Fingerless Gloves Read Online Free PDF

beginnings of a tsunami. I am not a drug dealer, at least not in any traditional sense, nor did I realize how my high was so blatantly evident to everyone else. The weird itching in my eyes must have visually manifested itself in two pools of red suffocating my pupils. I put my hands in my pockets and continued staring at the shelves while saying, “I have nothing…nothing at all for you friend…for that, I apologize.”
    The Burn Your Bucks employee rolled his eyes and rushed by me into the next aisle. His green apron vanished as fast as it originally appeared. I realized I had been staring at a plastic bow and arrow set for what was going on 10 minutes. The store was very weird. The whole store just felt warm. I felt the dish towels for softness and tried on the latex gloves, then smelled my hands. I wore the foam Little-League style hats. I kept clicking away at mysterious objects with one of those extend-a-reach claws. In the last aisle, I picked up a chintzy, tin Speed Racer lunchbox and a Snickers bar. I brought my items to the checkout.
    The girl behind the counter was also about 20, with red hair and skinny jeans over the green Burn Your Bucks mandatory apron/t-shirt combo. She was made up …as her eyes were outlined and her cheeks were the right shade of red. I had begun eating the Snickers bar before reaching the cash register. It was all gnawed caramel and nougat. She laughed to herself as she rang up the two items, one of which was half-eaten. My total came to $3.78. As I fumbled with my wallet, trying to impress her with my display of counting correct change, she sighed. “You know, I’m off in about two hours. I don’t mean to be too forward, but if you’re around, can I hang with you? I’ve never done what, well, you seem to do. I’d like to try it with a stranger, without my friends there to judge me.”
    I guess burnouts and stoners still exist even in small towns across America. When you don’t take the time to recognize what you are, you overlook everyone who is just like you. These kids will always be looked at as missed potential or shameful examples of youth gone wrong. This girl ringing me up, as I looked at her, I imagined the friends she used to have …the dances with her father …the way boys made her feel. Maybe it was the pot, or maybe just my overworked mind, but I felt close to her. I guess judgment will be passed based on misunderstanding, from now until the end of time. When you’re working a Friday night shift at Burn Your Bucks, probably paying your way through some local college…trying to avoid having to go home, there is no shame in smoking marijuana…I mean, if that’s what you need to keep your head on straight. I felt bad for this girl…she was, in some backwards way, cute. Her confidence, probably a result of years of repressed desire to do/feel something new, was oddly refreshing.
    In one hand, I had exactly $3.78. In the other hand, I had my wallet that refused to close. A credit card had lodged itself sideways in the bill flap. I had heard what she asked me, but was still deciding how to address it. I finally stuffed the bulging wallet into the back pocket of my jeans, and handed her the exact change. As I reached for the label-less plastic bag containing my purchase, I told her, “I’m not sure where I’ll be in two hours. I might be here or I might be around somewhere else. You’re just like me: everywhere already. You’re knee-deep in the most important night…possibly ever.”
    With that, I turned and made my way towards the door. As I walked out, the bells on the door smacked hard against the glass behind me. My cell phone read 8:45pm. The night had moved from open hoodie to closed hoodie. I was considering the jacket I had stuffed in the back seat of my car. The lamps lit a line down the center of the shopping plaza. Shopping carts stood fast like islands. Noises we unidentifiable and distant…just the air moving around. There was an old video rental