Revenge
A penny per tick, that’s pretty good money. I was already on my second mason jar; had to be almost five dollars. I probably could have fit them all into one jar, but I wanted to give them a little room to breathe. Jimmy had said they needed to be alive. There were a lot of ticks out in these woods, and if they started getting scarce, I could always go pick some of the horses or the cows. Those were the big juicy ones, but you had to be careful picking those off. If you squeezed just a little too hard, they would explode like little tiny water balloons filled with blood. That’s why I’m gettin’ the ones in the woods first. Jimmy hadn’t told me what the ticks where for yet. He said I couldn’t be trusted not to say anything. Jimmy’s my older brother. He just came back from boarding school. My parents told me not to listen to him; that he’d get me in trouble. But, I think Jimmy is the smartest person in the world. He said he’d teach me how to sleep with my eyes open this weekend.
I really hope these ticks are some kind of revenge for the stupid prick next door. Jimmy said he’s the one who killed our horse Blackie. We found her a couple of weekends ago out in the back field. Someone had beaten her to death. It looked like they had used a piece of board, maybe one of the fence pieces, because she had holes poked in her skin too. I’d never seen Jimmy so mad before. He swore he was going to make whoever did this suffer like they never thought possible. I hope he does, but I almost feel bad for whoever it is, ‘cause when Jimmy’s mad, he’s really mad. But, I just don’t know how all these ticks fit in to his plan.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••
Jake and Molly were parked out in the field. Jake had offered to bring her out there to “look at the stars.” And while the stars were out in all their glory and splendor that evening, the only thing Molly was getting a look at was a close-up of Jake’s face as he slobbered all over her, like an overly eager puppy.
They’d only been there a few minutes when Jake felt something crawling on his leg. He swatted at it inattentively, but after a few minutes he began to feel things crawling all over him: up the back of his shirt, on his arms, and in his hair. Not wanting to freak Molly out, and more realistically, not wanting to ruin his chances of getting some action, he was trying his hardest to block out the crawling sensation and focus his attention on second base.
Right as he was unsnapping the second hook on her bra, Molly let out an ear piercing scream. “What is it?!? What’s on me!?!? Get it off!?!”
••••••••••••••••••••••
That neighbor kid, Jake, died last night. Him and his girlfriend were taken to the hospital last night. The doctors were running tests for Lyme’s disease and some other stuff, on Molly. She’s still alive, but he went into some kind of shock, and died. They say nobody knows what happened to them, but I know what it was. It was the ticks that got ‘em. After I finished gathering up the jars for Jimmy, he told me he I needed to keep them for a little bit, because he needed me to do some more work for him.
That night, Jimmy had me sneak over to the property next door where Jake’s car was parked, and place the cans of ticks underneath the two front seats of Jack’s car. Jimmy said he had a date that night, and Jake wasn’t the kind of guy who ever took a girl out, he just took her to “park.” Jimmy said it was very important that I put the cans in such a way that they didn’t roll around, because we didn’t want Jake to find them on accident. And, he said, I needed to take the light bulb out of the dome light, so he couldn’t see what was crawling on him. He showed me how to do it on his own car first, so he could make sure I did it right.
I didn’t know that ticks could kill a person. But I’m glad he’s dead. I feel bad for the girl he was with, but anyone who hangs out with Jake is either stupid or mean like him. I just hope nobody finds out that I put the ticks in the car, or my dad will skin me alive. Jimmy said not to worry though, that as long as I did it just like he said no one would ever know. And I did, I did it just like he said.
