’t there. After I told him what had happened, Reece didn’t exactly feel like it either.

During the shift, I gave Max a call and asked if it was possible to come in for her shift the following day. I could hear Dominic crying in the background, but Max eventually figured out a way to make it happen. I hated that I had to ask her to do that. She needed to stay at home with Dominic so that he could recover from his surgery, but desperate times… you know.

The most difficult part about wrapping up the night was throwing away all of the pizzas that Juan prepped. There were so many, which was a good and a bad thing. The good thing was it meant that we didn’t have to deal with an outrageous rush, but the bad was that I was sure that the night’s slowness would destroy our labor cost percentages.

At the end of the night, I set the alarm and walked out. When I closed the door behind me, I saw a familiar face. Sitting on the cement, just around the corner, was George. With a blank stare toward the distant stars, his arms wrapped around his legs, he rested his head against the sharp bricks of the building. His batman action figure leaned on a fresh bag of gummy worms, which leaned on his backpack, which leaned loosely on the side of his hip. He, of course, leaned on Pizza Corp. It all seemed lopsided and unstable, like a small gust of wind could have knocked the whole thing down. This wasn’t the George I knew.

After I locked the door behind me, I checked my phone and made sure that I had time to talk, then I quickly walked around him and sat down. I plunged my hand into the bag of gummy worms without waiting for his permission and shoveled the lot of them into my mouth.

I waited a few seconds for him to respond, but he didn’t.

“Hey man,” I said.

Still nothing.

“George,” I said.

He took a breath and let out a long sigh. Careful not to knock anything over, he pushed one hand into the bag and grabbed Batman with the other.

“Hey, BossMan,” he said. “You want some gummy worms?”

I gave him a perplexed stare.

My mouth was still full. In fact, it was work making sure that none of them fell out every time I said anything.

“No thanks,” I said, barely making out the words.

“Why don’t you ever take any?” said George. “I’m starting to think that you don’t like gummy worms. But, then again, you have to like gummy worms. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be a real person.”

“George,” I said, “I already had some. I took a handful when I sat down.”

He shrugged in disbelief.

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