Not My Kind

By Lorca Damon

Tanner Barrett lives in a mansion overlooking the town of Spooner Pass, Colorado, but life isn't as perfect as the four-car garage made it seem. While her family is close-knit and happy, the rest of the town vilifies them for their small chain of medical marijuana dispensaries.

Even though the law said it was legal, the town never said it was right. And the ugly accusations from people in town might just have a little ring of truth to them...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lorca Damon
• Release date: Jun 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301922185

Lorca Damon

Lorca Damon is a teacher in a juvenile correctional facility and her young adult books focus on themes that come directly from the lives of her troubled students. Her non-fiction title, Autism By Hand, is an Amazon bestseller and is practical advice she gleaned from raising her profoundly autistic daughter.

Book preview

Not My

KIND

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places is coincidental. All other are aspects of the story are from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, people, or places is unintentional.

Smashwords edition

Copyright © 2013 by Lorca Damon

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

ISBN-13: 978-1481247924

ISBN-10: 1481247921

For the little girl in my daughter’s class,

who nobody would play with or invite to their birthday parties and sleepovers, all because her parents owned the adult video store and sex toy shop.

Children don’t know hate,

it’s taught to them by the adults who

should know better.

CHAPTER ONE

It was one thing when Carp Griggs had his hand on the side of my face, holding my cheek clumsily while we kissed. His touch wasn’t like a phony romantic movie thing, more like he didn’t know what to do with his hands in this situation. It was kind of like he was afraid of breaking something fragile with hands that were more used to doing outdoorsy stuff instead of caressing a girl. But when his hand began to work its way down my jaw, down my neck even, to where it automatically began prying back the spaghetti strap on my right shoulder, I froze.

It’s not that I hadn’t been in this spot before, with Carp or with anyone else for that matter. It’s just that it always came to this point eventually. What was I feeling? Anger? No, that wasn’t it. It was more like the disappointment at coming face-to-face with the same old thing from the same old kind of guy.

What do you think you’re doing, Carp? I asked, sounding more bored than mad.

What? I’m just being…romantic, he answered playfully, twirling some of my hair between the very fingers that had just slid the strap of my tank top away from my skin before leaning back to run his mouth along my neck. It’s no big thing.

Of course it’s a big thing. I told you last time it was a big thing, and the time before that. I can’t believe you! I hissed, pulling away from him and scraping the strap of my tank top painfully back up on my shoulder where it belonged. Honestly it was getting a little hard to put that much emotion into it. What had I expected? That Carp was going to be any different than every other guy I knew? Like all the rest who thought they could buy me off with a medium slushie before veering their cars to one of the secluded overlooks on the mountain?

And like all the rest, he was dead wrong. So why did they keep trying? Surely word had gotten out by now that my chastity belt didn’t even have a key, but unfortunately no one is going to tell the other guys that he got rejected by the eleventh grade Ice Queen. Instead, the stories in the locker room were always about how wild I was, how I was almost too much for him. Almost. You know, because he’s such a man, and all.

I don’t even know why I keep going out with these losers. But Carp was the last straw. I decided right there in his dad’s stupid mid-life crisis convertible that I was officially done with dating until I moved off to college, or maybe I’d just skip it all and go straight to a convent. One in a whole different city, a whole different state even. One where no one knew about me or my family.

Besides, this is a two-seater car. What was your plan, dumbass, that we’d jump on the hood and go at it? Huh? Did you think you’re such a prime piece of meat that I couldn’t keep my hands off you once you got me alone out here? I asked in my most biting, mocking tone of voice. You know I’m not that kind of girl, Carp. You’ve known that since the very first time you tried to get down my pants.

What’s your deal, Barrett? It’s not like you haven’t done it before, Carp shot back at me, pissed off now that he knew for sure that I wasn’t interested. Barrett. Because every guy calls a girl he cares about by her last name, like I’m just some dude he passes in the hallway. I laughed under my breath at how stupid I had been before reaching up to slap his fingers off the grip they still had on my hair.

What makes you think you know anything about what I have and haven’t done before? Just because some guy told you behind the gym that I give it away for free doesn’t make it true. And even if I had, it sure doesn’t mean I was going to do it with someone like you.

That only made him angry. Instead of letting go, he used that handful of curls to shove my head down painfully towards his lap where his free hand was already reaching for the zipper on his jeans. You’re not leaving here without giving me what I want, Barrett. Nobody likes a tease.

Carp! Let go of me right now! I screamed, bracing my hands on either side of his legs, jerking upwards. This wasn’t real, there was no way this was really happening. I only succeeded in smacking my head really hard on the steering wheel. Little flashes of colored light exploded in front of my eyes for a second. I had to really force myself to think about what to do next, but between the painful raking of his hands on my scalp and my complete fury at being right here at this moment, I couldn’t even begin to know what was real.

Until my foot got tangled in the strap of my purse, that is, still slouched where I’d left it in the floorboard on my side of the car. My purse, thank goodness. I reached my hand for it while I fought with Carp, having to feel for its bulky shape by using my own leg to guide my fingers for the little side pocket where a large canister of pepper spray was snuggled. I unsnapped the embroidered decorative flap over the pocket, slid the canister into my palm, then aimed upward to where Carp’s face must have been before pinching my finger down hard on the plastic trigger button. His sharp inhale and the scream that came after it told me I was free, even before my head snapped loose from his grip.

One thing about pepper spray, though, is it goes everywhere in a killer vaporous cloud. I knew before I hit that button that I’d have almost as much of it on me as Carp did. I ducked my head in the crook of my elbow, fumbled for the strap on my purse, and jumped out of the car, wishing Carp had kept the top down on the car.

