Hefting the bag in both arms, I let myself out of the apartment and was just heading for my bike, which was parked out front, when a large shape stepped in front of me, blocking my forward progress.
It was our landlord, Carl Groperson again, and the look on his face was not happy.
“Oh, uh, hello, Mr. Groperson,” I said uneasily. I was glad I had the big bag of clothes to cover my front with this time, but I wished very much that I had woken up Bran and Lachlan and asked them to come with me. Both of them were big enough and strong enough to intimidate a creep like Groperson. But as it was, I was entirely on my own because there was no one else up at the complex that early in the morning.
“You have a lot of explaining to do, Missy,” Groperson snapped, glaring at me with his piggy little eyes.
“Uh, what?” I had no idea what he was talking about. “What do you mean, Mr. Groperson?”
“I mean this.” He stuck one grubby hand in the pocket of his sagging shorts and pulled out a handful of cigarette butts. With a sinking heart, I recognized the pink smears of lipstick that marked them as my mom’s. Still, I couldn’t let on that I knew something was wrong.
“I don’t understand,” I said, making my face as blank as possible.
“Yes, you damn well do, Missy!” he snarled. “I took that coin you gave me over to be appraised yesterday. But when I reached in my pocket to get it, I came up with these.” He shoved the handful of cigarette butts in my face, wafting the scent of stale smoke at me, which made my nose wrinkle.
“I don’t know anything about that,” I protested—which was honestly the truth. I had no idea how the butts had turned into a golden coin in the first place or how they had changed back again either. It had just…happened.
“Don’t lie to me!” Groperson barked. He glared at me menacingly. “You gave me some kind of trick coin or something to make a fool of me!”
I felt my fear and worry turning into something else—anger.
“First of all, I didn’t give you anything,” I snapped back. “You took that coin right out of my hand without my permission! And secondly, it’s not my fault if you lost it and somehow got a, uh, handful of cigarette butts instead. You can’t blame me for what you did.”
Groperson narrowed his piggy little eyes and fixed me with a malevolent glare.
“Oh yes I can blame you, girly. I’m the Goddamned landlord around here, or did you forget it?”
“Like you’d let us forget!” I snapped back. “If you’d waited for the rent at the time it was due, maybe you wouldn’t have ended up looking like a fool at the pawn shop, or wherever you went!”
I knew the moment I spoke the words that I had gone too far. But after years of Groperson raising our rent and being nasty to my mom, something in me just snapped and I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Speaking of the rent, girly, it’s overdue now that your little fake coin trick flopped,” the nasty landlord snarled at me. “And I’m charging you double to make up for it.”
“What?” I demanded, thinking I must have heard him wrong. “But you can’t do that! My mom and I barely make enough to pay the rent as it is, since the last time you raised it!”
“Too bad,” Groperson sneered. “I better have double the rent in my hand by this time Saturday morning or you and your lazy, chain-smoking mother are out on your asses! Do I make myself clear?”
“My mom is not lazy!” I exclaimed (I couldn’t exactly refute the chain-smoking part.) “And you can’t do this! We…we’ll sue you or something!” I added, not sure how I would do this but thinking that there must be laws against a landlord suddenly doubling the rent like he was threatening to do.
“Oh yeah?” Groperson smirked at me. “And how you gonna pay the legal fees, girly? You know most lawyers want at least five hundred bucks to even walk in the front door, right? How you gonna come up with that and get me into court in time before I kick you and your mom out?”
I didn’t have an answer to that. And to be honest, I didn’t even know any lawyers. Come to think of it, I didn’t think there were any kind of legal services in Frostproof at any price—let alone five hundred dollars.
The landlord could tell by my silence that I had no way to refute his claims and he gave me a nasty, yellow-toothed grin.
“Double the rent,” he said, jabbing a pudgy finger at me. “By this time Saturday or you’re both out.”