fast car | STEVE HARRINGTON [2]

7. ski pants in summer

JULIA WHEELER WOULD BE THE FIRST TO ADMIT SHE HAD MADE MISTAKES. Mistakes in raising her daughter, that was. Thinking of how unsupportive she had been two years before when Ringo had first been sent to Indiana left her feeling heavy with shame. The guilt would likely never leave her, but she would spend the rest of her days as a mother ensuring her first-born knew just how loved she was.

Unlike the Wheelers, including Ringo's late father, Julia hadn't originated from a suburban middle-class background. The fact they were on the lower spectrum of the economic scale wasn't something new to her - Julia was from the proverbial 'wrong side of the tracks' from the get-go. And when someone hurt a family member on that side of the tracks, it didn't slip by without consequences. Charlie Lincolnshire - the titled owner of Charlie's Convenience Store, was about to realise that today.

"You!" Julia called out the second she stepped through the doors to the empty store, prompting the young boy manning the till to jump a mile into the air in fright. "Get the owner."

"Aren't you R-Ringo's mom?" Ben inquired, nervous by her attitude but relaxing slightly as he began to notice how eerily similar they looked.

"You bet your ass," Julia announced proudly, placing her hands on the counter and waiting until the teenager fetched her target of the hour as he disappeared through the back room and reappeared with a middle-aged man she didn't quite recognise.

"Is there a problem?" He questioned, raising an eyebrow and eyeing her carefully.

"What kind of asshole shouts at a girl the way you did to Ringo?" She demanded, feeling very much like Karen Wheeler complaining to the manager about inappropriate service - every cliché about middle-class mothers rolled into a single person. "You have no right to even look at my daughter wrong, much less insult her the way you did for the sake of a couple cans of pineapple."

"I don't know what your daughter told you," he sneered, squaring off his shoulders to appear taller and look down upon her, "but I never raised my voice. If anything, I gave Ringo special treatment because she seemed a little stressed out. So whatever she told you is obviously an excuse to cover up the fact she was too lazy to work hard for a living."

"Are you trying to suggest that my daughter is a liar?" She recoiled, eyes wide with offence and fists balled by her side. Julia was a matured woman - for the most part. But offend her family or loved ones and she suddenly became the sixteen year old girl who beat up boys that made her friends cry, or pranked the girls that smack-talked her family.

"If that's the conclusion you want to draw," he shrugged uncaringly, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You're the liar," a quiet voice sounded out from next to them, so low they wouldn't have heard it had there been any sound other than their heavy breathing. Confused by his sudden input, Charlie reeled to glare at Ben with a vicious stare, daring him to speak again.