Pirates of the Retail Wasteland Read Online Free

Parkway.
    “You know,” I said, “if I were walking, I could just go straight down August Avenue and be right at the school. You know I wouldn’t get lost or anything.”
    “We know.” Dad sighed. He was a little more sensible than my mother when it came to imaginary criminals. “But there’s snow and ice all over the ground. You might slip and fall in the dark, and we wouldn’t even know you were hurt until you froze to death.”
    “When was the last time anybody froze to death in this town?” I asked. “It’s suburbia, not a little house on the prairie. Surely one of the muggers or drug dealers would come along to help me.”
    “Forget it, Leon,” he said. “Maybe next year, when you’re in high school, you’ll be able to walk, but for now, it’s out of the question.”
    My dad may have been a bit more progressive than my mom—he didn’t really care if I walked home from Fat Johnny’s, the pizza place on Eighty-second Street, just a few residential blocks away, after dark or anything like that. My dad’s biggest concern was that the minute I was not under adult supervision, I’d be approached by every drug dealer in the state and wouldn’t have the willpower to say no. As though I could possibly afford drugs on my allowance.
    “Be careful,” he said as we pulled into the parking lot.
    “You know I will, Dad,” I said.
    “I know you’re a good kid, Leon,” he said. “We just want you to be careful. I know all about how tough peer pressure can be.”
    “Dad,” I said, “I don’t know what it was like when you were a kid, but when someone offers you drugs, they’re usually just offering to be polite.”
    “Well,” he said, “you know what to do if the situation comes up.”
    “Sure,” I said. “Save some for you. See ya!”
    At the door of the high school gym, I paid two bucks to get in and found Brian and Edie already standing around by the concession stand.
    “Hey, guys,” I said. “You want any drugs?”
    “I don’t know,” said Brian. “What kind of drugs can I afford for four bucks?”
    “Oh, I can get you all kinds of stuff for four dollars,” I said. “Didn’t you guys meet all the dealers hanging out on Tanglewood Parkway when you walked over here?”
    “Yeah,” said Brian. “And they tried to get us to join their gangs, but we just said no and ran.”
    “Good job,” I said. “Sometimes when you’re in a gang, they’ll ask you to smoke.”
    I suppose we were exaggerating a bit—the town wasn’t
that
clean. James Cole may have been the first kid in school to smoke pot, but plenty of kids had done it since then. And I knew that plenty of kids at the high school were living on the chronic diet—a joint for breakfast, another for lunch, and then a sensible dinner, like animal crackers and cheese puffs. Whenever anyone mentioned potheads, Edie would go into a rant about how, to afford drugs, they had to be rich kids and should therefore be considered scum. Commies hate rich kids. Edie herself was not exactly poor—her parents were lawyers. But she claimed to have renounced them and everything they stood for.
    A minute later Anna turned up, and we all sat down at one of the metal picnic tables set up near the concession stand and watched everybody coming and going. A few people we recognized from classes gave us the “I acknowledge you exist” nod, but they were all actually interested in the basketball game, and headed straight in for the stands, which were farther inside than we normally got. Per our custom, as soon as “The Star-Spangled Banner” was over, we were out the door. My mother would have been furious to know that I was actually spending the basketball games walking around town, but what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.
    As usual, we headed south, cutting through Da Gama Park. Sometimes we stopped at the pay phone near the gazebo—practically the last pay phone in all of Cornersville Trace—to make prank phone calls, since pay-phone