Early the next morning, I cautiously entered the Marion ballroom, unsure of what I might find waiting for me. I grabbed my usual spot at one of the makeshift tables scattered around the room. The battered tables consisted of doors wrenched off the upstairs rooms and balanced on wooden barrels, while the chairs were dented milk cans stolen from the local dairy or wooden crates found in alleys.

In the cowboy westerns at the matinee movies, the lone cowboy always wandered into a saloon and sat at a table, his back to the wall. Like that lone cowboy, I didn’t trust anyone to watch my back and preferred seeing and knowing where everyone else was in the room.

Dill Barker sat across from me, slurping his coffee. He was one of Skitz’s flunkies, but then so was I, seeing as how I drove a delivery truck bootlegging rum, whiskey, and other illegal substances from the Deep Second to various locales downtown, including the Underground Chinatown, where a case of 190 proof procured Garbo’s headache powder.

I glanced at the table on the raised orchestra platform where Skitz and his inner circle sat, plus Garbo looking bored and sleepy as her eyes scanned the room.

Skitz ignored Garbo and leaned toward The Torch, one of his trustworthy wiseguys in charge of the delivery runs. That’s when Garbo caught me staring at her and she winked at me. Plain as day winked!

I looked away and caught Dill Barker giving me a jaundiced eye, one pale eyebrow arched toward the ceiling.

“What!” I demanded.

Dill shrugged and stood up. He grinned. “Are you looking for trouble, Theo? Or is that just a natural habit of yours — trouble always finding you? Speaking of which…” He jerked his head toward the entrance of the dilapidated ballroom.

Agate and Birdie were strolling straight toward my table. Agate carried two battered tin cups of hot coffee, black as pitch. Sugar and cream were for babies. Birdie clutched two stale biscuits, one in each hand, and was nibbling on one while eyeballing the second biscuit and measuring it to the other biscuit.

When they reached my table, Birdie scooted her butt onto a rickety wooden bench, and Agate placed a cup of steaming coffee down in front of the shrimp.

My hand beat Birdie’s to the tin cup of coffee.

“Hey! That’s my coffee, Feeo!” Birdie squawked.

“Not any more, kid. You’re too young for coffee. It’ll stunt your growth.”

“Nuh-uh!” Birdie protested, poking out her bottom lip in a pout. “I only stunt my growth if I smoke cigars.”

Scalding coffee spewed from my mouth. I swiped the back of my hand across my mouth and glared at Agate. She grinned and shrugged as she slid onto the bench next to Birdie.

“I prefer Cremo cigars. There’s no spit in Cremos!” Agate rattled off the popular advertising jingle meant to quell smokers’ concerns about the unsanitary conditions of handmade cigars and inhaling germs from someone’s spit.

Dill Barker snorted and shook his head. “Like I said. Trouble.”

That did it. “I’m outta here.” I stood up, jammed my cap on my head, and cocked a crooked grin at Agate. “I’ll see if I can find you some Cremos.”

It’d be a pleasure watching Agate light up a five-cent cigar, take a puff and turn a hundred shades of sickly green when she puked from smoking her Cremo cigar.

“Where you going?” Birdie squirmed around in her seat as I sauntered off with Dill.

“I have business for Skitz. Later, kid. Try to stay out of trouble!”

Dill and I headed off. I didn’t look back; didn’t want to look back. I might not feel so antsy if I knew what to expect when I returned later tonight after leaving Agate and Birdie Jones to their own devices for an entire day.

I shuddered to consider such possibilities or the consequences.

What if they started blabbing to the other kids? Maybe I was looking for trouble leaving them. But hell! I wasn’t going to drag them along with me everywhere I went.

Beside me, Dill Barker snickered as we strolled from the ballroom and headed off to the streets and the day’s errands and scams.

“What?” I scowled at Dill.

He guffawed and shook his head.

I punched his shoulder and he laughed even harder.

“You’re in deep trouble, Theo.”

“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know, Dill.

On the nights following Agate and Birdie’s arrival, I no sooner crawled in through the window from the fire escape and stretched out on my side of the mattress when Agate would sigh and shift around on her side of the mattress, the left side. I made dang sure she knew I owned the right side closest to the window and door.

Most nights, I wasn’t surprised to find Agate still awake, even at two o’clock in the morning. All I wanted to do was shut my eyelids, drift into oblivion, and forget everything I had done or heard or seen during the day’s events. What I didn’t need was Agate popping off questions and aggravating me. She was the nosiest dang girl I had ever met. She wanted to know all my secrets, everything I thought, and why, especially why.

