Free For the Love of Money by Sam Polk Page B

want to go home. The sky was gray, drizzling. My jacket was thin so I jammed my hands into my pockets and hunched my shoulders to my ears.
    I saw Neo in the distance, crossing Broadway from the west, wearing a hat and big pants, boots, and a puffy jacket. He was a Cuban from Florida, and he never looked comfortable in the New York cold. He wrestled at 119 pounds and was tall and lanky, all arms and legs, unusual for that weight class. When opponents would shoot in, he would sprawl and it was like a bug caught in a spider’s net. They would wriggle, and Neo would adjust. They would strain, and he would tilt. Before they knew it, they were trapped, and he was on top with a two-point takedown. Once he got on top, he stayed there. He was one of the best leg riders I ever saw. He’d started on varsity as a freshman.
    I, on the other hand, hadn’t. After being injured for most of freshman year, I got cut from the team. I wasn’t surprised—I was smoking weed and taking Valium daily and had put on twenty pounds after I stopped throwing up, having replaced bulimia with new addictions.
    As soon as I was cut from the team, I started taking steroids. Many Columbia wrestlers took them during the season, but I hadn’t wanted to risk getting caught. But now that I was off the team, there was no chance of an NCAA drug test. Neo wanted to know why I wanted to take steroids if I wasn’t going to compete. I told him the truth—I just wanted to feel bigger, stronger, more powerful.
    I’d been picking up the steroid pills from Neo’s suite, where many of the other wrestlers hung out. In an effort to impress them, I told them I’d figured out a way to break into any dorm room on campus. They laughed and said I’d never do it. Neo was the leader of that group. He said I didn’t have the balls to go through with it.
    He was wrong.
    Neo walked up to me and nodded, and we set off toward the security office where students who have locked themselves out of their dorm rooms can retrieve a replacement key.
    â€œDo you want me to go in with you?” he said.
    â€œIt’s better if I’m alone,” I said. I left him leaning against a wall, his cap low over his face, water dripping off the tightly curved bill. I walked into the dark, dry hall. The security guard was at the counter.
    â€œI locked my keys in my room,” I said.
    â€œID?”
    â€œLocked my wallet in my room, too,” I said.
    He matched my gaze for a beat. My stomach tensed. Then he sighed, eased off his stool, and turned toward the file cabinets on the back wall.
    â€œRoom number?” he called over his shoulder. With his back to me I didn’t need to hold my face so tight, and my lip quivered with fear.
    â€œ1109,” I said.
    â€œName?” he called.
    â€œRandy Moreland,” I said.
    Randy was a drug dealer who lived in the room next to me. His two best friends were Percy, the tallest hippie I’d ever seen, and Jim, who was soft, quiet, and always wore a huge smile on his face. They spent nearly every night in his room, rolling joints, passing pipes, even inhaling through a gas mask. I really liked Jim, wanted to become friends with him. But I didn’t know how.
    I’d started buying weed from Randy earlier in the semester and had been invited to smoke with him a few times. Randy kept his stash in a huge jar, and for me he’d carefully pick out a few buds and weigh them to the decimal. For his friends, he’d stick his whole hand into the jar, forearm deep, and pull out a fistful, buds raining down on his desk. Percy and Jim would smile and lean back with the easy comfort of close friends.
    I overheard Randy tell Percy he could buy Ecstasy cheap in bulk: $17 a pill, for fifty pills. It’d take him less than a month to sell them all at $25 each, he said. I wanted so much to be a part of this group, to be invited to every session like Jim and Percy. So I offered to fund the