She turned so fast he took half a step back.
“With what?”
He lifted one shoulder. “You never know.”
“We do know.” Her voice dropped. “We know exactly what thirty-eight dollars buys us. Gas. Food. One motel shower if we’re careful. Not somebody else’s garbage.”
Noah looked away, embarrassed but not convinced. He had a way of holding on to stupid hope long after Riley had buried it.
The first few units sold high. One went for nearly nine hundred after bidders spotted a motorcycle frame under a tarp. Another brought six hundred because of new appliances still boxed in plastic. Riley watched buyers crowd forward with the hungry alertness of gamblers. Every time the metal door rolled up, everyone leaned in like the unit might contain a new life.
Usually, it contained old furniture and debt.
By the seventh locker, the crowd had started to thin. By the tenth, tempers had shortened and coffee had worn off. The auctioneer wiped his forehead with a bandana and called for the next unit.
The manager slid the door up halfway.
A smell rolled out first.
Not rot, exactly. Dust, mildew, stale paper, old grease, and the long-sealed odor of a life packed away too fast.
People recoiled.
Inside, the unit was stacked floor to ceiling with junk. Broken end tables. A rusted box fan. Plastic Christmas bins. Framed paintings turned backward. A cracked leather recliner. A disassembled crib. Lamps without shades. Cardboard boxes sagging in the middle. A dented upright freezer. Old tires. A metal locker. A wooden wardrobe with one door hanging crooked. Newspapers tied in bundles. An antique radio half buried under quilts. A red wagon missing a wheel.
No obvious electronics. No visible tools worth anything. No neat, promising boxes.
Just a dead person’s leftovers or a living person’s failure.
The auctioneer grinned. “Now this one’s got personality.”
A few chuckles. More people stepped back.
Riley glanced at Noah and saw that bright look on his face again. Not random. Focused.
He nodded toward the back corner. “The metal locker.”
“So?”
“And that radio. And those old crates under the blankets.”
“Or mold. Or mice.”
“Could still be scrap.”
Before she could answer, the auctioneer started the bidding.
“Ten dollars. Give me ten.”
Silence.
“Ten? Anybody? Five?”
One hand went up from a bulky man in a sleeveless work shirt. “Five.”
“Got five. Looking for ten.”
Another bidder called ten just to keep the game moving. The man in the work shirt raised to fifteen. Then no one spoke.
The unit stank. It looked heavy. Clearing it would take hours. The resale value, at first glance, was lousy.
The auctioneer pointed. “Fifteen. Need twenty.”
Noah whispered, “Riley.”
She stared straight ahead.
“Riley.”
“No.”
“Please.”
The man in the work shirt smirked and crossed his arms, sure he’d get the locker cheap.
“Fifteen going once,” the auctioneer said.
Riley’s heart started thudding for reasons she hated. She saw the metal locker again. The old radio. The wooden wardrobe. Maybe brass. Maybe copper wiring. Maybe tools. Maybe enough for a little more than gas.
Maybe absolutely nothing.
She also saw Noah last night in the front seat pretending he wasn’t cold.
Her hand rose before her good sense caught it.
“Twenty.”
A few heads turned.
The auctioneer pointed at her instantly. “Now we’re alive. Got twenty.”
The man in the sleeveless shirt looked annoyed, then laughed when he really saw her and Noah—two thin kids in worn clothes standing on the edge of a bidder crowd they did not belong to.
“Twenty-five,” he said.
Riley swallowed. Noah’s breath caught beside her.
She should stop. She knew that. Every decent instinct in her body screamed stop.
“Thirty.”
The man’s mouth flattened. He looked back at the unit, recalculating. Too much labor. Too much trash. Not worth a fight.
“Thirty going once,” the auctioneer called.
The man shrugged. “Out.”
Riley felt something cold slip down her spine. She wanted the ground to open up and spit her thirty dollars back.
“Thirty going twice…”
She almost shouted never mind.
“Sold. To the young lady for thirty dollars.”
The gavel cracked against the trailer rail.
A couple people laughed outright.
One woman muttered, “Hope she likes mildew.”
Noah turned to Riley with a stunned grin. “You did it.”
Riley stared at the open locker like it might suddenly reveal a yacht. “I may have killed us.”
The auctioneer hopped down from the trailer and approached with paperwork. Up close, he looked to be in his late fifties, weathered and broad-shouldered, with a white mustache and eyes too sharp to miss anything.
“You got cash?”
Riley handed over three tens and eight singles with fingers that were trying very hard not to shake.
He counted it, tore off a receipt, and lowered his voice. “You’ve got forty-eight hours to empty it. Need your own lock if you want to secure it in the meantime. Name’s Gus Moreno. If you find a body, holler.”
Noah gave a nervous laugh.
Riley didn’t.
Gus studied them for half a second longer than necessary. He noticed the car across the lot, the blanket in the backseat, the way Noah’s shoes were held together with black tape. He didn’t say anything. He just pulled a pen from behind his ear and added something to the receipt.
“Office closes at six. Dumpster use is included. There’s water by the side gate. And if anybody bothers you, you come find me.”
Riley blinked. “Why would anybody bother us?”
Gus glanced at the crowd of resellers drifting toward the next locker. “Because people get interested when other folks get lucky.”
“We didn’t get lucky.”
He tipped his hat toward the unit. “That remains to be seen.”
The first thing they found was a dead toaster.
The second was a lamp shaped like a fish.
By noon, Riley was certain she had made the worst decision of her life.
The unit was hotter inside than the parking lot, thick with trapped air and dust so fine it stuck to their sweat. They dragged broken furniture to one side, trash to another, metal into a separate pile Noah swore would still bring something at the scrapyard. Riley found a box of chipped plates, six water-damaged romance novels, three holiday wreaths, a cracked humidifier, and enough tangled extension cords to strangle a horse.
Noah, on the other hand, was having what could only be described as the best worst day of his life.
“Vintage,” he said, lifting a dented Pepsi sign.
“Bent.”
“Patina.”
“Rust.”
He grinned. “Same family.”
Riley snorted before she could stop herself.
That was Noah’s real talent. Not fixing broken electronics, though he was good at that. Not talking people into paying five dollars for a radio he’d resurrected from a curb. His real talent was findi
