Chapter 1
“We lost another eBay profile.”
“How long did we have that one?” my uncle asked without turning away from the box of records.
“That's a pretty decent streak.”
And he wasn't wrong. My uncle ran a business flipping whatever he might find in an abandoned storage unit or at an estate sale or unit clean out.
If I wasn't helping him pack a box truck full of whatever, I was managing a dozen different eBay profiles with listings for anything from those hauls that might be worth selling.
These were used items, but no matter how much the listing warned someone what the condition was, buyers expected like new. For the volume of items we moved, a batch of complaints could easily pile up at the same time, getting an account flagged or ruining its seller rating.
It wasn't the worst job, and he was usually reasonable, but there wasn't really a ladder to climb.
It was just me and him with the occasional day laborer popping in for an especially big job.
What I did now would be what I did until my uncle got out of the business.
He loved his job, though, so I was dubious of when or if that day would ever come.
He kept a warehouse of miscellaneous items that he believed would appreciate in value or would sell for a good price when the right customer eventually came along.
Barbershop chairs, rare CRT televisions, a few dozen record players of all types and sizes, broken pinball machines, and so on.
As you can tell, he didn't go in for boxes of clothes and used toys.
He liked to treasure hunt. Rare and unusual electronics were his favorites.
“We have a pickup in the morning,” he said, wiping dust onto his pants. In this work, dust was ever-present. “Meet me here at 7?”
“Sounds good. What are we picking up?”
“Brunner High School upgraded their computer labs. We’re taking away the old ones.”
Normally, I would think that was a decent score.
In the case of electronics recycling, clients like schools and government offices paid us to take old hardware away.
Really, they paid more so for data security than the physical removal of old tech.
My uncle had the certifications to properly wipe everything and had a big insurance policy to reassure clients if they were worried.
But I graduated from Brunner High School a year ago and wasn't excited about running into old teachers and having to explain that yes, stacking 10 year-old PCs in the back of a Uhaul was my career now.
“I'll give you an extra 50 bucks to stay a little late and go through the books,” my uncle offered.
Books were almost always a waste of time, but it wasn't unusual for a few boxes of them to get lumped into a bulk estate buy or something similar. For the profit margin, flipping random used books was awful, so we avoided them whenever we could.
“Sure,” I answered. “How many boxes?”
“Three.”
I leveled my gaze.
“Okay, five. But I took a peak and it's easy stuff like dictionaries and dime store novels.”
“Yeah, I'll take care of it.”
“Thank you. When you lock up, don't forget we changed pin codes.”
“Got it.”
With a smile and a pat on the shoulder, my uncle left the warehouse. 15 minutes later, I walked to the other end of the building to get started on those books.
“Fucking asshole,” I muttered to myself when I found the boxes. They were huge.
But an extra $50 wouldn't hurt, and I had nothing to do when I punched out, so I got to work.
The first box was all books about trains. Train nuts loved those, so those were worth keeping.
The second box was old business and self-help books. Trash.
The third and fourth boxes were miscellaneous paperbacks and sticky children's books. Also trash.
My phone buzzed. Gracie Johnson. She wasn't popular in the cliche teen movie sense, but she was friends with everyone, teachers loved her, and she landed a big scholarship. I crushed on her hard for a bit, and even found the courage to tell her that.
She told me she just wanted to be friends.
“Do you still sell weed?”
So she had no interest in seeing me. I was a pitstop for supplies for what would be a fun night with her real friends.
“Nope,” I replied. “How are you, though? It’s been a while.”
Dealing in high school was stupid easy. I could double my money in a day in most cases.
The market was only so deep, so profit potential wasn't endless, but the extra cash was nice, and high schoolers knew nothing about what good weed was or what prices were fair. As long as I didn’t get too greedy, the money kept flowing.
Dealing as an actual adult? Not worth it. The risks were too high, and I didn’t want to have to go hunting for new customers. I liked being able to mention I was holding in home room and then sell most of my inventory during lunch period after word got around. The real world wasn’t so easy.
I watched my phone screen for a minute or two to see if the icon for Gracie writing me a message popped up. It didn't.
