Chapter 29 [YS: Twin brother]

[One and a half weeks had passed since he got the mustang]

It was around noon, and winter break had already started. I sat behind the wheel of the Mustang with Meemaw riding shotgun beside me, Georgie and Missy crammed into the back seat behind us. This car was unbelievable to drive, smoother and more responsive than anything I'd ever gotten behind the wheel of before.

Georgie and I had been sneaking it out for joyrides to our hearts' content any time Mom happened to be out of the house. Technically we were only supposed to drive with an adult present, but between the two of us, we'd both gotten plenty comfortable behind the wheel by now, comfortable enough that we could drive without hesitation.

Over the past two days, Georgie and I had taken turns driving the Mustang. We also spread the word that it was up for sale. Surprisingly, it was Meemaw who ended up producing our first real lead, mentioning almost offhandedly that she had a friend who might be interested in buying it.

So there we were, the four of us packed into the car, driving out to meet whoever this mystery friend of hers turned out to be, meemaw was amused like she knew something that she didn't share yet.

"Nobody tells my daughter we're going to the shooting range," Meemaw warned us. This wasn't the first time she'd taken us out here just to hang around, so we already knew the drill by heart. Sheldon, for that exact reason, had been left conspicuously out of this particular outing.

"This is where your friend's gonna meet us, right?" Georgie asked. We'd put real work into this one, painting the whole thing by hand ourselves from start to finish. I'd gotten the mechanical side fixed in a single day, and it had run smooth as anything ever since. This time around, I'd held back on using the efficiency portion of the skill entirely, sticking only to the durability enhancement instead.

We'd spent a full week on the paint job alone, using the best materials we could find to make sure it turned out looking like the best car on the street, hands down. It had come to us originally painted a plain red.

By the time we were finished, it wore a much deeper, hotter shade of red with a bold black stripe running down each side, giving it a look that turned heads the second it rolled past.

Meemaw already knew the staff at the gun range well enough that she barely had to say a word walking in. They greeted her by name, waved us through without any fuss, and we found ourselves waiting inside for whoever this mystery customer of hers turned out to be.

I was bored out of my mind the whole time. If it hadn't been for the car sitting out in the lot, I wouldn't have bothered coming along in the first place. Guns had never held any real appeal for me, not the way they clearly did for Georgie and Missy, who both perked right up the second we walked through the door. As far as I was concerned, a gun was just a tool, useful for defense in a pinch and nothing more worth getting excited about.

"Hey, Constance! Seems like age is finally catching up to you," a voice called out, and there she was, an old woman who looked to be somewhere in her eighties, ambling over toward us with a knowing grin.

"Maggie, you old hag. Still kicking, huh?" Meemaw said, and it seemed this was just her particular way of greeting old friends.

"I'm not dying before you do. We had a bet," Maggie said, coming to a stop beside us.

"These are my grandchildren. The little one is Missy, and the boys are the ones who fixed up the car," Meemaw said, catching all three of us off guard. So Maggie was the customer. I hadn't seen that coming at all, but before I could fully process it, Georgie had already recovered ahead of me.

"That Mustang definitely suits your personality. It's real nice meeting you, Meemaw's friend. I'm Georgie," Georgie said, hopping up to shake the older woman's hand before I'd even fully registered that this old lady was interested in a Mustang.

I followed suit a second later, reaching out to shake her hand as well, while my other hand shot out on reflex to clamp gently over Missy's mouth the instant I saw her gearing up to say something that absolutely would not have helped our case here.

"You got good kids, Constance," Maggie said to Meemaw as we all made our way back outside. Georgie and I caught each other's eye and had to work hard to hold back our laughter at the whole situation. This car, for this particular old lady? Stranger things had happened, I supposed.

Listening to the two of them go back and forth, I slowly pieced together that Meemaw and Maggie went way back, with some kind of long-running arrangement between them where Meemaw placed bets and Maggie collected her winnings, minus a fixed commission for herself.

Maggie, it turned out, was a bookie running her own quiet gambling operation on the side, which was no small thing given that betting and gambling were both flatly illegal in Texas.

This woman was clearly something else entirely, sharp as a tack underneath that grandmotherly exterior. It was, I decided, exactly the kind of thing that reminded you to respect your elders. You never really knew what somebody's grandmother might be capable of underneath all that sweet talk and casserole.

Maggie fell in love with the car the second she laid eyes on it.

"You know, I went down to the dealership, but they didn't have a single red one in stock. I like this color a whole lot more than anything they would've handed me anyway," she said, running an appreciative hand along the hood.

"We painted it ourselves, and we can guarantee it'll hold up every bit as well as anything showroom grade," Georgie told her.

