Where The Food Goes

Thief Chapter 3

 

Laura woke me up early that morning. she latched onto me and started babbling about something. I groaned. What do you want?! I pointed to the sky; Laura knows that means ITS TOO EARLY.

“Im reaaaaaaaallly hungry!”

I groaned. I pointed towards the outside as if to say “See if someone else in town has something.”

“I asked them. Nobody’s got any food!”

Bullcrap, I thought, I just got them stuff two days ago.

I got up, tired and cranky. I walked to Richmond’s, our unofficial mayor. I used the little amount of sign language he taught me to say “Nobody has food?!”

He shook his head.

“I can give Laura something to snack on.”

He handed me a small apple.

“Im trying all I can. We’re going to have to find a legal solution to our problems. But for now… We need you to get us some more money.”

“What happened to what we had?!” I motioned by moving my index finger back and forth. I think that was the right one. My sign language was a little sloppy. The mayor was the only person I knew  who I could use it with.

“Well… Everyone’s poor nowadays. The police… they need to feed their families too.”

“What are you saying?” I motioned, confused.

He sighed. “I’ll be blunt with you, River. The police have the right to make us vacate our little town. We don’t own this land, we don’t… really belong here. So… I pay them under the counter, in exchange to stay here. Keep us safe. Adds to our expenses a little bit.”

I stared at him for a minute, trying to think. Come to think of it, the sheriff has been acting a little friendlier…

“how much?”

He laughed sadly. “Alot. Let’s just say that.  They change the deal everytime, and they come at completely random times. Right now we’re in deep debt, and that’s why I haven’t been able to buy food from James’ profits.”

“That’s not fair! Tell city mayor!”

“Whats the point, River?” He said, defeatedly. “You think he cares about us? We mean nothing to them.”

“what do we do?”

“For now, we suck it up, and use what we got. We brown-nose a little, pay here and there, work as hard as we can, and we’ll survive.”

 

We cant pay here and there. I thought, frustrated, We can’t even pay for ourselves!

 

“And, River,” he continued, “As much as I hate it, the only way we can survive is if James’ ‘resale’ business gets a massive boost, and that means we need you to get more valuable things for him to sell. If we don’t figure out something better than what we have soon… well.. you get the idea.”

I hate being needed.

 

 

 

I racked my brain trying to think of a solution. A single heist, if performed right, if I could fill my bags with enough of the jewelry or perfumes or million dollar wines or whatever fancy things, could help me feed these people, and I could feed Laura, and maybe even pay off our “debt”. But where? I needed a bigger job. I knew that the harder it was for a person like me to get in, the more guards, the better locks, the better the rewards were inside. So what was the hardest house to pull in the area…

I remembered something. A time when I got too ambitious when I was younger out of gold lust, rushed in and almost got killed on the spot. I still have scars on my arm from the incident.

I know where to go.

Reviews

[C. Rose]

I love the line "I hate being needed".

The plot pacing is going well. The first chapter got us used to the character's personality and situation in life, the second set up her community and now the third reveals the first big conflict.

I've learned a bit of sign language, and the way I understand it is that it's more abstract and inventive than spoken language. Sloppy sign language wouldn't result in dropped words. Could you have her either use Ruth's notebook or describe her attempt at sign language such as holding both hands face up and to the side 'what happened' or holding up two fingers to say 'bullcrap i just got them food two days ago'. It makes more sense to me when she points up at the sky to say it is too early. Try reading some examples of stories with a mute character like "The Healer" by Robin McKinley. Since Robin lives in a relatively small community and hasn't had a proper education, her way of signing with their mayor probably wouldn't be half formed sentences but more a repore (not sure how to spell that) where a certain gesture has been used before or through context he puts it together.

[nrshrews]

Thanks for the professional level criticism, it really means alot! Im gonna go through and see if I cant work that in

[nrshrews]

I need to improve my system for showing Rivers thoughts. Typically in a story I make italicized words equivalent to a thought bubble. It shows what they think. But I wanted River to use italicization as a means of saying, "This is the words I was thinking," and then explain how he explains those thoughts, usually by him making up symbols or just relying on Lenny's ability to seem to read his mind. I didnt really do that second part in my first verses cuz it was hard to develop