Free Cut Back by Todd Strasser

Can I count on you to relay that message?”
    For the first time, Kai smiled. “You bet.”

Fifteen
    â€œ
D amn it! Damn it! Damn it!” Pat stomped around the store like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum. Kai had just relayed the message from Mr. Blake that all the items in the store had to have clearly marked prices.
    â€œHow the hell am I supposed to make any money?” Pat asked.
    â€œYou could sell the T-shirts at normal prices like everyone else,” Kai said.
    Pat glared at him, and Kai could almost read his mind: Sell a three dollar T-shirt and a seventy-five-cent heat transfer for twenty dollars? Make only sixteen dollars and twenty-five cents profit when he used to make fifty dollars? Was Kai crazy?
    â€œDon’t give me any lip, sonny boy,” Kai’s father snarled.
    â€œWhy don’t we just pack up and go somewhere else?” Sean asked.
    â€œYou want to know why, Mr. Mud-for-Brains?” Pat snapped. “Because yesterday that SOB Buzzy Frankenstein or whatever his name is came in here and made me pay the whole summer’s rent in advance. We leave now, I’ll lose all that money and it’s too late in the season to open a new shop in another place.”
    â€œBut if we can’t make no money,” Sean said.
    Pat was quiet for a moment. Kai imagined all sorts of bent gears churning around in that sick mind. “We’ll make money,” he growled. “Believe me, one way or another, we’ll make money.” He looked at Kai and made a face, as if he’d just bitten into something sour. “So what happened with that Chinese guy?”
    â€œJapanese,” Kai said.
    â€œWhatever.”
    â€œI gave him a refund.”
    â€œYou what!?”
Pat went to the cash register and pulled it open. He quickly counted out the money inside. The Alien Frog Beast always knew exactly what was in the cash register.
    â€œTwo hundred twelve dollars! You son of a bitch! Why’d you do that?”
    â€œI had no choice,” Kai said.
    â€œThe hell you didn’t!” his father shouted. “You tell him you don’t know how to work the register. You tell him it’s broke. You tell him any goddamn thing you want, but you never give back my money, you hear? You ever do that again, I’ll send you packing so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
    Kai was tempted to say that maybe if his father hadn’t run away and left his son to fend for himself it wouldn’t have happened. But he knew it wouldn’t matter. Meanwhile the Alien Frog Beast’s face had turned red. He was fuming. “You are nothing but trouble for me, hear that?”
    Again Kai was tempted to remind his father that it was he who’d found them a place to stay the night before, when Buzzy had given them half an hour to get out. Meanwhile the Alien Frog Beast pulled out a half-smoked cigarette and lit it. As usual he immediately started to cough. Then, watery eyed and gasping, he gazed around the shop, squinting his eyes. He turned back to Kai. “You’re always drawing crap. Why don’t you come up with a logo?”

Sixteen
    T hat night while Pat and Sean watched TV in the motel room, Kai pulled a chair out onto the second-floor balcony and sat under the outdoor light. With bugs and moths making kamikaze orbits above him, Kai sat with his notebook in his lap, sketching logos. At first he’d resisted the idea of doing anything for Pat, but then he’d decided what the hell, if Pat wanted him to create a design, he’d create one. Besides, it would give him something to do at night.
    In the dark below, someone wandered out into the yard. It was Curtis with a bottle in his hand. He looked up at Kai. “Doin’ your homework, grom?”
    â€œSort of.”
    â€œThen I’ll leave ya alone.” Curtis pulled out a rusty old beach chair held together with string and tape and sat down with his back to Kai,