“Sure,” Abby said.
Meggie unzipped her fanny pack and took out her deck of cards. “I’m going to leave the jokers in. They count as jacks too. Okay?”
“Sure,” Abby said. The cards said Hawaii on them and showed a palm tree at sunset. “Did you and Rake go to Hawaii?”
“No. Do you know how to play this?”
“I forget.”
“We each get half the cards. So, I’m going to split them in half so it looks like two equal piles, and you can pick which pile you want. Got that?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” she said after Abby had taken one of the piles of cards, “now we’re going to take turns laying cards down in a pile. When you see a jack or a joker, slap it, and the whole pile is yours. The first person to slap it gets it. Whoever wins all the cards wins the whole game. Understand?”
“Got it.”
They started playing. It went on and on.
“How much time do you think has gone by?” Abby asked when the sun began to dip below the top of the hill.
“Who knows. A long time.”
At a certain point Abby decided to throw the game, and got extra slow with her slapping. Eventually Meggie won. It had to have taken at least a couple of hours.
“Want to play again?” Meggie asked.
“I have to pee. If I don’t come back in two minutes come find me.” Abby went all the way back to the space between the two small sheds, squatted, and quickly peed, keeping watch for alligators. When all this was over, she hoped to escape someplace up north, someplace that was alligator free.
She pulled up her running shorts, patted the stack of money to make sure it was still there, and readjusted her hair in its clip. Just then she heard the sound of a vehicle rambling down the road. She came back around to the front of the shed as Rake and Charlie were getting out of Charlie’s truck.
“Where’ve you been? You’ve been gone all day. It’s practically dark out,” said Meggie.
Rake threw a pack of cigarettes at Meggie. Seconds later she was smoking one, happily distracted.
“I got something for you, too,” Charlie said to Abby. He slid a bottle of pink wine out of a paper bag and unscrewed the top. “Sorry, there aren’t any glasses. You’ll have to drink right out of the bottle.”
“Thanks,” she said. It was fizzy and tasted like strawberries, but at least it was cold. It really wasn’t wine at all. The label said Mr. Bun-Rabbit’s Strawberry Wine and showed a picture of a white cartoon rabbit lying in a hammock sipping a glass of wine. Beneath the picture it said Alcohol content 15%. There was an orange sticker for $3.99 pasted over a white sticker for $4.99. It looked like wine for children.
“Can I try it?” asked Meggie. Abby hesitated. She really didn’t want Meggie to drink out of the same bottle as her.
“I got you your own prize,” said Charlie. He handed Meggie a six-pack of some kind of local beer. Abby had never tried it but she had seen it advertised on the front windows of bait shops and liquor stores.
“Thanks Chuckles. This shit’s expensive. I can’t believe you remembered that apricot peach is my favorite beer. See,” she said to Abby, “what did I tell you? He’s a heartbreaker.”
“Yeah,” Abby said, taking another sip from her bottle, wondering why she got $3.99 fake wine while Meggie got a six pack of microbrewery beer.
“That,” Meggie said to Rake, “is how you oughta treat me.”
“I got you cigarettes, and we already had beer here,” said Rake.
“It’s still nice to get a surprise.”
“What are you doing with these?” Rake asked, confiscating the deck of playing cards from the back of the truck.
“Playing slapjack. What’s it to you?”
“Those are mine. Where’d you find them?”