The Big Door Prize by M. O. Walsh

Author:M. O. Walsh [Walsh, M. O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

16

My Picture in a Picture Show

One “like” out of twelve followers?

Such antipathy was hard to achieve. It wasn’t the low number of followers that surprised Jacob, though; that Trina would cultivate an incredibly small list made sense. She was by all evidence cruel, and denying people entry to your social media is one of the easiest ways to be cruel. You don’t even have to get dressed. But only one of the twelve even “liked” it? Most people hit the empty heart out of habit, just to fill it, scrolling through their feed. Jacob was one of her twelve followers, though, and he certainly didn’t “like” anything about it. He hated mainly the way he looked so scared of the kiss, his eyes squinted up like he was chewing a lemon. You could see Trina’s hand on the back of his head and she was pulling him. It was obvious. She was dominating him with her tongue and he supposed this could look sexy to any number of Internet freaks out there, but it did not look sexy to him. Worse, too, he thought, was the one “like” the picture had received. It was from Deuce Newman.

Why had Trina allowed him, of all people, in her twelve? It sickened him to think about. Deuce had once requested to follow Jacob on Instagram as well, months back, as he had nearly everyone in Deerfield while trying, he said, to gather pics for his project. But nobody under the age of thirty accepted his request, Jacob was sure. It was a joke.

Jacob swiped the app closed and put the phone in his pocket.

He now stood again at the boys’ room mirror, doing his ritual face check before first period. He turned on the water and washed his hands and heard a flush from the stall behind him. Rusty Bodell undid the latch and walked out. He hefted his Dickies and popped up his collar and stood next to Jacob at the row of sinks. He tossed something the size of a hockey puck onto the sill beneath the mirror. It was likely a tin of dip, Jacob thought, Grizzly or Skoal, but saw instead that it was hair product called Killer Edge Shaping Wax. Rusty’s new coif apparently required accessories. Jacob watched him rinse his hands in the sink and pull a bottle of cologne from his pocket. He pressed a few squirts on his wrists and rubbed them together as if making a paste.

“Man, I’m telling you,” Rusty said, and dabbed his wrists to his ears. “This weekend is going to be good for business. A lot of talent from out of town, if you know what I mean.”

Jacob looked at him. He’d known Rusty nearly all his life but hadn’t had a meaningful conversation with him since they once played Pokémon together back in seventh grade. Rusty battled with a premade deck he’d just bought that day and Jacob destroyed him with one of his weakest custom decks made of Water and Plant energies, of all things.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.