The Diary of A Wimpy Adult (In Her Twenties): Pilot

Follow Landon, a twenty-one-year-old college student, navigating friendship, school, work, and ultimately adulthood. She keeps it all together with the help of her best friend Billie.

I buy a laptop from a place Billie tells me not to. It comes with a charger and a year's warranty. I'm told to keep the receipt in case I need to return it. I have a box in my cupboard where I keep all of the receipts from my purchases. I don't put it there. Billie tells me to leave it in the box. And I do. All the receipts are messed up and there's no order so I decided to put it in the laptop box.

The laptop runs for six hours straight and I write ten thousand words that night. I sit at my desk until sunrise. The government garbage services collect bins on Mondays. I got outside and roll the bin out of the yard. Inside the house, Billie is in her room. She's cleaning out her cupboards.

What are you doing? I ask her.

Spring cleaning.

It's the middle of winter. I don't tell her that. I want to know what brought on the change of heart.

What inspired you?

Well, with you buying all of this new stuff, I just realized that we have a lot of useless stuff. Did you know you still have the box from your first phone?

The one I keep all of my receipts in?

No, she says. The other one.

How do you know that?

I cleaned out your cupboards, too.

The garage truck sounds like a vacuum cleaner outside. It trundles along the street picking up bin after bin. When it goes quiet, I roll the bin back into the yard. Billie follows me outside with a black bag.

That's the last of it. You don't mind that I threw away your laptop box right?

I pause. I kept the receipt in there.

Why would you do that?

You told me to!

I mean, you bought the thing yesterday. What ate the chances of it breaking?

I follow her back inside the house. My laptop does and I have to sit by the outlet in the kitchen while I work. Billie passes me with a bowl of Rice Crispies. Her leg gets caught in the charging cable. The cord rips from the input and snags her leg.

F**k. She falls to the ground. Her rice crispies went flying across the room.

I put my laptop down. S**t, Billie. Are you okay?

I don't know. My leg hurts. S**t.

We get in the car and I drive her to the day hospital. She moans about her knee hurting.

I sit in the waiting room while gets her leg strapped up. The doctor gives her pain pills that she had to take three times a day after each meal. When we get home, she goes to her room to take a nap.

I sit down by the wall outlet and plug in my charger. The battery is flat. I wiggle the charger in the input. Nothing happens. I remove the cord. The pin is crooked. I can't tell if this means the charger is broken.

Billie? I yell from the living room. She doesn't answer me. I go to her room and sit by her bed. I shake her awake.

What's wrong?

Can I use your laptop charger?

What's wrong with yours?

I think it's broken. 

You bought it yesterday. 

Can I just use your charger? Please. 

Sure. It's in my cupboard. 

I take it from her cupboard and go back to the living room. I plug it into the wall socket. My laptop is on fifteen percent. The input of her laptop doesn't fit mine. Somehow I can't make any sense of it. I want my laptop to go back to before she tripped really badly. I feel the kind of regret I feel when I didn't realize things were as bad as they were. 

I get up and search Google for Mecer laptop chargers. It goes for almost five hundred on Takealot. Five hundred. 

Billie goes for a checkup a week later. The doctor says that her leg isn't healing the way it should and that she's going to run some tests to see what's the matter. She gets another bottle of pain killer and a doctor's note for work. 

What do you think is wrong with my leg? She asks me. We are on our way to the mall to buy a new charger for my laptop. 

I go to Cash Crusaders and I'm told they only sell universal chargers. 

What does or go for? I ask the shop assistant. 

About five hundred, she says to me. 

Five hundred? Can I see what it looks like? 

She shows me a display case with a charging cable that looks like it's been injected with steroids. It comes with a million cables and inputs. I leave the store. 

At Cash Converters, the store clerk tells me that they have run out of universal chargers and that they have no idea hene they are getting any more stock. 

Well, we don't really get any stock. But, you know what? There's this place across the street that sells laptop parts called PayCheap. What don't you check there? 

Billie says she can't walk on her leg anymore. I leave her in the car and go across the road to PayCheap. The man tells me that it's one fifty for a universal charger. I pay for it. The relief I feel overpowers the regret I felt the day before. 

Billie buys a few groceries. I'm anxious to get home and test the charger. She tells me that everything will work out for us. I find it difficult to accept that. 

At home, I sit by the wall outlet. The charger doesn't come with any instructions and Billie and I spend half an hour figuring out how it works. I plug the input into my laptop. It works. I sit and watch the laptop charge. 

Billie tells me to help her clean the kitchen. Washing the dishes distracts me from compulsively checking my laptop while it's still in charge. We have dinner after. She made chickpea stew. 

I take my howl to my room and eat over my laptop. I work right through the night. 

Billie has an early shift the next morning. I drive her. She tells me that she put my laptop in charge when I fall asleep the night before. I thank her. 

When I get back home, I turn on my laptop. The screen reads AUTOMATIC REPAIR IN PROGRESS. I call Billie and she doesn't answer. I text her, asking when she goes on lunch. She tells me in an hour. I drive to her work and wait for her in the back. 

What's the matter? She still has her leg in a brace. She hobbles when she walks. 

My laptop keeps turning off. 

What do you mean? 

I think there's something wrong with the battery, I tell her. The charger fucked it up. 

Can't you just return it? 

You threw away the receipt. Remember? 

You need a receipt for that?

Author's Note

(Yes, it's a Billie Eilish fan fiction. I love her. Grow up.)