One For The Road

36: Finance

Nothing happened over the next couple weeks or so, and every moment that passed was gone. No progress was made since I was barely even allowed to look at Sacrilege, but it wasn't like I had anywhere better to be.

Sure, I could have headed back to Baton Rouge and hung out with Griffin (whose house desperately needed cleaning at this point, probably), but would that have been any better? When I got fired, I knew there wasn't a damn thing there for me and headed to Vegas.

As I sat with Annie in the kitchen on a Sunday morning, she scrolled through her Pinterest feed on her phone with a cup of coffee on the table in front of her. Every once in a while, she showed me a cute idea she found, then she went back to her phone.

"So how's your college search going?" I asked,

She shrugged. "It's too late at this point. Classes are about to start, and it takes too long to get my transcript, fill out the applications, get accepted. There's just not enough time."

"There's always next semester," I said.

"I guess." She didn't sound too certain, but it was a big change for anyone. If there was one thing I knew about her, she would do whatever she could to preserve her lifestyle just the way it was. But that wasn't how life worked.

And maybe it was too late to begin the process. I didn't know how the hell it worked.

"Just promise me one thing, Katie," Annie said.

"What is it?"

"If I go back to school, you have to as well. You really should get your high school diploma. I know you don't think you need it, but—"

"I can't do that," I interrupted.

"And why not?"

"It's too hard. I'm not cut out for that shit," I said.

Annie set her phone down on the table. "Too hard? You had never driven a robot before, but you didn't think that was too difficult."

"Because that's different. I was barely passing my classes before I dropped out, and at this point in my life, I already know what I want and what I can do." It was a bit of a lie since I had no fucking clue what I wanted, but no one had to know that besides me and the Lord.

"You're a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for, you know."

"Doesn't matter if it takes me sixty million years to figure out what the words on the goddamn assignments are," I said.

"So," Annie thought for a moment, "dyslexia?"

I nodded. "I mean, I can read, but it takes me longer than everyone else to piece everything together. It's not even worth the effort."

"Which explains why you never read any of the stuff Drake and Josiah wanted you to." She let out a sigh. "All you had to do was say something."

"I never thought I'd end up staying here this long." Just as I spoke, someone came into the kitchen, and I looked over my shoulder even though I could already tell it was Drake.

"You did it, Katie. We're in," he said, and before I could even ask what the fuck he was talking about, he put a sheet of paper on the refrigerator with a magnet. "I printed out the email and everything. This is honestly the best day of my life."

Annie giggled. "Is this about that tournament?"

"It's not just a tournament. We got an invite to BattleBots, which is the biggest tournament around. After a few regular fights to determine qualification and seeding, there's a championship bracket of the top sixteen, and the champion wins the Giant Nut," Drake continued.