"It looks good, but let's see how it handles on the road," Maggie said, and Georgie wasted no time tossing her the keys. Meemaw climbed into the passenger seat right alongside her, and the two of them took off down the road together for what turned into a solid fifteen minutes.

By the time they finally pulled back into the lot, Maggie already had a cigar lit and clamped between her teeth, steering easily with one hand while the other held the cigar steady. Somehow, the whole picture suited her perfectly, like she'd been driving that car her entire life instead of just fifteen minutes of it.

"Alright, kids. I don't negotiate. Just give me a price," she said, still holding the cigar loosely between her lips.

"Nine thousand, with the friends and family discount," I said quickly, cutting in before Georgie had a chance to name a number of his own. We'd originally planned on asking somewhere around 8000$ as the asking price with 7500$ bottomline, but seeing how much she'd clearly fallen for the car, I decided to push it up a little further and see if it held.

"Alright, deal," she said, glancing between the two of us like she was trying to work out exactly which one of us was actually running this operation, though she didn't seem the least bit bothered by whatever she landed on. If anything, she looked thoroughly amused by the whole exchange.

For a second afterward, I felt a small pang of regret for not pushing the number even higher, though I talked myself down from it fairly quickly. Nine thousand was still an excellent price, especially considering the showroom version of this same car would have run closer to eleven thousand seven hundred brand new, and ours was already two years into its life.

All things considered, we'd walked away with the better end of the deal by a comfortable margin.

We shook hands to seal it, and Georgie counted out the cash as Maggie pulled it from an oversized purse slung over one shoulder. I caught a glimpse of what else was rattling around in there while she dug through it, and I had a strong suspicion there was at least one gun tucked away somewhere beneath all those crumpled bills, maybe two.

Once we finally had the money in hand, Missy immediately started angling for a celebration treat, and there wasn't much chance of me telling her no after the day we'd just had. We ended up at the Bluebell Diner, which set us back a hundred dollars between the five of us, though nobody seemed to mind much given the circumstances.

Maggie was kind enough to drop us home afterward, since we no longer actually owned a car ourselves at that point, while Meemaw rode along with her to drop off Maggie's own car first.

Once we got home, I pulled Georgie into my room so the two of us could sit down and go over the numbers properly.

"It's paytime," I said.

"Look, here's how the accounts break down," I started, but Georgie cut me off before I could get any further.

"Don't tell me the numbers. It'll just make me sad. Just give me whatever you're gonna give me," he said, already resigned to the fact that he wouldn't be walking away with an even split, since he knew I had my sights set on buying yet another car with most of it.

All told, the whole project had cost us twenty-eight hundred dollars, and we'd sold it for nine thousand, putting our total profit at a clean sixty-two hundred dollars. Not bad at all for roughly a week and a half of actual work. I handed Georgie five hundred and kept another five hundred for myself, and he seemed genuinely satisfied with that, clearly having braced himself to walk away with a lot less. It was winter break, after all, and with Christmas coming up fast, a little extra spending money for gifts felt more than justified.

I put the remaining eight thousand into the empty juice can tucked away in my drawer. Georgie eyed it doubtfully.

"It's getting hard to store it all in there," he said.

"That's exactly the kind of problem I like having. Now shoo, and let me study," I told him.

“Charlie! play doctor doctor with me” Missy came inside my room and there goes my afternoon.

I sighed and played with her for an hour.

_________

During the late afternoon, I got Georgie and we went around town searching for a new project, something fun to work on. We stopped by the usual dealerships and even swung by the junkyard.

We must have looked over a dozens of cars, and a few of them genuinely caught my eye, but none of them made me feel the way the last one did.

I felt kind of stupid, honestly, for narrowing my search down to just cars, because what caught my attention in the end wasn't a car at all. It was sitting off to the side in the car dealership with some minor damage, the kind of thing my restore and repair could easily handle, especially now that it was finally out of cooldown.

I had tested that skill on plenty of things before, computers, fridges, pretty much every electronic I could get my hands on, and it never worked on any of them. As far as I could tell, it only activated for vehicles, and only the kind with wheels that people actually sat in and rode.

"We are getting that," I told Georgie.

"Really? It's for the job, right? You can't just keep something like this to yourself. I am not liking the look in your eyes. Shit…..You know Mom's going to kill us, right?" Georgie said.

"Yeah. We're still getting it. It's mine," I told him.

I felt stupid all over again once it clicked. Bikes. Fucking bikes. That was the one thing I could actually drive legally at my age, and here I was getting worked up over it like it was some kind of trophy. Now it was just a matter of figuring out how to convince my parents to let me keep it.

I planned on taking it to the garage to get it properly fixed, but I was going to do everything I could to keep it for myself once it was running. It was actually legal for me to drive it, so there wasn't much of an argument they could make against that.

__________

AN: Suggest some good bikes for charlie from that era. They should be less than 250cc.