Sky Tongues Read Online Free PDF Page B

won’t wait, they’ll hire someone else! And you know damn well I could work for you for a month and not get that amount of money!”
   “Sorry, darlin’. You know if I could afford to pay you that, I would. Hell, I’d pay you all you kids that but you know I can’t. Just wait until the end of the season and you can come back here. There’ll be other jobs.”
   “You don’t know that,” I said. “I’m staying and I’m gonna do this. You can’t stop me.”
   “Well, sadly, that’s where you’re right. I can’t stop you. But, I’m asking you respectfully. Don’t do this. A young girl alone here in Los Angeles.” He shook his head. “That can only be trouble and I want to keep you safe.”
   I stared into his eyes, furious. He stared back helplessly, pleadingly.
   In the end though, I walked away from him. I walked away from all of them and a life that I had loved. I think now it was out of spite, out of resentment at being told what to do. I’d had enough of that shit from my parents and I told myself I would never let anyone order me around ever again.
   And, for the most part, I never did.

26

   I camped out on the beach that night, listening to the waves gently tasting the shore.
   Sleep didn’t come for quite sometime, however, due to the beach itself being quite famous for its aqua-colored sand and tiny rainbow snails, which had tourists combing it night and day, bagging sand as souvenirs, or homeless folks looking for a tasty slimy snack. The snails were free, after all, and quite good when eaten raw.
   Later, I washed up in a restaurant bathroom and showed up for work on time. During the downtime, I went around asking the crew if they knew of any cheap places to stay and of course, they all did, but no place was cheap enough for my wallet. A homeless shelter was the best I could do for the time being.
   The day after that the ice cream director gave me a business card, telling me it was a friend of his, an agent who specialized in getting work for Mues. I called the guy and made an appointment for the following week.
   As I lay in the shelter night after night with druggies and drunks and people just down on their luck, I thought about Gus and Milo and all of the rest of the carnies and wondered where they were now. Portland? Seattle? I wondered if where they were was a prettier place than LA but of course I was just playing a game with myself. There was no doubt that wherever they were, it was better than here.

27

   My agents name was Franz and he was a complete human, not a single drop of Mue blood in him, but he was nice enough and sent me out for job after job, without end. I got a few more commercials—enough to get me out of the shelter and into a tiny roach infested studio apartment where I shared a bathroom with other tenants—but not enough to get me much else. Rent in LA was obscene and I finally broke down and got a job working nights in a laundromat. The atmosphere was horrible, the pay was horrible and the customers where horrible, but I was desperate and took what I could get.
   I searched around for an acting class or program I could get into, but they were all out of my budget for the time being. Continuing to pound the pavement everyday, I was always tempted to drift into one of the theaters off Sunset but Franz was always discouraging me from doing so. He said my night job paid me more than they would and the real money was in film.
   “I can’t stress it enough, Sky!” he would say. “Film is the only thing worth your time.”
   I held out and got bit parts in a few sitcoms and another commercial or two. I had become a real working actor, complete with the headshots and the portfolio. Something was bound to break for me eventually. At least, that’s what Franz kept telling me.
   He was also convinced that I was not your average Outie. He kept insisting that I was also a Uni, the most rare of all Mues, those