Dead Highways: Origins (2 page)

For much of my life, it had always been grandma and me. I won’t get into what happened with my parents. Let’s just say I hate them both.

Moving on.

Grandma owned a small used bookstore in a nice part of Cocoa, Florida, and by nice I mean in the 1980s when she bought the place. By 2012, it was only nice if you wanted to score some rocks. So the market for book buyers was rather limited, especially since crack heads don’t have much free time to read, what with doing crack all damn day.

But the store was paid for and so sales didn’t matter much to grandma anyway. She liked to read, as did I, and that was what kept us going. Our love for books. That and her monthly social security check. Those two things.

The few customers we did get were usually people who knew grandma—most of them old ladies.

Mrs. Harrington with the pacemaker.

Mrs. Rose with her house of cats.

Mrs. Goldie with the bad perm.

Old ladies.

They would come by on a regular basis, talk about the results of their latest blood test, and then be on their way. I would usually be sitting in the corner reading a fantasy novel, trying to ignore them, wishing I was in another world.

Middle-Earth. Oz. Canada.

Anywhere.

The bookstore had two stories (
get it?
stories
), the second floor being our apartment space. Yeah, that’s right. I was twenty-two and still living with my grandma. Probably why I was still a virgin too. Go ahead, have a laugh on me.

Moving on.

The apartment space was no more than eight hundred square feet, with two bedrooms, one bath, and a shared living room. It also had a “kitchen,” but no bigger than what you’d find in an RV, cramped and useless. The second floor was only accessible via a narrow staircase in the back room, so no customers could curiously wander up.

I often tried to persuade grandma to move, fearing one day she might take a tumble down the stairs. She was almost eighty, after all. But she refused to stray too far away from her pride and joy.

No, not me, her only grandchild.

The bookstore.

Still, for as old as she was, she was as lively as they come. No walker. No memory loss. No old person smell. Her hearing was the only thing that didn’t quite make the trip into her senior years. I constantly had to yell, even when I wasn’t angry.

Forgive my lousy painting, but I think you get the picture. My life sucked more than those
Paranormal Activity
movies. Nothing that an apocalypse couldn’t solve.

And now that I’ve established where I worked, where I lived, and the fact that the only girlfriend I ever had was imaginary, we can move on to the next phase.

Don’t.

Do.

Drugs.

Remember that, kids.

Or you might end up like Kevin.

Kevin was the nicest addict I’d ever met. Hell, he was the
only
addict I’d ever met. He would shuffle by the bookstore twenty times a day, much like a zombie, always looking ruffled and beaten like he’d just gone for a long ride in the trunk of some maniac’s car. And maybe he had.

His hair was long and dirty and blonde, like Kurt Cobain’s before he killed himself. He wore the same clothes every day. Ripped blue jeans. Black T-shirt. Old pair of scuffed-up boots with the heels hanging off. I don’t think he owned any other clothing. Or anything else, for that matter. And my God did he smell—worse than the dumpster behind the building, worse than the TV dinners grandma always made.

But Kevin was nice.

He never tried to rob me, not that I had much money to take. He got his fix by doing good, honest work, begging for spare change at the Haji-Mart across the street. I even donated a few coins to the drug fund, usually after buying a hot dog or taquito for lunch. And why not? Finally, here was someone I could feel bad for. Here was someone more pathetic than me.

Then came the day when Kevin decided to pay me back for all my charity, in the only way he knew how.

By offering me a joint.

You know, even after all that has happened, and let me tell you there is a lot left to tell, I still remember that day so clearly. I suppose you never forget the first time you’re offered drugs.

It was a really cold day, which doesn’t occur often in Florida, and it caught me by surprise. I was halfway to the Haji-Mart before realizing I should have grabbed a coat. I jogged the rest of the way across the street to keep my blood from freezing.

Kevin was sitting outside when I arrived, head down, coatless, huddled against a black trash can for warmth. He was pulling the last drags off a cigarette he’d probably picked from the community ashtray. Gross.

He looked up at me and nodded.

I nodded back and rushed inside the store.

Few things feel better than entering a warm building after being out in the cold, even if the warm building is just an old, filthy convenience store.

