Chapter 5: Sold to the Rival

"Bid," I said.

"Me?"

"She knows my name. Bid, Mitch."

He was already typing.

"Forty-five."

Somebody else typed fifty.

Mitch typed sixty.

Somebody typed seventy-five and a heart.

"Who hearts a bid?" Mitch said. "That's psychological warfare."

"Just bid."

He went to a hundred.

The other bidder went to one-twenty.

On the screen, Shana smiled and swung the locket slowly under the light.

"Ooh, we've got a fight, my loves. It's gold. It's worth it."

I could see my grandmother's dent go past, then come back.

Mitch looked at me.

"How high, Hoyle?"

"I have four thousand dollars to my name."

"So, not four thousand."

"Whatever it takes."

He typed two-sixty.

The comments stopped for a second.

"Going once," Shana said. "Going twice. Sold, to the guy with the fish on his profile."

"It's a walleye," Mitch said to the phone. "Show some respect."

A message popped up asking for his shipping address.

He typed Norma's address in Kettering without asking me.

"Norma's?"

"Norma's house is on Route 15." He hit send. "Which means I'm the one who carries it to the door. Seemed fair."

I looked at him in the glow of the phone.

His beard needed a trim and there was burrito on his sleeve from the morning.

"I'll pay you back," I said.

"You'll pay me back by not crying in my grandpa's thermos."

"I'm not crying."

"I know. I'm saying it preventatively."

Keith showed up at Norma's the next evening.

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