Merry Random Christmas Read Online Free Page A

negotiated.
    He chuckle d . “No. But we get a ten minute breather and then we have twenty more minutes of this hellhole.”
    “A hellhole you dug for us with your turned eel.”
    “Drop it, okay? It’s not like I went into that Japanese restaurant and personally planted tainted fish . We’re doing our best to make up for it.”
    “That’s the problem,” I gr ound out as we walk ed down the hallway to the bedroom the hostess set up for us. My ears we re ringing, Trevor’s argument buried under the shrill sounds that fade d into a high-pitched whine that wo uldn’t leave my head for two days.
    “What’s the problem?”
    “We. This we shit. Y ou dragged me into this. I didn’t do anything wrong!” My thighs slid against each other like pistons.  
    “Would it kill you to help out friends in need?” Trevor rummaged in his coat and pulled out his smartphone, then snatched up a bottled water from a silver tray. The room was decorated in lavish purples and deep adobes, mosaic tiles covering the ceiling, but with a giant, human-sized mirror embedded right over the bed.  
    T he hair on the back of my neck—the parts that weren’t cover e d in oil—began to stand up.
    I pointed to the ceiling and swallowed half a bottle of water. Trevor tipped his chin up, drank, and then sprayed me as his eyes tracked what I was noting.  
    “Jesus Christ, Trev? What the hell?” I grabbed a towel and began wiping myself. The water just beaded on my naked skin. Damn. I had more oil on me than my grandma’s Thanksgiving turkey.
    “ Are we being set up for a reality television show, Joe? I mean, for real.” Trevor gestured at his g-string. I followed his hands, looking at his limp little ball of striped sadness.  
    Between the two of us, he might have been taller, more tan, and he headline d the band, but I had the bigger package.
    “Quit comparing my junk with yours,” he said, as if he read my mind.
    “I don’t do that, dude,” I lied.
    He ignored me and returned his attention to his phone. “Damn. Seventy-three notifications. What the...oh, God!”
    “What?”
    “Grab your phone.”
    I searched my jacket. No phone.
    “It’s gone!”
    “Oh, no,” he groaned. “Darla’s in jail!”
    “JAIL?”
    “She’s been texting us for hours!” Trevor has always been a pretty mellow guy. Sometimes too mellow, unless he’s stealing peyote and chickens. H e ran a shaking hand through his hair, those bright eyes widening with the dawning realization of his own words.
    “Why is she in jail?” I asked, patting down all my clothes. No phone. I came here with it. Where the fuck was my phone?
    Trevor fingered his glass screen. His face soured, like he smelled something bad, and then he thrust his screen in my face.
    “Why are you taking pictures of yourself on Instagram?”
    I opened my mouth to argue with him, but the evidence made me shut my mouth. He was right. My ass, covered in hanging paper money, was on display in the photo.
    “I can’t take that kind of picture of myself with my phone. My phone that I don’t have !” I snapped back.
    T revor ignored me, grabbed his phone, and scrolled through various sections of his phone. “Fuck! She was arrested a few hours ago. Her newest text says she’s with your mother in Cambridge, trying to find us.”
    The world cracked in two. Hot lava and cold nitrogen poured into every molecule of my body at the same time.
    “Darla is with my mother ?”
    “Yes.”
    “ My mother. Joanne Ross? Tiny little thing filled with more Botox than blood? Puts diapers on chickens?”
    “Do you have another mother I don’t know about?”
    “Shut up.”
    Trevor squinted. “Darla’s last text is from about ten minutes ago. Said she’s in central Square and your mom bailed her out and—”
    “MY MOTHER BAILED MY GIRLFRIEND OUT OF JAIL?” I bum-rushed Trevor and crowded around him, pressing hard against his back to try to read the screen. We were spooning, except it wasn’t romantic.
    I