I made my way to the hot dog roller and fountain drink stations located on the far end. Ah, yes, that was where I usually spent my lunch money. The rest of the stuff on the shelves was usually expired. It didn’t matter if it was candy, potato chips, or even headache medicine for crying out loud, it probably went out of date last month. Even some of the ready-to-eat stuff, like the donuts sitting in the glass case with the big sign saying Fresh Donuts, looked like they’d shriveled up and died long ago. And don’t get me started on the fresh-brewed coffee. It seriously looked like shit water. I guess the manager, an East Indian man named Aamod, believed in a different definition of the word
fresh
than me. The only exception to this seemed to be the hot dog roller, which Aamod was forced to restock throughout the day due to the strict budgets of people like me, the neighborhood poor, and there were a lot of us going around.

I paid for my hot dog and soda and then left the store. Few things feel worse than going outside in the cold after being in a warm building. Kevin was still leaning against the trashcan, still looking miserably cold. I felt extra bad for him on this day, so I gave him all my leftover change, a whopping two dollars and fifteen cents.

“Gee thanks, bro,” he said to me.

I smiled politely and then walked away. I did my part to help the less fortunate. I could sleep soundly that night, knowing my good deed for the day was done. Two dollars and fifteen cents? Why, he could buy a few cups of that shitty-looking coffee for that. I call that progress.

By the time I finished my hot dog, I had realized I could do better than two dollars and fifteen cents. I patiently waited for Kevin to shuffle back by the bookstore to wherever he went, and when he finally did, I met him outside with a present. It was an old coat, and an ugly one if I may be totally honest. Grandma got it for me years ago, back when I was in high school. Since then it sat in my closet collecting dust, like a lot of the clothing she’d bought me over the years. Until now.

“I thought you might want this,” I said, holding the coat out to him.

Kevin looked down at the coat, then back up at me, then back down at the coat. “Are you for real? I mean . . . that’s a nice coat, bro.”

“If you say so,” I said. “I mean . . . yeah. It’s yours if you want it.”

“Sure, sure, I’d love to have it. What do you want for it?”

“Nothing. I’m just trying to help out, that’s all. I know the cold doesn’t give much warning around here.”

“Nah, man.” He took the coat and tried it on. “Fits real good,” he said. “How does it look?”

“Looks fine,” I said. Not really a lie. The coat was actually an improvement over Kevin’s other clothing. At the very least, it was clean and still smelled rather new.

“Well, if you want your money back, you got it.”

“No, no. It’s no big deal, really.”

“You sure? Hey, wait a minute. I got something for you.” He reached into the pocket of his ripped jeans and pulled out what I at first thought was a crumpled up receipt.

He held it out to me so I could get a closer look.

Nope. Not a receipt.

“Is that a cigarette?”

“It’s a joint. Take it. What do ya say, even trade?”

“No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

“Everybody smokes, bro.”

“Not me.”

“Why not?”

I thought about the question for a moment. “I don’t know. Never had the urge, I guess.”

“Well, today’s your lucky day,” he said, still holding the joint out for me to take. I looked around nervously for any sign of police, but didn’t see any around. “It’s the least I could do, since you’ve been so kind to me. I don’t have much else to offer. Take it, and I’ll leave you to your books.”

The debate continued for another five minutes before Kevin won. I grabbed the joint from him and shoved it into my pocket, feeling like a criminal. By that point, I would have done just about anything other than sexual favors to get him to leave me alone. I never had many friends growing up, so this was the closest I’d ever come to experiencing peer pressure. And it worked. I felt like I was living inside one of those after school specials.

We said our goodbyes and Kevin headed off with my coat, and I headed back inside the bookstore with his joint.

Of course, I had no intention of smoking it, officer. I only took it so he’d leave me alone, your honor. I wondered if the law would accept that rationalization. Grandma would certainly be upset if she knew I had it, so I’d have to get rid of it as soon as possible. Until then, it would stay hidden out of sight under my mattress.

For the rest of the week, I avoided going to the Haji-Mart, fearing I’d run into Kevin and he’d ask me about it.

Truth was; I was wrestling with the idea of smoking it, but I was also scared of what might happen to me if I did. I had never done anything so crazy in my life. The craziest thing I’d ever done was spend a whole weekend reading the
Lord of the Rings
for the third time.

Gandalf smoked, didn’t he?

I had to remind myself that Gandalf wasn’t real.

Finally, after a week of contemplating, the intelligent part of my brain, the part that kept me out of trouble, the part that allowed me to leave high school with a solid C+ average, said enough was enough.

