Sterling's Weekly

I never took my phone out, though.   Never called Omar.   In fact, the prospect of collecting the thousand dollars from him and his cousin Meelod quickly became unrealistic and equally as unimportant, irrelevant.   Why?   Because while sitting there on the floor, cat in my lap, watching some coming-of-age TV drama from the 2000s— One Tree Hill Des said when I asked—I realized that Nadia was, to put it plainly, a perfectly nice lady.   And what I mean by that is she seemed completely unlike her brother and cousin.    Where Omar and Meelod were frenetic and harebrained, Nadia was quiet and measured—though I’m not sure what I should’ve expected, considering she’d been forced from birth to experience the world in blackness.   I’d probably keep to myself, too, if that were my lot.   Of course, I’d just met her, so this was all mere speculation, yet, regardless of whether the money was real (it wasn’t), I resolved then and there that I wasn’t goi...

Like I said, I had no intention of looking for the kid, and if that jeopardized, or forfeited, my chances at the thousand bucks, then so be it.   Sure, I highly doubted that I’d ever see either Omar or Meelod again, that we’d even had the slimmest of chances at finding Nadia, or that the batty cousins would’ve paid me the money even if we had.   I did a 360 and took in surroundings, tried to get my bearings, but I realized I had no idea where I was.   I’d say I was in the back of the ice cream truck for only fifteen, twenty minutes, but watching the outside pass by through the rear window, together with the disorientating jingles, had done a number on my sense of direction.   I felt a bit like a hostage who’d been nabbed and held for ransom, but then quickly and unceremoniously dumped on the side of the road once my captors discovered I was worthless and wouldn’t fetch a penny.   I took out my phone and checked my location, how far I was from home.   Th...

I got in.   Now, if you’re wondering why that sounds familiar, it’s because this wasn’t the first time I’d gotten into the large vehicle of a virtual stranger.   Remember Seamus, the psychopath EMT?   Yes, I wish I didn’t either.   The catalyst for that debacle was the implied promise of a ride home, one I desperately needed at the time.   And this time, I don’t think anyone can blame me for hopping in the ice cream truck with Omar and Meelod.   A thousand bucks was a thousand bucks.   But what the kiosk cousins didn’t tell me was that I’d be earning that rack in a way other than simply searching for the missing Nadia—namely, slinging ice cream treats.   I should’ve expected as much.   Omar and Meelod were not the kind of men who’d let a business opportunity like this pass them by, looking for a missing loved one or not.   What I couldn’t have expected, though, was the class of ice cream treats we’d be selling: refrozen .   “I...