Free Have Mercy (Have a Life #1) by Maddy Wells

Kirby found me.  “This is like the best party ever!” she said.  Captain Kirby had never told me where she lived or who she lived with.  We had only known each other for two days, true, but all of a sudden it seemed like a giant omission.  “Don’t you have to tell your mom or dad or somebody where you are?” 
                  “My mom’s working.”
                  “ Now ?”
                  “ Your mom is working, too.”
                  Somehow I never thought of chaperoning as work.
                  “See,” Captain Kirby said, “This is what I want when I’m on my own.  A house where people can feel they can come and hang out.  With music and food.”
                  “I thought you hated pizza and Chinese take-out.  That you thought it wasn’t really food.”
                  “I do.  I mean, I hate it as a regular diet.  But it’s great for a party.”
                  ”Maybe you can help Jane with a whole food menu the next time the band comes.”
                  She grimaced. 
                  I didn’t approve of Captain Kirby backing down on her food ideals.  I would have to expand my opinion of Captain Kirby to include this profoundly contradictory information.
                  “Why don’t we bring your mom some food?” I asked, suddenly wanting to be away from the scene which didn’t seem to involve me now that The Griffin was in the bus with that girl.  “Does she eat pizza?”  A Papa John’s delivery van had made the third delivery of the night a half hour ago—Jane must have told them to time their drop offs—and the pizza was still warm.
                  Captain Kirby considered this as she looked around the best party she ever attended.  “She wouldn’t mind, I guess.”
                  Her mother had the VW van and Captain Kirby didn’t have a bike.  I told her she could take Tim’s who was high as a kite on himself and was jamming with Raymond and Bang and talking to them like he was their freakin equal—which I guess they thought he was because they were tweaking his song so they must have thought it was worth something—and he didn’t even notice we were going.  I kept my eyes straight ahead as we pedaled past the bus and into the damp early morning air.  The box of pizza was strapped to the carrier on my rear fender.  We rode about two miles into town when I shouted to her, “Where are we going?” and she pointed straight ahead to a row of big mansions that used to house the steel magnates in the last century, but were now mostly broken up into doctor offices, a couple were apartment buildings, and one was Kulick’s Funeral Home which is where we turned into the circular driveway.
                 

Chapter 12
     
    “Your mom works here ?” I asked.
                  “My mom isn’t a people person,” Captain Kirby said. She hopped off her bike and put her index finger up to her lips. 
                  “I don’t think anyone in here can hear us,” I said.
                  “The owners are very light sleepers.” 
                  We walked our bikes around back.  The VW van was parked in the lot.  Captain Kirby pushed Tim’s bike out of sight behind a rhododendron bush and after unstrapping the pizza box I did the same, then we went down a wrought iron stairway and she tugged on a chain hanging from a bell which rang really loudly with each pull and after what seemed like an hour, a woman in a white lab coat, goggles, face mask, paper hair net and rubber gloves opened the door.  She looked at us over her goggles which she had pushed down her nose.
                  “Oh, Janet, it’s you,” the woman said.  “Who’s this?”
                  “My friend, Mercy.”
                  “Well,