Betrayed by My Childhood Love novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: Shrimp Boil

Nobody said anything for a second.

The birthday girl was still sitting on the floor with frosting on her chin.

"Top three," the recovery junior said. "We were seventh last year."

"I know," said the adviser.

"Seventh out of forty," Waylon said. "With a motor I built in my dorm."

"I know that too." The adviser rubbed his eyes. "I'm not saying it's fair. I'm saying it's June."

After he left, the team stood around the cake.

The avionics senior counted out loud on her fingers.

"Even if we stay alive, we need new composites, a new test stand and about four thousand dollars of nitrous. We have eleven hundred."

Everybody looked at the floor.

I looked at the shop rag hanging off Waylon's back pocket, and I thought about Gran.

"My grandmother can feed four hundred people off one boat," I said.

Waylon turned around.

"What?"

"Shrimp boil. On the docks in Galveston. She does one every fall for the fishermen's fund. We charge twenty bucks a plate." I was already doing the math. "We could clear three, maybe four thousand."

The recovery junior pointed at me with his fork.

"Freshman," he said. "I love you."

Gran said yes before I finished asking.

Then she said a lot of other things, mostly about how many pots she'd need.

On the third Saturday in October, nine rocket nerds drove down to Galveston in two borrowed cars.

They had never seen Gran's dock.

There were three steel pots the size of bathtubs, with propane burners roaring under them.

Gran had painted a sign on a sheet of plywood.

RICE ROCKETS SHRIMP BOIL. $20. EAT TILL YOU'RE SICK.

Half the shrimpers on the island had come.

They were sunburned men and women with cigarettes and bad knees, and every one of them knew me by name.

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