#--non ca--

 “Oh jeez, I’m sorry, I was just- shit, I didn’t think--” He never guessed someone would go out this far. Whoops. Maybe it was time to change where the camp w-

Wait a minute. She looked awfully familiar. High-school graduate in his class? Yeah. Her name was coming back to him.

“How the hell you even make one anyway? I saw a potato explode in the microwave one time, so that prolly ain’t it...”

Steve, you’re an idiot. Baked things go in the oven. You bake a potato in the oven.

“Ah fehkur ow ih ah tur ih, ah cah may ih moo.”

“Only the people I don’t know, hweh…”

It was sad, he knew. But all the young kids and people he didn’t know that came to buy from him were often berated and made fun of. There were a lot of people too. He didn’t make friends. He didn’t even have a lot of friends.

“Listen kid, I ain’t a general store, I’m a seller. What you see is what I got. What, you want a hairbrush and a ball of yarn while you’re at it too? Hweh heh heh.”

Some people could be so picky. He was a street thief, not a store. Normally he didn’t have too much trouble with people looking for stuff, but this kid was getting on his nerves, trying to barter with him.

He needed something to sell today, and his brother’s construction crew was running low on supplies, so stealing from them wasn’t an option. He had a buyer who was looking for construction supplies at much cheaper prices than were being offered, and Steve was the man for stuff like that. He had an idea of where he might be able to snag a hammer or a box of screws or something of the sort.

The Ol Pickaxe was a good store with a lot of supplies and, from what he saw, only a few employees. The perfect place to snag some stuff and make some quick cash. Walking in the front door casually with a cigarette in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, he gave the cashier, another gator about his age, a nice smile.