Gen-Zennials

THE GIRLS TRY WEED

They're both in spaghetti strap camis and underwear. Brooklynn has on knee-high tights and Charlie has fluffy, wooly socks collecting at her ankles. They're independently watching content on their laptops, Brooklynn with bluetooth headphones and Charlie with bluetooth earbuds.

Brooklynn sighs existentially, manspreading on their green corduroy sofa from a local swapmeet, with a colorful hippie kantha quilt thrown over.

"Why did I move out of my mom's house?"

Charlie looks over at her, sitting at the coffee table on a pillow and eating a bowl of quinoa, fruit and yogurt. "Because why wouldn't you?" she says with a mouthful.

Brooklynn sulks. "No. That's not good enough!" She slams a throw pillow down, a mini tantrum that doesn't stop Charlie from looking at her laptop screen with big reading glasses, and eating. "So you move out of your parents house and then what? Go through life with traumas and just let your shitty parents get away with it scott free because you've removed yourself, so now they can live in a big mud bubble convincing themselves that they were a good parent because their kid has gone off doing what society and their boomer relatives pressure them to do, like getting a degree, a job, illegitimate children and your own place, stuck with debt and bad credit and full of regret and aging ten times faster than normal? When little do they care or know, your job has nothing to do with your degree and doesn't pay the cost of living for your overpriced shitty squalid life where you're stuck living with some weird loser for a roommate. No offense," she says to Charlie, who shrugs and pops food in her mouth with chopsticks.

"You know what!" She erects on her feet. "Fuck it! Fuck everything, and fuck everyone."

"Yeah!" Charlie playfully cheers with a fist in the air.

"Fuck what everyone thinks, and fuck the law."

"Yeah–wait, the law?"

"Exactly. I'm...gonna try weed."

Charlie stands up. "What?" she glares in confusion.

Brooklynn rants while flailing her arms and shaking her hair. "All this time I've done what everyone has wanted. And it's got me nowhere. They tricked us! They tricked millennials! They made all of us think we were wrong for being unique and threatened that we'd be nobodies if we had fun at school and so we sucked it up and got boring and zombie walked through the rest of life, and now these upstart Gen Z asshole brats are riding on our coattails having all the fucking fun and succeeding while looking and living exactly how our parents and teachers and society told us not to! And not to mention our pediatricians called us fat for being what's now called thicc and then they have the nerve to give people BBL's and then those bubbly BBL bitches have the nerve to get rich on social media off of it. Where did we miss the memo doing what boomers told us! Fuck Adulting; we'll do it tomorrow. Tonight, we reclaim our youth, and paint the town red! And I might even get a face tattoo and a pussy piercing!"

Charlie stares at her. "Bit dramatic, but ok," Charlie shrugs and pops her hands on her hips. "And how exactly do you propose we get this weed?"

"Aren't you from Ohio? What young white person from the midwest doesn't know how to get weed?" she snides. "I bet even the Amish know."

"Well excuse me for being law-abiding. I once was a good girl. Until I had to slum it in New York." She rolls her eyes and plops down on the couch next to where Brooklynn is standing.

"...Are those chopsticks?"

"Yeah. I was just laying in bed one day–"

"You don't have a bed."