Baseball and Other Lessons (Devil's Ranch Book 2) by Aubrey Gross Page B

around towards him and she shot him a panicked glare. “Mom, I’ve gotta go now that you’ve ruined my life. Love you, bye.”
    She ended the call and tossed her phone onto the couch, then dropped her head to her knees.
    Matt wanted to laugh—really, the urge was quite overwhelming—but he had a feeling that laughing right now would go over like a fart in church. Instead he walked over to Jenn, sat down on the floor beside her and picked up the gas mask.
    “I’ve always wondered what one of these would look like up close and personal. And yup, still a little like an alien.”
    Jenn snorted and muttered into her knees. “I’m going to kill my mom. This shit has got to stop.”
    “So you didn’t have ‘gas mask’ and ‘‘bug out bag’ on your Amazon wish list?”
    “God, no. She just randomly sends me this crap. Yesterday I got four buckets of MREs from her. Two weeks ago it was a homemade Faraday cage, which I had to Google in order to even know what the hell it was used for.”
    “What is it used for?”
    She shook her head. “To protect electronics in case of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.”
    “Like in the book One Second After. ”
    “Yeah, she’s sent me that one, too.”
    Matt laughed. “I guess I know what you meant when you said your mom was ‘more or less’ retired.”
    Jenn looked up and rolled her eyes. “You don’t know the half of it. Long story short, Mom and Dad quit their jobs some time ago, bought some land out near Sanderson, sold their house here and have been building a prepper’s paradise ever since.”
    “And apparently embarrassing you in the process.”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know about embarrassing, at least not until today. I’ve managed to hide their lifestyle from most people. Chase and Jo know a little, but Owen happened to see the MRE stash one day and grilled me about it. Until today he was the only person who knew about all of the crazy.”
    He inclined his head towards the backpack. “So what’s in the bag?”
    “I’m not sure I even want to know.”
    “Want me to open it for you?”
    She picked it up and handed it to him. “Sure. You’ve already seen the crazy, might as well let you have fun with it, too.”
    He unzipped the bag and said, “It’s like Christmas or my birthday or something.”
    “I wouldn’t go that far.”
    “Easter?”
    She snorted, leaned over and peered into the bag. “Only if the Easter Bunny was in the habit of leaving you Lifestraws and trauma kits.”
    Matt pulled said Lifestraw and trauma kit out of the bag and set them on the floor. Next was a bundle of paracord, a military-style compass, two rolled elastic bandages, a pink canister of pepper spray, a Bear Grylls multi-tool, a large flashlight that could double as a club, a small sewing kit, a slingshot, a sixty-count bottle of toothpaste tablets, a package of no-rinse bathing wipes, a bottle of no-rinse body wash and some square package with “Urinelle” written on it in a script font.
    “What the hell are these?”
    Jenn took the package from him, flipped it over and back and laughed. “Apparently you missed the lovely illustration right here,” she said as she pointed to something that looked suspiciously like a drawing of a semi-naked woman standing up with a paper party hat in front of her goody bits.
    “Wait. Is this what I think it is?”
    Jenn opened the package and pulled out a triangular-shaped, thick piece of paper. She unfolded it along the seams to reveal that it was actually a cone. “Yup. Now we women can stand up and pee like you guys.”
    Matt eyed the paper cone suspiciously. “Somehow I doubt that thing’s going to work as well as, well, being a dude and having a penis.”
    “You’re probably right. I’ve talked to some women who have used something similar called a Go Girl. Some of them love it, and some of them hate it. Me? I think I’ll just hand these out as party hats. Throw some glitter and tassels on them and we should be good to