REBEL, a New Adult Romance Novel (The Rebel Series) by Elle Casey Page B

twenty-two, single, no kids, and I’ve never been to jail.   Now that I think about it, I guess I’m kind of boring.”
    “Nobody who lives at the Golden Legacy is boring.”
    “So, what’s your deal?”
    “Well, my name is Rat, I’m from around here, I’m sixteen, not married, no girl but definitely looking for one, and I got arrested once but never went to jail.”   He holds the hunk of drywall he brought over for me and eyes the dimensions to try and make it a couple inches bigger all the way around the square hole he made.   He uses the pocket knife to saw away the extra.
    “Brother’s or sisters?” I ask, picking up a rag and spraying ten squirts of Windex onto the grimy front window.
    “I got a sister.   She’s not around here, though. She’s older.   I was the bonus baby.”   He looks over and grins, and a gold tooth winks out at me.   His grin drops away when he catches me grimacing.   “What’s wrong?”
    “Sorry.   Your gold threw me off.”
    He frowns until he figures out what I’m talking about.   “Oh, the grill.”
    “The golden tooth.   What’s up with that, anyway?”   Now’s my chance to get into the head of a person who finds that kind of thing attractive.
    He shrugs as he puts the patch up to the wall to test the size.   He scrapes some of one of the edges off, all his attention on the drywall and not me.   “Dunno.   Guess I thought it was cool.   Cost some money too.”   He looks up.   “You don’t like it?”
    I’m afraid to answer him honestly.   He’s being so nice to me, the last thing I want to do is insult him.   “I don’t know.”
    “Sure you do.   Go ahead and say it.   You hate it.”
    “Okay, fine.   I hate it.”
    “So does my ma.   She whacked me on the head when she saw it.   Every time I smile she rolls her eyes.”
    “Must make you want to stop smiling.”
    “Kinda,” he says, putting the patch up to the wall a few times while marking it with a pencil.   “But whatever.   Parents never like what their kids do, right?”
    I nod.   “You got that right.”
    “What about your parents?   They like where you’re living?”
    “They’re dead.”
    He stops everything and turns to look at me.   “No shit?   Dude, I’m sorry.   That sucks.   How’d it happen?” He sits down on two of my stacked boxes, staring at me, the drywall forgotten.   He looks so cute, sitting there with his hat tilted crookedly and gold tooth shining from behind his lips.   I promptly and silently ask the universe to find him a cute girlfriend.
    I shrug.   “My mom died of cancer when I was just born.   I guess she had it while she was pregnant.   Then my dad died just last week.   I don’t really know how.   Heart attack, I think.”   The call from his lawyer is just a blur in my memory right now, another thing to deal with that I want to just forget.
    “My condolences.”
    I turn back to my nasty window, pretending to be very interested in getting it sparkling clean. I can actually see sunlight coming through it now.   Apparently, it isn’t grime covering the glass; it’s paint.   Who the hell paints over a window in a tiny, airless studio apartment?   “Thanks,” I say without looking back.   I’ve done enough sharing for one day, so I say nothing more about my family.
    Thankfully, he takes the hint and goes back to the repairs.   “Yeah, so we moved in here about a year ago.   It’s not that bad if you can ignore Stella in the front office.”
    “She’s pretty hardcore about the no partying rule, huh?”
    He snorts. “Yeah, right.   She wishes.   Like she can stop that around here.”
    I look over my shoulder and see him shaking his head.
    “This place is never quiet. Never. There’s always people shouting, and playing music too loud, and throwing things around.   I have to play static in my headphones just to study.”
    “You study?”
    He turns around.   “What?   I look like I don’t study?”
    My face