Less Than Nothing Read Online Free Page B

uncomfortable moment, and then I shrug again.
    “All right. Later.”
    “Tomorrow, Sage. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He sounds like he knows the answer will be yes. We both do, but I give nothing away, especially not the tingle of pleasure hearing him say my name creates in my core.
    “We’ll see, Derek. We’ll see.”

Chapter 3
     
    I finish my day at 4:45 with sixteen dollars, which blows goats, but is enough to buy dinner and do some laundry. I pack up my stuff and head off to Melody’s. Her mom doesn’t get home until almost six, so we’ll have an hour to talk, which after a whole day spent thinking through Derek’s offer, I really need.
    I met Melody the first week I came to the city, after spending nearly the last of my meager savings on bus fare from Santa Rosa. I’d made friends with another street musician named Perry, who worked what was now my spot, and he took a shine to me, which I admit I exploited. He was a big weed smoker, high from morning until night, and had decided to head to Los Angeles and try his luck, having run into some trouble locally he didn’t want to talk about. He offered me his block in exchange for twenty bucks, which I agreed to, even though it cleaned me out.
    “You’ll make it back by tomorrow, sweet thang,” he said as he took my last two ten-dollar bills. Perry sounded like one of those seventies blacksploitation movie characters, Shaft or whatever, only he was always bobbing in time to music only he heard. He was a great singer but, like many of the folks in the Haight, liked his drugs and booze a little too much and had obviously never gotten it together.
    Perry was thirty-four and looked like he was pushing fifty.
    I still remember that night. We talked until the sun was coming up, at which point he offered his final thoughts as he left for the bus station.
    “Be at your spot every day, no matter what, before the stores open, and don’t take no shit from no one. That’s yours now, baby girl, and you fight for what you got, you hear?”
    Now, as I trudged the last few blocks to Melody’s, I felt like a big fat loser. The first real challenge to my supremacy, and I’d folded like a house of cards. Okay, maybe not that bad, but in my mind I should have stared Mr. Derek Smooth-as-shit down and run him off, hands on my hips like Wonder Woman as I scorched him with my glower of fury.
    Melody and I had met the first day I started playing in my new spot. She’d been on her way home from school in the early afternoon, a latchkey kid, and had stopped to listen to a song, which had turned into ten. She’d given me five bucks, which I was like, ‘score,’ and we spent an hour talking. We’re both seventeen, and polar opposites. I’ve always been slender and pale, my natural hair color a medium brown, and she’s tall and curvy, with cinnamon skin from her mother’s Colombian side.
    Stopping by to listen to me squawk became a habit with Melody for several weeks, but now with school out, she hangs around the house during the day. Her mom works in an office downtown and takes a bus to and from work, and Melody sneaks me into their postage-stamp two-bedroom apartment on the edge of the Haight whenever possible so I can ‘freshen up,’ as she puts it.
    Melody’s my best friend in the world now that my old life is flushed. Just as well. I hated school, was bored out of my gourd with it – I already knew everything they were trying to teach me because I’d been reading ever since I was old enough to walk, and hadn’t made any friends to speak of. More like a few loners that grouped together with a common cause: misery loving company, and completely failing to be good citizens in academic society.
    I pull my cheapo burner cell out of my back pocket and text her to let her know I’m coming by, and within a minute get her response: Swicked. I’m sooo bored. Got chocolate?
    I text back: I can pick up PBC, but it might break the bank.
    And she: Sweet. I’ve got $.
    I stop at