Stranger

There was something about her when she came walking into the parking lot that made the whole place settle down when they saw her standing outside the Dairy Queen. It wasn’t so much the fact she was standing there with a brown, leather jacket zipped all the way up with some ragged blue jeans torn slightly at the near or the dirty, blue converse on her feet that looked like they’d had a tuff run. It also wasn’t the red hair combed back into a pony-tail with absolutely no grease or even the slightest hint of hair spray, or even the dark sunglasses her eyes hid behind, but you could tell they were glaring back at you like a rebel that matched the demeanor of her hand-on-hip stance. Even the backpack on her back wasn’t all that strange, and although it was the kind you wouldn’t find around here with its skulls embroidered with strange shapes, anyone could have easily put it off as having come from some other state.

No, it had to be the fact she had her hands wrapped around the strap of an elongated case that, to anyone who knew their stuff, looked a lot like a long-rifled gun, and that tied to the strap on her backpack by a leash was the strangest looking dog ever to be seen in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It had to be two-sizes too big; it’s head came up to her thigh and, despite the serene, sapphire hue in its eyes, those fangs lined on the bottom of its jaws, and the way it looked a little too much like a wolf— with its pointed ears and monochromatic fur, made it seem just as deadly as any junkyard dog.

Whatever it was, she didn’t seem to care, or maybe she was just used to it as she came up to the see-through door of the diner. She paused, though, and, like she’d done it all too often before, untied the leash and snapped her fingers at th...

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... one with ketchup only, fries and water to go,” the waitress spoke up behind them suddenly and dropped a paper bag with a wet, grease-stained bottom onto the counter.

“Thanks. What do I owe ya?” Wolf asked as she rummaged through a small pocket on the inside of her jacket.

“Seventy-five cents.” Wolf muttered something under her breath that made her laugh, but Pony couldn’t hear it, and he found his attention pulled away from it when she pulled out a roll of bills, and not just one dollar bills. She had a five and—his eyes just about bulged out of his head—a ten along with five ones. She didn’t even show a hint of reluctance when she whipped out a one, set it on the counter, told the waitress keep the change as she put her bills back, snagged the food, and turned back to them with an excited look.

“Wanna meet the big guy?”

Works Cited

S.E.Hilton Outsiders