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I read the letter again, hand shaking I thought I’d dodged a bullet with that visit froht behind it, ready to flatten o back to jail, and I didn’t want to end up like my mom and die there But ould I die within weeks? What was that all about? Maybe soainst me was in jail already? I’d pissed off plenty of people in my life, but as far as I knew there wasn’t anyone who hated h to want to killfor any clue as to who had sent it It was printed on plain white paper and the envelope was an ordinary white envelope No signature No postle person who’d bother finding me a job, much less threaten me with jail to make sure I kept it

Why jail? Why not rehab?

Because jail’s a bigger threat, I realized Rehab would suck, but jailWhoever sent this stuff had to know that jail scared the shit out of me

I read the letter onedressed while hts continued to tumble It wasn’t as if I’d set out to be a loser I didn’t wake up everyand say, "Hey, how can I screw ed against me, and most of the time it didn’t see to catch a break

Except Except this letter wasn’t a couple of hardass cops questioningI didn’t know shit about This was so threat over htest crap about irl If this job was for real and I didn’t at least give it a shot I’d be right back at being a Grade A Screwup But who the hell would do this forto find out would be to take the stupid job

Drive a van for a month How hard could that be?

Chapter 2

I made it home from the hospital and obediently set s around, to not be a complete screwup

My alarm went off at 7:30 I slapped the snooze and rolled over

I woke up again at 9:15

Crap!

I took the fastest shower of rabbed the first T-shirt I could find that didn’t showobnoxious printed on it Great I had a job handed to me, and I screwed it up the first day That I didn’t understand why I supposedly had this job was beside the point If it paid real ive it a shot Besides, I’d been doing soe fan of all those crime scene shows on TV, so I knew that coroners did forensics and that kind of stuff, and carried all their equip vans or Huht? In other words, there was a really good chance that this job could be exceedingly cool

But hell, anything’s better than working a ht as I pulled the shirt over h the frizzy mess of my hair

I lost several precious ue ht, which meant I had zero idea where it had ended up Hell, I didn’t even knohere I had ended up, other than the ER Oh yeah, and naked on the side of the highway

I finally dug the spare keys to my battered little Honda out of the bowl on top of my dresser, then ran for the front door At least my dad wasn’t up yet Not that I expected him to be any time before noon That was fine with me because it meant I didn’t have to try to explain to him where I’d been or what had happened He probably had no idea I’d even been in the hospital Again, I had no problem with that