I would get rid of it, once and for all.

I would say NO to drugs.

By the time the bookstore closed at six, the sun was already beginning to go down, but the cold days that had made their mark a week earlier had come and gone.

After depositing that day’s money in the safe, Grandma and I headed up the stairs and said our goodnights. I sat on the floor in my room and watched TV for a few hours. When I was sure she was asleep, I took the joint out of the mattress and put it into a plastic grocery bag with some other random trash I had lying around. Now I just had to toss the grocery bag into the dumpster behind the building and all of this drug nonsense would be behind me.

As I made my way across the dark bookstore to the door, I saw a man and a woman arguing outside in the parking lot. They stood next to a red car under the dim glow of the streetlight, yelling at each other.

A moment later, the man pushed the woman to the ground. Then he hopped back into the red car and peeled out of the parking lot.

“Holy shit,” I whispered. For a fleeting moment, I considered calling the police, then remembered the joint in the trash bag.

The woman slowly got back to her feet and began to walk toward the bookstore.
Could she have seen me
, I wondered, standing in the dark watching her altercation like some creeper. She sat down on the curb right outside the store and hung her head. Calling the police was out of the question, but I had to do something. Maybe call her a cab.

I set the trash bag on the counter and then unlocked the door. The woman raised her head when she heard the door open. I stepped halfway out.

“Hey, are you all right?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine,” she said, turning back to look at me. She swept her curly orange-blonde hair out of her face.

“I saw what happened. Who was he?”

“Just some guy. Nobody special.”

“Clearly.”

“What’s your name?”

“James, but my grandma always calls me Jimmy.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Jimmy. This your store?”

“Yeah, me and my grandma’s.”

She smiled at me. “Ya know I won’t bite you unless you ask nicely.”

“What?”

“You’re standing there like I’ve got some disease. I ain’t got nothing like that, so you ain’t got nothing to worry about. I’m not a bad person.”

“Sorry,” I said, slowly coming the rest of the way outside. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Well, then you won’t mind sitting down next to me.” She patted the concrete curb with her hand. “Come on, don’t be shy.”

And this was how I met . . .

“Peaches, at your service.”

I shook her hand and sat down. “Peaches, huh. That’s an unusual name.”

She giggled. “Thanks.”

Peaches had quite a cute round face with tiny little orange freckles sprinkled about that matched her hair color. She wore a tank top with cutoff jeans and sandals. She carried a little extra weight around the hips and thighs, and her breasts were almost as big as my head. Not that I was staring or anything—they were just out there for everyone to see—I just so happened to be the only one in the vicinity at that moment.

Okay, I was staring.

“You want to talk about what happened?”

She sighed. “Not really. He owed me some money, that’s all. Wasn’t the first time, won’t be the last, I’m sure.”

“Well, if you want I could call you a cab.”

“Nah, that’s okay. I got a cell. And I don’t live far from here anyway.”

“Might be dangerous walking the streets at night.”

“Eh, I’m used to it.”

I should have known then because she made it so obvious, but I was a dunce. We were worlds apart.

“Tell you what I
could
go for though.”

“What’s that? A glass of water.”

“A cigarette,” she said. “I left mine in stupid’s car. You smoke?”

I thought about the joint inside the store. “No, never.”

“Really? Good for you. It’s a bad habit.”

“Why don’t you quit?”

“I don’t know. It gets me by. I started when I was young, and it’s just stuck with me all these years.”

“How old are you?”

“How old do I look?” she asked.

“Is this a trick question?”

“No, just curious.”

“I’d say twenty-nine then.”

“And I’d say you got a lucky guess. How old are you?”

“How old do
I
look?” I asked.

“About seventeen.”

We both laughed.

“Are you serious? I’m twenty-two.”

“I was just messing with ya,” she said.

I didn’t realize this at the time, but what we were doing was called flirting. I hadn’t done it before. It felt good.

“Care to escort me to the store across the street?” she said. “It’s been a long night and I could really use a cigarette. Don’t worry, I got my own money.”

I smiled. “Sure, why not.”

As we walked across the street, I kept looking around for Kevin. Luckily, he was nowhere to be found. He was probably passed out in some alleyway. As we reached the front of the store, Aamod greeted us outside and flipped the open sign around so it read closed.

“You got to be fuckin’ kidding me,” Peaches said.