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By Root 436 0

and authority figures all tell you that if you follow the rules, if you work hard, if you behave, you will be rewarded. Maybe with fame. Maybe with fortune. And if you really, really want it bad enough and work hard enough, maybe both. This is the Holy Grail of American mythology. But the real world doesn't work that way, kiddies. Because there are chronic fuckups who are still wildly successful at whatever they do. And there are smart, hardworking people who just can't get a break or, worse, who squander their gifts and never, ever amount to anything special. And even worse than that, there are people who work their asses off throughout their young lives, achieve their goals by getting into a top-notch Ivy League school, and then drop dead at twenty years old from an undiagnosed heart condition!!!”

And just like that, it shattered: the defensive infrastructure holding up the stony façade I'd put up after William's death. After nearly a year without tears, I was keening more wildly than Dexy ever had, and right in front of the kiddies.

“There are no guarantees of success in this world, not even for those whose lives are as charmed as yours. So have fun now! Do it! Put down the books! Have sex! Drink too much beer! Do something stupid while you're still young enough to chalk it up to blissful ignorance!”

I got right in their young, fresh, horrified faces.

“Go out and live! Live! Live before it's too late!”

I got fired, of course.

* * *

June 30th

Dear Mom and Dad,

First, I want to thank you again for your willingness to “waive” rent this summer. That's big of you, considering none of us expected me to be here. I hope you understand that I'm trying to do the best that I can under these difficult circumstances. Mom, as you know, a heartbreak is not so easily mended. And this unexpected parting of ways, coupled with my recent employment problems, has made 2005 a summer to forget.

That said, I would greatly appreciate it if you would please refrain from nagging me about losing my job with ACCEPT! I'm even less thrilled with the prospect of working at Wally D's than you are, but everyone else has already made their hires for the summer season. Time is money and I don't have enough of either to waste in a fruitless search for more “meaningful” employment as Mom puts it.

I will be the perfect guest. Quiet, neat, and easily missed. In return, I hope that you will extend me the courtesy of honoring my request.

Your daughter,

Jessie

* * *

the fourth

“Isn't that where all the good blow comes from?”

This inquiry was directed to the lower right of my crotch, via my coworker Sully.

“What?” I asked, tearing open a carton of wafer cones.

“Columbia,” he said again, gesturing to the crest on my gym shorts. “That's where coke comes from, right?”

This was strange enough to make me stop dead in my tracks, a dangerous move on a night where even a momentary pause could incite corpulent civil disobedience.

“STOP BLABBING, GIRLIE GIRL, AND MAKE MY CONE!”

“GIMME MY CONE!”

“CONE! CONE! CONE!”

The Fourth of July is always one of the most insane nights of the year on the boardwalk. So I hadn't stopped running from customer to customer and cone to cone since I put on my Wally D's T-shirt. I'm on the 6 P.M. to 3 A.M. shift, which means I deal with every conceivable type of bennie, from the cranky families who've got sand stuck in the crotch pockets of their swimsuits, to my carefree peers perpetually transitioning from hungover to drunk again, to the pervy lurkers who wait until five minutes before closing to satisfy their hankering for something cool and sweet and mortally high in calories. For the privilege of working this most dangerous of shifts, G-Money pays me an extra buck an hour, bringing my hourly wage to a whopping $6.15 plus whatever tips people stick in the jar by the register. (COLLEGE FUND, it says, which is so close to the truth that it almost makes me weep.) I'm a bizillionaire in cigarette butts, fossilized gum, and tokens for Winning Wally's arcade. If I save up on the last, I might accrue enough