Mr. V's Authorial Debut

OK, so the secret is out. I've been working on a book. This is only Chapter 4, or at least pieces of it, and that's as far as I've gotten. I hope it won't be too confusing, even though it refers to specific scenes from chapter 1-3. The narrator is a sixteen-year-old-boy who is off from school for the summer. He had to move way out in the booneys due to his parents' sudden divorce. A distant cousin of his mother set them up with a man named Jackson Knoll, a man they've never met, who is providing lodging and a job for them both in a country convenience store. The only other employee of the store is Jen.

Please leave me comments! This is only a rough draft with plenty of errors and room for improvement, but I hope it creates a bit of intrigue about some of the weird things going on in the tiny town of Pleasant Valley. Enjoy!

Chapter 4

The first time I saw the helicopter, it was just after sunset. I’m not really sure where it came from, but I heard it, hovering over our apartment like a curious insect.
“Well, that I didn’t expect to see,” I muttered.
“What was that honey?” my mom called from the kitchen sink, where running water must have obscured her hearing.
“Nothing,” I told her, leaning up against the cold glass, watching it disappear into the gray dusk. It’s twinkling light drew back into the darkness like a star, and just beyond a forested hill, sank slowly into the fabric of the land. And that was it.
Until I caught the same sound again two days later. This time it was midday and I was restocking Ding Dongs in the store. An old lady in a hat was pondering the tabloids and talking to herself, clicking her tongue in disdain.
“Is there a hospital nearby?” I asked.
She looked up at me inquisitively and then over her shoulder as if to check if I was speaking to her. “No,” she finally replied, turning back to the tabloids.
“It’s just . . .” She looked at me over her glasses as I spoke. “It’s the second time I’ve heard that helicopter this week and it seems strange that one would fly over here unless it was a MediVac or something.”
No response.
“Excuse me,” I said, ducking into the back room and out the rear exit.
The strange, gray bird was following the same path it had two days earlier, predetermined, resolute, growing smaller and smaller until it fell out of sight in the same distant stand of trees. I stood, hands on my hips, staring after it.

I forgot to ask Jen that afternoon. There was something about her that could make you forget anything. Her sharp, bright eyes and wide gleaming smile.
“Did you know that Mr. Knoll lets us steal a candybar each break? “
“Lets you steal?”
“Yeah, kind of funny, huh? I guess it’s not really stealing then, but it still feels kind of fun.” She strolled over to the candybar rack. “My favorite is Three Musketeers. It’s like eating a chocolate cloud.”
“Awh, c’mon! Snickers is so much better. Peanuts, caramel. Who can resist that?” She reached for one and slipped back behind the counter.
“Someone who wants to keep her girlish figure,” she joked. Then, more seriously she added, “Y’know, funny thing about Mr. Knoll is that if anyone other than an employee on break steals a candybar, there’s hell to pay. Once, this guy was passing through, middle aged, sports coat, not exactly your shoplifting type, and sure enough, camera caught him snagging a Snickers bar. Knoll got the guy put in jail. I mean, literally. Thirty days, maximum sentence.”
“Wait, you mean he’s got cameras in this place?”
“Sure – behind those mirrors in the corners – that’s one-way glass.”
“Really? Way out here? But where are the monitors?”
“Oh, I don’t think there are any. Just recordings of everything that goes on in here.” Suddenly, she leaned forward, changing her tone. “Although, I have wondered whether Jackson Knoll sits in a cellar somewhere, watching us like a cat, like everything in here is some bizarre reality TV show.” She leaned in close, so close, I felt her breath. “And we are the cast.” She drew back, nodding somberly.
A second later, the line of her mouth curved into a reluctant smile. “I wish you could see your face!” She started to laugh. “You look like you swallowed a bug!”
“I – I knew you were joking,” I said, sagging my shoulders and averting her gaze. “He wouldn’t have cameras in a hick-town convenience store like this.”
“Oh, I wasn’t kidding about that part,” she said, handing me a Snickers. “There are cameras, all right. Thirty days. The guy went to jail.”
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To be honest, it was tough to understand how the place stayed in business. The gas was the most expensive place I’ve ever seen, and only two or three cars would drop in before lunch and maybe five or six on there way home from work. Mom and I never did accounting. An armored truck pulled up in the middle of the night, and they had their own key to the store and the cash register. All we had to do was lock up and walk upstairs to our apartment. We figured we only made about a hundred dollars a day, certainly not much more than that, which would cover only the employees wages. So how was Jackson Knoll paying for the electric, the stock, the taxes . . . the whole thing seemed a little fishy, though nothing was as strange as the man himself.
Ther was a picture of him, from the seventies,w ith a mustache and bushy sideburns, that hung behind the counter, sunbleached and cracking. The little engraved panel on the frame said “Jackson Knoll, Proprietor.” He didn’t really look like a man who would get rich selling Twinkies and travel he world someday, but apparently he’d surprised the people of Pleasant Valley, rising above and beyond their modest expectations.
One day, she came back again. It was the lady with the flipped up curls, driving the blue Lincoln. Same lady. Same car. I swear.
“Good morning,” I said, stepping into the morning sun.
She didn’t reply, but a credit card magically appeared between two of her fingers. She chewed her gum methodically and said, “Fill ‘er up.”
This was the second time I couldn’t quite make out the man sitting in the passenger seat. I was standing next to the car, and he was pretty tall, so all I could see was his blue jeans and his hairy arms. There was blonde hair on his arms, almost white, and lots of it. The gasoline slowly chugged into the car, then stopped abruptly after three gallons. It was full. I swiped the card.
“How’s your father? Feeling better?” I asked turing the card back to her slim fingers and pointed nails.
“Excuse me?” she said, lifting her lip and eyebrow into something between puzzlement and a sneer.
“I mean, your father, the other night. You seemed really worried about him. Is he OK?” I stammered. The man in the passenger seat said something under his breath.
“My father,” the woman said, staring ahead and starting her car, “my father has been dead since before you were born.” And with that, she sped off, leaving my thoughts spinning.