Frankenstein's Girlfriend

6: The Dream Team

They called themselves “The Dream Team.” Dana’s more accurate description of them, “The Piss-Poor Excuse For an Assembly Line,” didn’t roll off the tongue in the same way.

General Manager Eric Malcolm had two hiring policies: employ high school students because they work cheap, and hire ethnically diverse candidates because corporate demanded it. An excerpt from the Jobs page on Juiceroo’s website read, “Magic happens when you mix people from all walks of life together in the same ‘blender’––we call those moments Blendertunities!™” The result was that five privileged white girls, all of whom graduated from the lowest rung of the popular clique at Buchanan High, received a paycheck for texting and gossiping, while a 27-year-old Hispanic man named Marco had the blendertunity to do all their work for them.

Marco chopped up a mango, which resembled the fat, red face of his former boss at Hodgson and Son’s Computer Repair, who fired him from a somewhat decent job fixing laptops. The Hodgson method of “fixing” was to charge customers a service fee for sending computers back to their manufacturers, where all the real repairs were done. Marco was excellent at pretending to know how to fix peoples’ laptops.

The reason for Marco’s dismissal: Leo Hodgson wanted to hire his grandson Kenny, so he could rename the shop Hodgson and Son and Grandson’s Computer Repair, even though, Jerry Hodgson repeatedly explained to his father, Kenny planned to leave Chupa Valley for a “sure-to-be lucrative” career as an interpretive/jazz/tap/hip-hop/flamenco dancer in New York. Jerry was the most sarcastic member of the family.

Sweat collected on Marco’s forehead as he sliced the mango for an impatient customer. Amber noticed this and couldn’t help but giggle, as Fruit Prep was supposed to be her job. She took off her hygienic brown visor and let her raven black curls cascade down to the matching brown apron strings resting on her shoulders. A stray strand of her hair found its way into a blender in the sink coated in blueberry yogurt. It’s 11 am, she thought, time for a break. She hadn’t lifted a finger all day, except once to scratch her costly, though petite new nose.

Theresa’s head was mere inches from the screen of her expensive, hideously bedazzled new cPhone, her neck outstretched like an ancient turtle to read the words on the touch display. It would take one more year of blindness before Theresa finally admitted to herself that she needed glasses. Theresa texted her boyfriend with effortless speed, tapping the screen as though she were training to break the Teen Girl Olympics record. She typed in front of the Juice and Powder Station, for which she was supposedly in charge.

Theresa’s back was turned to Amber, who was sneaking up on her. With a swift tug, Amber pulled Theresa’s dirty blonde ponytail.

“Whaaa,” Theresa yelped in pain!

“Hey biiiitch,” Amber replied with a vocal fry, randomly pitching up words as if she were constantly asking questions. She sidled up next to her friend.

“Hey,” Theresa shrugged as she returned to her texting.

“Patrick got fired.”

“Why?”

“Because Dana’s the worst. I hear she came on to him, and he refused to do her, so she fired hiiiim. My uncle’s a lawyer, I’m gonna ask him if Patrick can sue her. We should sue this stupid company, too. That’s called a Classic Action Suit? I think sometimes, Dana, like, undresses me with her eyes. Total. Lesbo.”

“Yeah.”

If Amber hadn’t skipped her sophomore career aptitude test to loiter in the back of a Best Buy with her white Rastafarian ex-boyfriend (later she’d claim she was only with him for the pot and for a cut of his scalped jam band ticket sales), there’s no doubt the best possible career for her would be professionally poking hornet nests.