Read Online Bearded Women by Teresa Milbrodt - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Teresa Milbrodt
Tags: dark fiction
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like seventy-eight little siblings. I love them, but they’re annoying.
“Am I going to turn to stone?” slurs one guy at the bar after polishing off his fourth gin and tonic in an hour.
I give him a granite stare, say that he’s reached his limit and I’m cutting off his booze. If someone hadn’t come up with that turn-to-stone bullshit, I would have been able to get a better job, maybe in a high-end retail store, and not have to work two part-time gigs. Understand that I’m bitter.
Tips have been bad tonight, which doesn’t improve my mood. I’m hoping to make enough this week to finish paying down my credit card bill. Between tending bar and shelving books at the library I can get by, but the tips give me a little room to breathe and buy a couple chocolate bars at the grocery.
It’s April, a rainy night, and I have to walk home. The snakes don’t like getting wet, and when they’re too cold or warm I get a headache. My car gave out six months ago and it wasn’t worth repairing, but winter was hell. I had to walk around with a big fleece head wrap that kept the snakes warm enough for the ten-minute walks from my apartment to the bar and the library.
I budget as I walk, figure this month I’ll have just enough. So much for the credit card bill. Last year I was optimistic about the future, bought a new couch, then I had to get the brakes and heater on my car replaced. A waste of money since it died a few months later.
I’m also paying for one class a semester at the college, which means no new car soon, just books and tuition. I want to get a degree in biology and a job doing plant research. I like studying cells and reproduction, started taking classes four years ago, but I’m only a sophomore. I remind myself I don’t have to be in a hurry to finish, but it feels like I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to quit my jobs and get student loans and end up paralyzed by debt I might not be able to pay off. A couple friends of mine who work at the bar tell me every night how they’re never going to be in the black.
“Just because you go to college doesn’t mean you’ll have a great career,” Katie says. She has a degree in history and fifty thousand dollars in loans. Before I got the job at the library and just worked at the bar, I was really scrimping. Ran up two credit cards in the process. Every night my snakes got headaches as I thought about the bills I couldn’t pay off. I don’t want to be in that position again.
But night after night I collapse in my apartment, too tired to study because I’ve been working all day, but if I don’t study I won’t be able to pass my classes and get a degree that might win me a better job (though Katie is quick to remind me it’s not guaranteed). Tonight I have reading homework for my Greek mythology class. (It’s one of my electives. I took it because I hoped I could dispel a couple myths, mostly ones about me.)
My upstairs neighbours have decided to throw one of their parties. I have to be up at eight, and it sounds like my ceiling is about to give because of the boozy thumping. I stomp to the second floor and feel like a crotchety old woman, but dammit, I need to get work done. Intoxicated people loll out the apartment door. One of my upstairs neighbours (there are two guys and a girl) wavers towards me, stepping over a couple of bodies.
“Would you keep it down,” I say. “I have to work in the morning.”
“Sure thing,” she says. She’s wasted. I hear someone vomit.
Back in my apartment I still can’t concentrate, decide I might as well sleep, but I have to lie in bed with a pillow over my head. I want to break the damn lease and move because all the other people in the building are twenty-something college students whose parents are paying for their degrees. They could care less about studying. But this is the cheapest apartment I could find that’s within walking distance of both my jobs. I don’t have extra money, can only hold
“Am I going to turn to stone?” slurs one guy at the bar after polishing off his fourth gin and tonic in an hour.
I give him a granite stare, say that he’s reached his limit and I’m cutting off his booze. If someone hadn’t come up with that turn-to-stone bullshit, I would have been able to get a better job, maybe in a high-end retail store, and not have to work two part-time gigs. Understand that I’m bitter.
Tips have been bad tonight, which doesn’t improve my mood. I’m hoping to make enough this week to finish paying down my credit card bill. Between tending bar and shelving books at the library I can get by, but the tips give me a little room to breathe and buy a couple chocolate bars at the grocery.
It’s April, a rainy night, and I have to walk home. The snakes don’t like getting wet, and when they’re too cold or warm I get a headache. My car gave out six months ago and it wasn’t worth repairing, but winter was hell. I had to walk around with a big fleece head wrap that kept the snakes warm enough for the ten-minute walks from my apartment to the bar and the library.
I budget as I walk, figure this month I’ll have just enough. So much for the credit card bill. Last year I was optimistic about the future, bought a new couch, then I had to get the brakes and heater on my car replaced. A waste of money since it died a few months later.
I’m also paying for one class a semester at the college, which means no new car soon, just books and tuition. I want to get a degree in biology and a job doing plant research. I like studying cells and reproduction, started taking classes four years ago, but I’m only a sophomore. I remind myself I don’t have to be in a hurry to finish, but it feels like I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to quit my jobs and get student loans and end up paralyzed by debt I might not be able to pay off. A couple friends of mine who work at the bar tell me every night how they’re never going to be in the black.
“Just because you go to college doesn’t mean you’ll have a great career,” Katie says. She has a degree in history and fifty thousand dollars in loans. Before I got the job at the library and just worked at the bar, I was really scrimping. Ran up two credit cards in the process. Every night my snakes got headaches as I thought about the bills I couldn’t pay off. I don’t want to be in that position again.
But night after night I collapse in my apartment, too tired to study because I’ve been working all day, but if I don’t study I won’t be able to pass my classes and get a degree that might win me a better job (though Katie is quick to remind me it’s not guaranteed). Tonight I have reading homework for my Greek mythology class. (It’s one of my electives. I took it because I hoped I could dispel a couple myths, mostly ones about me.)
My upstairs neighbours have decided to throw one of their parties. I have to be up at eight, and it sounds like my ceiling is about to give because of the boozy thumping. I stomp to the second floor and feel like a crotchety old woman, but dammit, I need to get work done. Intoxicated people loll out the apartment door. One of my upstairs neighbours (there are two guys and a girl) wavers towards me, stepping over a couple of bodies.
“Would you keep it down,” I say. “I have to work in the morning.”
“Sure thing,” she says. She’s wasted. I hear someone vomit.
Back in my apartment I still can’t concentrate, decide I might as well sleep, but I have to lie in bed with a pillow over my head. I want to break the damn lease and move because all the other people in the building are twenty-something college students whose parents are paying for their degrees. They could care less about studying. But this is the cheapest apartment I could find that’s within walking distance of both my jobs. I don’t have extra money, can only hold
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