Autobiography 1.2

1.1:

Here's the second part. This includes slightly less telling and more showing. However, the style is supposed to have a lot of telling, so whatever.

They’re the type of family that can afford that stuff, too. All the fancy professional pictures, I mean. They get them done once a year. Of course I tag along, but there’s always a family picture minus Lena. The one with me goes up in the living room, though, so I guess I’m grateful for that bit of it. They don’t really order my school pictures though, since those are always sent to Jim’s parents. And it’s not like they want some dorky picture of me sent to ‘em.

I should probably try a bit harder to fit in with all of them, though. But it’s not like I dress in all black, with big ole black made-up raccoon eyes and a face that says “I hate my life.” I used to though, back in the day. I used to wear this black Led Zeppelin t-shirt every day with a pair of torn up jeans and converse sneakers. I parted my hair so that it fell in front of my face and my makeup pretty much made me look like some Marilyn Manson wannabe. And, boy, did I drive my mama and Jim mad. My mama’d buy me cheap girly clothes straight outa Walmart – pink t-shirts with little hearts all over, stuff like that. But I was too much of a hard ass for that.

Damn, it’s embarrassing to even think of those days.

I try to look as nice as I can. It’s hard, though, since I never really have enough money for all the nice clothes. I can’t afford the one hundred and eighteen dollar jeans or the one hundred and twenty seven dollar boots all the rich chicks at my school wear. My jeans were twenty bucks and I found my favorite pair of shoes by rustling through the lost and found at the Junior High.

I’ve always been good with my money, even though I never have any. That’s one of the nice things my mom’s had to say about me. Right after I turned sixteen, I bought this fancy little Toyota Celica with straight cash I’d been saving up since I was five or something. I don’t know any other kid who could ever save like that.

But it’s getting harder and harder to make any money. A year ago I could turn twenty bucks into a hundred and eighty in less than five hours. I was good at selling things – electronics, contraband, anything you could think of. But it ain’t really like that anymore. I have to make an honest sort of living. I’ve always worked at some little kiddie farm in my home town, but that wasn’t even paying enough, so I started looking for a job somewhere else. It was pretty funny when I got a job at the Gap. Who would’ve thought, a chick like me working at the Gap. I hate having the work indoors, but I ain’t complaining about a couple hundred dollars a week.

You think it’d keep my mama off my back about stuff, since I make my own money and don’t ask her for anything, but that’s just not the way it goes. Like today. She made me go and pick up Erik from his little Elementary school. I don’t know why she couldn’t do it herself. Too lazy, I guess. He had some running club deal after school, so he was there until, like, four and couldn’t take the bus home like he usually did. But it’s nice how he likes to run. It reminds me of myself, back in the day.

Sitting in the school parking lot is the worst. Even though my car windows are tinted, I feel like all those rich, uppity mothers can see me sitting inside my car. I feel like they can smell the cigarette smoke that’s ground its way into the seats. I even turn down my music a little so Mr. Shakur doesn’t pollute their beautiful kids’ ears.

Erik’s a bitch to me the whole way home. He doesn’t really talk to me at all, except to ask me to turn up the AC. I guess I should be used to that by now. And when I get home, my mama’s standing in the middle of the driveway, waiting for me, or something. She waves one of her big, beefy arms at me. I roll down my window.

“What?”

“I need a ride to Issy.”

I sigh. How lazy is the woman? She has her own goddamned car. And Issaquah’s fifteen minutes away, in the opposite direction of where I’m planning on going for the night. But my mama hops in the passenger seat before I can really object or anything. She doesn’t care if she makes me late for whatever plans I have for the Friday night.

The worst part was that, by the time I got to my boyfriend’s house that night, after dropping her off in Issaquah, my mama was already calling me and asking for a ride back home.

I just turned off my phone.

My boyfriend, he’s a nice guy. Probably the nicest guy I’ve ever run around with. My mama likes him too, which is strange because she usually hates every guy I bring home. She always makes up little names for them, like Goat Beard or The Thirty Year Old Janitor. Her only complaint about Derrick, though, was on account of him being Catholic and being Mexican. The first thing she said after meeting him was: “why not white, Lena? Why not white?”

But I think she realizes that he’s a good guy in overall, despite being a Catholic Mexican. He’s a big guy, more than six foot three, and is a pretty well known fighter down at the Indian Casino. He’s already been through some college, too. His dad works for some high-end company out in Seattle. The whole family lives in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the whole Valley. Even my mama has some respect for all of that.

When I get there, him and I just sit out on the back porch for a while, watching the sun set over the Cascades.

“How late you gonna be stayin’ tonight?” he asks as he’s packing a bowl into a little metal pipe. I hate those metal pipes. I always end up burning myself one way or another.

“Not too late. There’s another one of them concerts down in FC. Thought I’d make an appearance.”

He doesn’t say anything, just starts lighting the bowl.

“You should come, too. Vargas said he’d be there.” Vargas’ a guy he used to run with a bit back in the day. They don’t really kick it anymore, though, and I get the feeling that there’s a bit of a story behind the whole thing.

He coughs for a second after inhaling and hands the pipe over to me. “Nah, I ain’t paying five bucks to watch some little white tweaker rap. And all of them high school kids’ll be askin’ me to buy ‘em beer the whole time. I’ll prolly jus’ head over to the casino tonight.”

“Whatever you wanna do.” I hand the pipe back over to him. I don’t really smoke a whole lot anymore. I’ve been trying to quit, so my tolerance has been down quite a bit. The whole back yard’s all dizzy and I get lost, swimming around in my thoughts. But I know that whatever thoughts I was thinking were real beautiful. They always are. That’s what I hate about being high. You don’t remember any of the cool shit you thought of. I wish I had some sort of a tape recorder, one that recorded thoughts or something.

“I’m hungry,” I say suddenly, standing up real quick.

“Settle down,” he says, chuckling. “I’ll cook us up a couple of steaks in a minute. I bought some of them filet mignon’s earlier.”

And I just love watching that guy cook. He’s good at it, too. Makes the best steaks you’ve ever tasted. They just melt right in your mouth. He says that, one day, he’s gonna teach me to cook as good as he does. Even then, it’s not like he’s gonna send me to the kitchen to make him a “goddamn sandwhich” or nothing. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t mind doing the laundry or vacuuming. It’s the perfect reversal of gender roles, you know?

He was there when my mom called me up, telling me that I was for sure going to have to move down to Oregon. I’d just gotten off work, and I picked him up before coming home. My mom and Jim were across the state, visiting my grandparents, and I didn’t really want to spend the night at home alone. I don’t know why my mom decided in that particular weekend that she wanted me to go there. There wasn’t any real logic in it.

She basically just called me up, asked me how work was, and then told me I that it’d be best if I went to stay down there for a while. I straight-up just said: “What the hell?” and she hung up the phone on me. She always does that. I can’t really remember a phone conversation where she didn’t hang up on me.

Derrick was just all like: “what was that about?”

It was pretty difficult to tell him. I’m not really a relationship person in general. I get annoyed with people pretty easily and I don’t stay close to people easily.

He was just silent for a couple minutes. He pulled a beer out of a brown paper bag that he’d brought from his house, cracked it open, and took a sip. “I’m joinin’ the Marines then. Once I get my right to bear arms back, I’m joinin’.”

“When’s that gonna be?”

“October.”

Four months after I’m leaving.

Thank you.