Odd Jobs Read Online Free PDF

from that open window. The car swerved in all directions, and then it veered right toward my father and sister. It lifted my father clear in the air and rolled over Katie. The car never slowed down and careened out of sight. Katie’s cone was still intact on the pavement but the ice cream had been separated and was unrecognizable amid the crimson mess. How could it be? I thought, unable to process what I had just seen. Dad and Katie lay on the sidewalk like broken mannequins, but the ice cream cone was still intact.

    A hit-and-run accident. They never found the guy. Drunk driver, they hypothesized. Broad daylight and everyone could see it but no one saw it but me. The whole process was only a few freak seconds. Did the delay waiting for the doll cause a bizarre juxtaposition that couldn’t be reversed? It was just a few seconds. Yet those few seconds caused a disruption that ended two lives and sent two others spiraling in a completely different direction than they were headed before.

    I guess every minute is a defining moment somewhere in the world. Ten minutes ago, Billy Bob Buttfuck in Ohio just bought a winning lottery ticket and the next minute Igor Roganovich got hit by lightning in Croatia. Good or bad, is the new direction permanent? For me, every day since those brutal moments has been a fight to get back to where I was. Where I want to be.

     

     
    For the next few years, my mother was a virtual zombie. She barely had the desire to get out of bed to go to her bookkeeping job. Mom was there and I was grateful, but damn, I missed her. If I weren’t around, my mother would have offed herself long ago, I’m sure.

    Any extra money I made after the accident went to maintaining our shoebox of a house in Hempstead and buying her medication, but there was rarely enough money for both. Then, when there was some extra cash, instead of putting it away for a rainy day like I should have, I’d be too tempted to go out with my friends and see a movie or grab a burger, anything to squeeze in some “normal.” And those little things add up. The extra pressure of a stupid thing like money was killing us.

    Harris North IV changed all that, though.

    I remember the first day I saw him. I was in my last year of middle school and Harris North IV was watching me play basketball at Hempstead Park, a hotbed for street basketball. There were 30 or so shirtless basketball players wearing long shorts and high-top sneakers. Along the tall brick wall were another 20 hand-ballers wearing long pants and wife-beaters. Also lounging around in the vicinity was an assortment of old-timers with scraggly beards and dental issues. Then there was this one guy sporting khaki slacks, a pink golf shirt and Gucci loafers sans socks. Yeah, he was some chameleon. Fit right in.

    His Gucci ass showed up at my house and he started talking to my mother about giving me a great education. This guy was actually scouting parks looking for people to put his school on the map. I wasn’t any better than my buddies Loot or Carey, but Harris wanted me because I played b-ball pretty good and I was white. I found out later that the school had this whole strategy worked out. A football team had too many players and too much equipment, so a major football program wasn’t worth the trouble. With no expensive equipment and only 12 players to award scholarships, hoops was just what they needed. And what they really wanted was lily-white players.

    This guy really laid it on thick for my mother. Hempstead schools couldn’t compare with a private school like Remington. I would be a target for drugs and in a bad element if I stayed where I was. He could open up important doors for me. This grown man with a pink shirt, hanging out in shitty parks, was gonna open doors for me?

    It wasn’t like I bought into North’s visions; I had no choice. The guy had no idea what buttons he was pushing. After all, my mom had just lost two of the three people dearest to her in the