A Girl in New York (Pre/Sequel to The Outsiders: A Girl in the Gang)

Chapter 20- Amateur Drug Dealer

Note to Readers:  Again, I'm sorry it took me so long to update this, but I know how to continue the story now.  Don't forget to comment and vote!

The rest of my fourth grade and into my fifth grade year was spent avoiding school work and causing as much trouble as I could. I got in fights on purpose, stole from anyone and everyone, trespassed, destructed private and public property, your typical hoodlum child.

After school one day, which I only went to so I wouldn't have to stay home and listen to my parents bickering, I was wandering around the back alleys looking for something to wreak havoc on.

I was bored and in a bad mood because we had just gotten a notice in the mail that they were kicking us out of our apartment in a week, and my father in response had just started drinking more and hitting my mother again. She was, supposedly, desperately searching for a job, of which she hadn't gotten yet because she was too intoxicated, doped up or zoned out from her innumerable amount of pills for anyone to consider hiring her.

I still hadn't figured out how they had money for alcohol and drugs but not to pay the rent and the bills, but I wouldn't be surprised if they stole that just like I stole everything. I had to have gotten that bad habit from somewhere I suppose.

I caught sight of two guys on a street corner, and I watched as one of them held out a crumpled brown paper bag with something in it, and the other guy fished a handful of wrinkled bills out of his pocket, handing them over. They exchanged items, and then went their separate ways, surreptitiously taking off down the street.

I had seen drugs bought on the streets all the time, but I knew it could be dangerous. Like life-threatening dangerous, something people would kill for if you made a wrong move, so I had stayed away from people like that as best as I could. But the notice about losing the apartment lingered at the back of my mind, and I suddenly got an idea. A very bad one as I would later find out, but still.

I headed home, early for once instead of staying out until nine or ten at night like usual, cautiously opening the door to the Apartment of Hell just in case my beloved father decided to throw a whiskey bottle at me the minute I walked in. He didn't, but I could hear his snores through the whole house even though he was in their bedroom with the door closed. My mother was passed out on the couch herself, an empty bottle of her pills on the ground by her hand that was dangling limply over the side. For a brief second I thought she'd overdosed and was dead, but then I saw her chest rising and falling with each breath and I relaxed.

I went into the kitchen, eyeing the bottles of pills lined up along the counter before grabbing the fullest of the three that had yet to be opened. I slipped it into the pocket of the too-big sweatshirt I was wearing as a fall jacket and then headed for the door. I stopped only to grab the empty bottle that was laying on the living room floor, stuffing that in my pocket, too.

I traveled the streets and alleys again, this time going to the alley where all the druggies and stoners hung out, situated between a run-down smoke shop and a crappy apartment complex. Normally I just walked right past it, but this time I entered the alley, thick with the smoke of joints, a scent that made me sneeze.

An older guy, wearing a dirty, torn overcoat and dress pants that were so filthy I couldn't even tell what color they were supposed to be, with long stringy hair and a bushy, scraggly beard that had bits of....something stuck in it, heard me sneeze and came over, looking me up and down. Being ten at the time, I was scared, but I didn't say anything, just tried to act like I knew what I was doing.

"Ain't ya a little yung to be 'ere, girlie?" the guy asked, and I could smell his foul stench as he drew closer to me, cocking his head to the side.

"It doesn't matter," I said haughtily, and he chuckled, stepping even closer to me so I could see his huge pupils in his bloodshot eyes.

"Really? Ya got some good shit?" he asked.

I pulled the bottle out of my pocket, the pills rattling around inside, showing it to him.

"Two of 'em are strong enough to knock you out for hours," I said.

He gave me a curious look, probably deciding if he should believe me or not.

"How much?" he asked warily.

"Three hundred," I stated.

"I'll give you two."

"They're prescription grade. Two fifty," I compromised, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing.

He pondered for a moment before nodding and grabbing the bottle, shoving a thick crumbled pile of bills in my hand, bound together by a rubber band. It looked like $250 in singles, so I turned and walked away, a little giddy because I had the money to pay for the rent this month, and then some.

I clambered up onto the roof of an abandoned office building via the fire escape a couple blocks away from Drug Alley, pulling the bundle of bills out and counting them. Two hundred fifty exactly, which is what I had wanted for it, having planned on negotiating a lower price when I said three hundred in the first place. Not bad for my first time drug dealing, and I still had another bottle, half full like the first one, in my pocket to get me another month's rent.