Chapter Four

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.  Slowly the young girl stumbles away from the bed in her mother’s room, and to her own. Smack.  Shutting off the alarm, she dresses mindlessly in her black pants with the chains and bright seams, along with a black t-shirt that shines “back off” in silver plastic-like letters. Back to her mother’s room for just a moment, she whispers her usually ‘bye mom’ allowing her self to pretend she leads a normal life and trudges out the door to school. 

Ignoring the usually mutters about how ‘weird’ she is, the girl walks to her home room class, and straight up to Walden. “I won’t be able to attend class today, I’m ill” with a sickly sweet smile and a weak voice.

            “Your ill?!” the bald man scoffs, “You’re a no good, worthless brat, is what you are!” He hollers as she leaves the room, and begins down the long dreary hall.

            “I’m worthless?! I’m no good?!” The girl stops dead and rounds on him; “At least I know what a let down I am, you are one hell of a failure; pretending like you teach to help us?! You do it so you can go home and lie to yourself, you think your so great, but I bet you all of these kids agree that you do this job for the money, you don’t give a s**t about any of us” She continues to dig at him, acknowledging the students gathering only for a moment. “You only care about your self, and your f*****g books. You’re a selfish stuck up fraud.” With that the girl turns on her heel to leave him once more. With a smug smile, she refuses to acknowledge the kids that say she’s ‘weird’ when they try to congratulate her.

            Out the doors, down the walk, up the road; Darcy quickly walks away from the chaos, straight for him.

            “Darcy?! It’s only nine; you didn’t go to a single class!” Toby lectures her, with a smile.

            “No, I hate it there; I don’t think I’ll ever go back!” She huffs, not wanting a lecture from him too. “I mean, I want to graduate but…ugh.”

            “Darcy, you need to go to school, graduate and do something with your life.” Toby sighs, looking away.

            “Not you too! You don’t understand! I can’t DO IT!” She says, crossing her arms and turning away from him.

            “Darcy, you’re smart, you know that school is necessary, I wish that I had stayed. I’d be a junior this year.” Toby blushes, ashamed of his confession.

            “A junior! You mean you don’t own this store?!” She gasps, shocked by Toby’s news.

            “No D, I tried to tell you. I’m just sixteen; I dropped out in my freshman year, like you want to do. And I’ve regretted it ever since. I lost my friends and any hopes of a solid future.”

            “Why’d you do it?” the girl whispers, barely audible.

            “This was my dad store; he died of cancer when I was in the eighth grade. My mom couldn’t afford to live with out two incomes, she tried to take care of us, but she couldn’t; so I dropped out and started to run the store. It’s not great money, but we have been able to scrape through for the past few years. Why do you want to drop out so badly?” Toby replies in a low voice.

            “I can’t stand the teasing. It’s not a good reason, I guess. But at least you had friends in school. I don’t have a single friend. I don’t even have a teacher I can count on. I’ve got no one. But Mom.”

            “You have me, Plus D, What would your mom say if you dropped out?” Toby cuts her off.

            “My mom wouldn’t know the difference. She hasn’t been sober since my dad left us, three years ago” Darcy sighs, ashamed of her family. “Our house has gone to shambles, and we’ve been living off of our savings, we’re going to lose it all soon. I should get a job and support us, like you did.

            “D, Babe. You’ve got to go to school, and then get a real job, a good paying one. Maybe you could get a part time job around that. Maybe you could work… you could work here. My mom has told me to hire someone, she says I’m going to run myself ragged, and that she wants me to have some life, after all I am sixteen.” Toby perks up, at the brilliance of his own idea.

            “Could I Toby? Could you afford to pay me?” the girl says, her voice rising with excitement.

            “I’ll manage, you could put ads around your school, and maybe we could re decorate, clean the place up and draw in more customers.”

            “But I like the old fashion feel this place has, I still think of it as the old record store, even though you’ve progressed to selling CDs.” She says, voice rising still.

            “Yeah, we’ll have to stay vintage, but cleaning up is still a good idea. Yeah” Toby says, a dreamy look appearing in his eyes.

"Yeah” the girl agrees, joining him in the dream.

Reviews

[Julie Estes]

I really enjoy your style of writing. You were able to pull me into your character Darcy, and feel for what she's dealing with in life. I like how you write about real issues, and real life that people out there are dealing with and going through everyday. Looking forward to reading more.