Free Douse (Book One: At the Edge of a Hurricane) by June Hydra Page B

loud strokes.
    “I’m
almost done with the Russian boy,” she says. “Coffee? Why thank
you.”
    “I
made it extra strong.”
    “Even
better.”
    As
I watch Piranha type, I wonder if Caddy’s right. Melodramatics aside,
would other people really do what I do or have done?
    The
worst thing for me is to be considered a bad person. I’ve always thought
my parents to be wretched human beings. Striving to be better than them away
from them, figuratively, literally, was always the goal. To be better than
them. Have a moral compass they could never posses or comprehend.
    I
will be better than them.
    “I’m
getting a part-time job,” I whisper to Caddy. “Tomorrow I’ll
start applying.”
    “What
happened to patience?”
    “I
can’t wait anymore. I’ll work two jobs. This one and the one
I’ll be working at soon.”
    “Where
will you even work?”
    Piranha’s
typing grows incessant and louder. She cranks her head to the side every once
in a while to offer a big fat “Shush!”
    We
leave the room again.
    “You
won’t bail on us?”
    “No,”
I say. “I’ll stay with you. It’s just I need to do this for
myself and all. See how things can work. See if I can be the first.”
Caddy raises an eyebrow. “You will have to get ‘real’ jobs
eventually, too. Piranha already has one, sort of.”
    “Maybe.
She works like ten hours a week max there.”
    “Shush!
Stop arguing, please.”
    “Yeah,
Violet.” Caddy drags me back in. I keep my mouth shut for the duration of
Piranha’s work schedule.
    At
approximately eleven o’ clock she finishes all her tasks. We compensate
her sixty percent. Normally she chastises us about Educate, but she has
expensive taste in Americana she needs to support. Morals die in the face of
Piranha The Consumerist. More perplexing is her ability to mentally extricate herself
from the business, as if she’s had absolutely no part in it, before
bidding us goodnight with a “You’re going to get caught.”
     “It’s
funny, the essay they wanted,” Piranha says before I shut my door.
“It was an essay about cheating in American universities and how to stop
it...”

CHAPTER 10
    My
first round of job applications involves trolling the Internet for available
openings. There’s waitressing, hostessing, being a receptionist.
Low-paying grunt work. Thankless work where you’re ordered around like a
mule.
    I
fire off the last of my applications. At around three o’ clock P.M.,
after much puttering around the apartment, I decide to call Bishop.
    “Haven’t
heard from you in a while,” he says.
    “I
was sort of…been thinking of you is all.”
    “Really?”
He breathes close into the phone. I can hear the sound of tires against
concrete. “I’m out and about. I actually have freetime soon, if you
wanted to get together.”
    We
pick this French sandwich place. Lez Magaritez or something—Caddy would
crucify my pronunciation and unearthly lack of global savvy. The walls of the
place are covered in posters displaying what appear to be French singers in
dramatic poses done in black and white. The music played is along the lines of
Edith Piaf, old and rustic, rugged and plentiful whiny. Caddy would call her
“mournful” but he’s more sophisticated about these things
than me.
    “You’re
beautiful,” Bishop says over his soup. “You’re stunning
today.”  
    “You’re
stunning yourself.” I stir my own soup. The heat emanating from it warms
my fingers. I stir and focus on the ripples.
    “How’s
life?”
    “Decent.
I’m getting another job,” I say. “Applying to a lot of
places.”
    “Where
at?”
    And
then it strikes me how silly I would sound listing off high-school level jobs.
Bishop’s a working professional. Today he’s dressed in khaki slacks
and an oxford shirt. He wears a tie while I wear barely fitting cotton
trousers, five bucks at the local Goodwill.
    “One
job is more analytical,” I say, “like the kind of job you would get
for data entry, except