Eli knew that, next to going through someone’s search history or maybe looking through their messages, clicking on another person’s email was one of the most invasive things that he could do. But Eli wanted answers, and adults, even adults like Jo, were never going to give straight answers. Adults were always saying they were protecting you, but Eli knew that was just a fancy way of saying lying.

So Eli clicked the lone desktop shortcut and into Jo’s email he went.

Wild Nights property sale: PENDING

That was the only message in her inbox. Eli should have stopped there. Should have closed down the mail client and shut down the laptop. It was very obvious, really, what Eli should have done next. Don’t open your boss’s email. Especially the boss who hired you when you still had a juvenile record. It was one of those things that went without saying, really.

Eli clicked open the email.

Of course, once he’d opened the message, Eli wished he’d never seen it. Wished he’d actually listened to Jo and not touched her laptop in the first place. Wished he’d let the adults protect him from the truth instead of going out searching for it like a real asshole. As he read, the pit in Eli’s stomach grew until it formed the kind of chasm that he didn’t know how to climb his way out of.

NOTICE

This is a notice that the sale of the property, plant, and equipment—Wild Nights Bookstore building and lot—is under consideration with the West Garden Property Group and will likely be finalized in the next fourteen days. Please consider yourself advised.

Regards,

Archer Hunt Jr.
Owner, Hunt Properties, LLC
Tempus Fugit …

Leave it to Archer Hunt to not even put a greeting at the top of a message that told his oldest and most senior employee that she was going to be without a job and out on her ass in two weeks. Attached to the email was a series of documents—unsigned—but all looking like pretty official contracts. The valuation of the property that the bookstore sat on was blacked over. Like Jo deserved to be given two weeks’ notice to find a new job but not to understand the basic underlying numbers and monetary value of what she was being sold out for.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

Eli was used to this by now. He was under no illusions that the world was a fair place. He had accepted that as true and real for as long as he could remember. The world was an unholy and random dumpster fire, so stick it to the man as much as you can.