We were scouring books on the value shelves at the corner book shop. It was a rainy day and watching him skulk over the new science fiction arrivals made me weak and unusually aroused. I had a few good finds piled onto one arm, including one autographed book. I wasn’t much interested in the book itself as much as it being autographed. And then I got to thinking—how do they know it’s genuine? Do they have the author’s signature stored away for such an occasion as you would need to prove it was they who signed it and not some punk teenager trying to score a little more cash for selling an autographed copy? For pot no less. Pot.
This got me thinking about the night before. It had been the fourth of July and we, or my boyfriend of seven months, Jason, and I, had gone to my friend Shirley’s house. She lives with her fiancé, who proposed at Chili’s. They live right next door to his buddy Oscar and she gets no sleep at night. Which must suck since she’s the only one working. Right, so the pot got me thinking of them because throughout high school she was as squeaky clean as I had been, and now she had ditched her once in a lifetime music scholarship in the city to stay and raise her boyfriend … fiancé, I mean. I had high hopes for her, and they didn’t include working at a tool shop.
But I guess people had high hopes for me as well. I had my hands in everything while I was in high school. I was the epitome of a college hopeful; varsity swimming, chamber orchestra, theatre club president, business professionals of America vice president, and member of the art club. So instead of going to one of the many schools I was accepted into, I stayed. I stayed to be close to my deadbeat high school boyfriend who, after three years, cheated on me again and stole my school money to buy coke. After I left him and moved back home, he called and told me he was so lonely, he “had” to have a call girl come by just to relieve the pain of not having me there. If that was some kind of plea to make me feel guilty and go back to him, it didn’t work. Especially since that’s when Jason started to really come around and I realized how bad I had it and how I didn’t deserve it.
