Please Ignore Vera Dietz Read Online Free PDF

sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist.
    “Dylan’s outside,” I say.
    She looks up and squints out the plate glass. She knocks and startles him to attention, and he arrives in the store, still exhaling pot smoke.
    “Get your lazy stoner ass over here and pick this up.”
    She throws the hot bags to him, inserts the pizzas, shows him where they’re going on the map on the wall, and just as he’s forgetting the two six-packs of Coke, she runs over and balances them on top of the pizzas and opens the door for him.
    We watch him burn rubber as he takes off down the parking lot.
    “That kid is a total idiot,” she says.
    Marie says the basic requirement for employment these days is a heartbeat, which is why she doesn’t fire him. Even though he doesn’t mop the floor right when he closes, he still gets the same money I do, and I mop right. When he does the dishes, there’s dry food stuck on them in the morning that someone has to chip off with a table knife, but he’s still on the schedule, week after week.
    It seems the older people get, the more shit they ignore. Or, like Dad, they pay attention to stuff that distracts them from the more important things that they’re ignoring. While he’s busy clipping coupons, for instance, and telling me that a full-time job will teach me about the real world, Dad is overlooking that the guy on Maple Street could have killed me and chopped me up and distributed my body, piece by piece, along the side of the highway. He’s overlooking every story on the news about drivers being robbed at gunpoint, or getting carjacked.
    It’s one thing if he wants to ignore it. I guess that’s fine. I mean, I ignore plenty of stuff, like school spirit days and the dirty looks I get from the Detentionheads while I try to slink through the halls unnoticed. But there’s something about telling other people what to ignore that just doesn’t work for me. Especially things we shouldn’t be ignoring.
    Kid bullying you at school? Ignore him. Girl passing rumors? Ignore her. Eighth-grade teacher pinch your friend’s ass? Ignore it. Sexist geometry teacher says girls shouldn’t go to college because they will only ever pop out babies and get fat? Ignore him. Hear that a girl in your class is being abused by her stepfather and had to go to the clinic? Hear she’s bringing her mother’s pills to school and selling them to pay for it? Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Mind your own business. Don’t make waves. Fly under the radar. It’s just one of those things, Vera .
    I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. If we’re supposed to ignore everything that’s wrong with our lives, then I can’t see how we’ll ever make things right.
    It’s ten-thirty and we’re nearly down to closing crew. Dylan wants to leave early to go to a party, so he has Marie cash him out while I take my dinner break sitting on the cold stainless-steel counter in the prep kitchen, next to the sink.
    “You working New Year’s Eve?” Marie asks, counting out his commission.
    “You kidding?” he says, shaking his head. “Count me out, man.”
    “We could really use extra drivers. I’ll pay double commission.”
    Dylan isn’t even listening.
    “I’ll do it,” I say. Because what else do I have to do on New Year’s Eve now that Charlie is gone?

HISTORY—AGE THIRTEEN
    The first New Year’s Eve I can remember making it to midnight was when I was eleven. It was snowing and my mom was still there, and when the ball came down in Times Square, I ran outside, barefoot in the snow, and I yelled “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Charlie answered, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” and it was so quiet from the insulating snowfall that it sounded like he was standing right next to me, even though he lived a hundred yards down the road and a skeletal woodland separated us.
    The next year, Mom said that we had to celebrate New Year’s Eve as a family. She made homemade eggnog and put out a bunch of leftover holiday (we couldn’t say “Christmas”