Odd Jobs Read Online Free PDF Page B

whole world. She sure as hell wasn’t about to lose the third – me. And if Harris North IV had the solution, she was going to take it. While speaking with him, Mom came out of her trance and flat-out demanded that I go to the academy. If something like sending me to a private school moved her, I wasn’t going to argue. I just wanted her to be happy, not that she ever could be. Not like she was.

    Looking back, though, Remington Academy was fine. It showed me some stuff I never would have seen. On the other hand, it made me want stuff I didn’t know I wanted. Bottom line was that I was in a packed 10-cent candy store with only nine cents to spend.

    The funny thing was that this bozo Harris North IV sold Mom on getting me away from all the drugs in Hempstead. Meanwhile, you can’t believe the drugs rich kids get their hands on. While we were scoring dime bags in Hempstead Park, the guys at Remington were getting blow, X and ‘shrooms like they were renting movies from Blockbuster. Their money made all the difference.

    These guys lived in a different world, and for a while I got to live in it. I liked living in it. They showed me there was another world outside Hempstead, and I couldn’t help it, I wanted in. I got a front row seat courtesy of Constance Wendy Wellington. Everyone called her C.W. You’re not really allowed in this world without a weird name. It’s like a password at the door. No lie. We had a Bunny, Potter, Bucky, Rip, Chip, A.J. and every combination of initials possible in the alphabet, landing me right with C.W.

    I remember always trying to have an excuse to talk to her, to find any reason to see her. I can practically still feel her straight brown hair that was so silky and shiny that it drew in the light and sent it back out with a subtle glow. While the rest of us were fighting the good fight versus a tsunami of zits, C.W.’s skin was flawless. Her dark complexion managed to look tan in the winter. Beautiful green eyes and a mouth that was inviting in a plump and seductive way accented it all.

    It was hard not to be drawn into C.W.’s world. She would talk to me about basketball and the games we had coming up. When she talked to me about hoops, I was pumped. I tried to fit in. In my second year at Remington, I actually busted my ass to nail down literature class. To make things even tougher, her favorite author was Charles Dickens, so besides the regular reading, I tried to tackle Dickens. I didn’t give a flying fuck about literature, but it was C.W.’s favorite subject. Girls make you do some weird things. English Lit was hard enough to grasp, and they didn’t make it easy for a guy like me. We were reading books in class like The Catcher In the Rye, A S eparate Peace and The Great Gatsby — stories about these characters with tons of money and fancy lifestyles, perfect for the Remington crowd. For them, it was like reading about their next-door neighbors. For me, it was like reading a story about aliens from the Planet Zeron.

    Later on, C.W. admitted that’s what got her really liking me. I’d like to think I charmed the fuck out of her, but that’s a reach. She knew I couldn’t care less about this stuff but I was doing it for her. I never minded doing the work to get what I want but when I looked around, everyone else was either getting things handed to them or expecting to get things handed to them.

    I spent a lot of time at C.W.’s house...if you want to call it a house. The damn place could have had its own ZIP code. I always knew people had swimming pools and tennis courts, but the Wellingtons even had a stable and horses. It was her mom’s “hobby.” This hobby could drain the economy of some small countries.

    C.W. had a great relationship with her mother. I would meet them at the Piping Rock Country Club and they would be there downing Southside cocktails, watching the tide roll in. They would spend hours together before I got there. It wasn’t that I thought it was