“How come you don’t smoke like the other boys?” she asked.

In the dark, I rolled my eyeballs and almost sprained an eye muscle. Forget about sleeping. Bring on the questions!

“I never wanted to, that’s how come.”

“I thought all boys smoked,” Agate said, sounding petulant like a whiney girl. Oh, for Pete’s sake! She was the girliest boy I had ever met. How she managed to fool anyone into believing she was a boy was beyond me.

I almost groaned, but I had to open my yap and ask, “How about you?”

“How about I what?” she said.

“Smoke,” I said. “I saw you staring at Willy’s cigarette — how he rolled it and lit it up, like you’d never seen a kid smoke.”

“I have so! Once I—” She stopped and refused to say anything more. She always did that whenever I asked her questions. How aggravating! Every time I asked her why she had run away from the Refuge or tried to pry into her life to learn more about her and Birdie, she would get all huffy and say it was none of my dang business.

“Well?”

“I never wanted to smoke either,” she admitted.

I chuckled. “Thought so…” Another insane thought struck me, and as hilarious as the idea was to imagine, I still had to ask, “Does Birdie smoke?”

“Hail Columbia! Smoking would stunt Birdie’s growth!”

I laughed. As if coffee wouldn’t do the same.

“Your invisible act, crappy as it is, might have everyone else fooled, but it doesn’t fool me. Not one bit, Agatha Grace Haisten,” I teased.

I rolled over onto my side and closed my eyes, ignoring Agate’s surprised huff. Nipped that shit right in the bud. As if she didn’t know, I knew exactly who she and Birdie were — Agatha Grace and Mary Rose Haisten. Plus, Birdie was too happy to see me, as if we were long-lost best friends. Those two girls could pretend all they wanted, but not me.

“Now, shut up and go to sleep.” A yawn cracked my jaw. Right after that, everything went black.

“I got the depressions,” Agate whined. She braced her elbows on her knees, propped her chin on her fists and let out a deep, long sigh. I hoped her negativity wasn’t contagious.

I glanced at her. “Agate, everybody’s dealing with depression these days. In case you haven’t noticed, the entire country’s got the depression.”

“I got the depressions bad. It’s seeped into my bones, and they’re starting to crack. I can hear them popping.”

“That’s your imagination working overtime.”

“But you’re never depressed!”

“How do you know I’m not?”

“I just know.”

“You don’t know shit.”

“You sure hide it good.”

I sighed and gave up arguing with her. “Listen up and listen good because I’m not gonna repeat it. I don’t believe in worrying about the future. Living each day in the here and now is hard enough, and getting through the day in one piece is worrisome enough. My best advice — watch your back because nobody is gonna watch it for you. That includes me. Just because I know who you and Baby Birdie are, and I haven’t ratted you out to Skitz, doesn’t mean I’m gonna look out for either of you. You two would be better off at the Refuge.”

“You’re mean. Tulsa was right about you.”

“Tulsa doesn’t know squat about me.” Tulsa was an odd duck and a few years older than me. She had always been decent to me, and covered for me several times, so I didn’t have anything against her. She even kissed me once. On my cheek, so don’t get any funny ideas about any of that romantic business.

Curiosity bit. So much for not caring what others think. I had to ask.

“So, what did Tulsa say?”

“She said you are mean and dangerous.”

“Maybe you should have listened to Tulsa. Ever think about that?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s something you ought to consider. I won’t always be around to keep you and Birdie out of trouble.”

Agate huffed. “I can be mean and dangerous.” Her pout killed me.

“Dangerous, I believe — especially around fire. But mean?” I snorted at the idea of Agate being mean; she quivered too much, and she couldn’t hide her thoughts or keep her emotions from leaking all over her face and giving her away.

“Hardly,” I said, hopefully a little too softly for her to hear me and encourage any more conversation. She made me so damn angry. I wasn’t her protector. I swear. Trying to have a conversation with Agate drove me crazy. She was so annoying sometimes. I was a sucker. Guys didn’t deserve girls like Agate. Call me crazy, but I probably deserved her. It would be my luck — stuck with her to protect every guy in the universe from Agate Jones, boy disguise and all.

© 2024 by Elizabeth A. Monroe, Trouble in River City excerpt