Carp was still screaming like a girl in between calling me every skanky name he could think of, when he wasn’t threatening to beat the crap out of me, my family, my dog, and basically everyone I’d ever met, that is. I walked backwards away from his car, watching him wipe at his moist face uselessly with the sleeve of his T-shirt. I took huge gulps of air off the mountain to cool the burn that was tearing apart the inside of my nose, too. I turned around and headed up the coarse asphalt road, really glad that I hadn’t bothered to dress up for this date and wouldn’t twist an ankle in pointlessly pretty shoes.

Getting home from there was no problem. It was only about a half mile walk, even though the road snaked up and down along the lines of the mountain. To say that my family lived in one of the larger houses that looked down its nose on the valley below would have been an understatement. Across the valley, more mountains rose up to make a circular wall around the city, only those far mountains had been lovingly groomed into ski trails that fed the tiny resort. And the resort basically fed the whole town. When I was little I used to look out my bedroom window on the town below and feel just like a princess in a castle. Too bad the rich little girl’s castle had been paid for with drug money.

CHAPTER TWO

There are a whole lot of things that people are willing to overlook, especially if they think there’s some deep, noble cause at play. What people aren’t willing to overlook is that my parents own a small chain of medical marijuana dispensaries, even though the nearest one is thirty miles outside of town. It was fine with everybody back in the days when it was a one-shop operation that delivered supplies to elderly cataracts patients and people with AIDS who weren’t strong enough to come into the store themselves. I guess people could wrap their heads around the good that my parents were trying to do, but mostly, no one talked about the town’s hidden business.

But once the whole industry exploded and business was good, we became the poster people for all that was wrong with the world. Once it became possible to get a prescription for weed for stuff like insomnia and irritability, random stuff like that, we weren’t quite the noble crusaders that people used to let themselves believe that we were.

So a lot of the people in town had a real attitude problem when it came to the family business. It was like some dirty secret that no one could talk about. The irony was that those snotty people were the exact same customers who paid for the massive house that we never entertained in because no one wanted to socialize with the Barrett family. The local charities reluctantly took my parents’ large checks, and more than one church had made it pretty clear up front that God didn’t like us so they didn’t have to, either.

I guess I have to admit that not everyone in the entire town hated us, even if it felt that way sometimes. There were a few people who believed in the same things my parents believed in, but there were also people who had more of a live and let live philosophy, the kind of people who retired to our tiny mountain town with the express purpose of staying out of everybody else’s business. But those people didn’t come around often enough to really show their support.

Our housekeeper, Alexa, was one of those you mind your business, I’ll mind mine people. On the surface, I kind of used to think that my parents had hired her out of charity since she was a single mom with some kind of dark and unspoken thing in her past that no one ever talked about. But the more I thought about it over the years, the more I had to ask myself if we weren’t the charity case in this story. Maybe she was the one who was being a decent human being by coming to work for us, since there probably hadn’t been a line of people who were willing to scrub toilets AND align themselves with the Barrett family. I had tried to ask her about it one day after a particularly ugly run in at school, but I ended up just being even more confused.

Hey, Alexa, I said one day after school had started back this year, coming in to the kitchen for something to eat while our housekeeper chopped a salad for dinner. What’s going on?

Not much, Lil Bit, how about with you? she replied. Somehow, Alexa ended up in Colorado, even though she is just as country as anybody from the South. It was all part of that unspoken, dark past thing we didn’t talk about. She kept slicing up the tomato in her hand with a tiny sharp knife, sliding it back and forth across her fingers so fast that if I had tried it, I would have ended up with a stump where my fingers used to be.

Let me ask you a question, I announced, pausing for dramatic effect or maybe to give her a chance to run away.

Okay, shoot, she said, moving on to slicing a cucumber so thin that you could see through the slices if you held them up to the light.

You know what my parents do for a living, right? I asked, squinting my eyes a little like I was afraid of what she might say.

I suppose I do, she said slowly without looking up from her cucumber slicing.

And what do you think about it? I kept on, reaching for some of the slices and popping them in my mouth, chewing thoughtfully, while she pretended to swat my hand away from the plate.

I always figured it wasn’t any of my business. My paycheck is good and it feeds my family, so if I had a problem with where that money came from, I need to find me another job. I don’t get to pay my bills outta one hand then complain about where my employer got that money in the first place with the other.

I didn’t really know how you would complain with your other hand, but I just decided it was some neat Southern expression like the ones she was always tossing into her conversations. But you don’t have an opinion about people buying that stuff?

I don’t guess I do, she answered after thinking for a second.

Would you ever buy it? I questioned, reaching for more cucumbers.

If you don’t stop eating that, there won’t be any for dinner! she laughed, swatting at me again. Where is all this coming from, little miss? Are you still upset about what people say to you when they think nobody else can hear?

How did you know about that? I asked, indignant.

Everybody knows about that, Tanner, don’t ever forget it. And no, right now, standing here today in this very kitchen, I don’t see myself ever buying anything in your parents’ store, if that’s what you’re dyin’ to know, she said with a resigned sigh. But that don’t mean that I don’t admit that everyone else has to feel that way, same as me. I can look you in the face right this second and tell you one thing for sure, though. If it was my mamma suffering, I’d be first in line when those doors opened in the morning. And anyone who tells you different is lyin’ to your face. Nobody knows what they’re gonna do until it comes time to do it. They can talk big about what they would do or wouldn’t do, but they don’t know for sure ‘til the time comes to do it.

I felt a little bit better, but a good feeling only lasts as long as you let it. It was nice to know without a doubt that there were people on my parents’ side, but those people can’t build a wall around me and keep me locked inside forever. And they certainly can’t protect me from everyone who wants to get me.

I was spared from any more wallowing in self-reflection by reaching my driveway, a winding cobble stone lane that disappeared through old cedar trees that