So we weren’t even friends after all. Whatever.
Box five was more self-help books for the most part, but there were a few hardbacks mixed in that had to be a few decades old. Hand bound, cloth or leather-wrapped covers with engraved, gold lettering. Fancy-looking stuff.
These usually ended up being junk too. Old didn't mean desirable, but my uncle was terrified of overlooking a rare first edition that could have netted us millions of dollars.
There. Books sorted. I could look up prices for what I set aside after the pick up in the morning.
“David?”
Christ. This was my first dolley of towers, and I was getting stopped already. I had hoped that since the new school year hadn't begun that I could avoid running into someone who knew me. That was a dumb hope to have.
“Hi, Mrs. Riding.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Picking up a load of PCs,” I answered.
She frowned. “Is this your job?”
“Yes.”
“Have other plans for your future?”
“Not specifically.”
She sighed. “I know it can feel like life is over after high school, but you're still young. You have time to turn things around. You've got the brain for it. Don’t waste it.”
“Thank you,” I said and went back to pushing the dolley, leaving Mrs. Riding behind.
That wasn't the first time she gave me that speech.
As a freshman, I turned down the gifted program when she explained how many extra projects I would have to do, but she never stopped trying to inspire me.
No matter how many classes I slept through and no matter how much homework I didn't turn in, she could still deliver the “you're better than this” speech with complete sincerity.
Even after graduation, apparently, when it should have been clear that no, I was not better than this.
On the third trip, Lacie Greshin stepped out of a biology classroom in a pantsuit. I hadn’t seen her since graduation, and she looked even cuter now. The professional attire suited her glasses and dense brown curls.
“David! Are you shadowing too?”
“Shadowing?”
She looked at my blue jeans and embroidered polo shirt. “Oh, sorry. There are a few secondary ed majors here today. I thought you might be one of them. What are you doing?”
“You kind of caught me in the middle of a heist,” I joked, gesturing at the towers on my handcart.
She smiled. “Where’d you end up going to school?”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh, so you work for the school?”
“No, my uncle. Recycling electronics. You look a lot better in clothes like that, by the way.”
Her smile fell. “...Better?”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. You just really pull off the look.”
“Better than I pulled off being a marching band girl?”
“Yes.” I realized how bad that sounded, and my panic spiked. “No. That’s not what I meant. I always thought you were kind of cute, if you wanted to go out sometime or something.”
She stared, dumbfounded. Fuck, why did I say “kind of cute?”
“I have to get back,” she replied, ducking into a classroom before I could say anything else.
That was a 10/10 landing, for sure. Bravo. Couldn’t have gone any smoother than that. I sighed to myself and started pushing the hardware again.
Six more trips later, every tower, monitor, keyboard, and mouse was packed away. In 30 minutes, when we got back to the warehouse, I would move everything again when we unloaded the truck.
“Weird being at your old school?” my uncle asked once we were on the highway.
“Yeah, a bit.”
“Man, I hated high school. I don't get why people hype it so hard.”
“Same,” I said.
“High school gets more fun when you get into your 40s and 50s.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Yearbooks are just the ‘before’ photos. Keeli Peters wasn't good enough for me in school. Ran into her last week. She's hot as hell. It's amazing.”
I knew what he wanted to talk about next, so I thought that maybe if I didn't ask, we could change topics.
“Fucked her at the bar six hours later,” he said with a grin. “She's still got it and then some.”
“Are you dating her now?”
“What? Hell no. She's married. Two fugly kids. Probably an herb garden. No thanks.”
I couldn't help but laugh.
“I'm serious. Maybe lead paint or something was involved. They're shockingly ugly. I'll find a picture for you when we get back.”
“I'll be alright,” I replied, knowing full well I would see the pictures anyway, followed by a dozen different photos of Keeli Peters then and now.
“The biggest mistake I made when I was your age was being too picky.
I'm not saying lower your standards. I'm saying that you should learn to appreciate what makes women different, find what's beautiful about them.
When I was a kid, the super skinny look was all I saw in magazines, so that's what I wanted.
Now I see old photos of girls I could have banged and I'm like god damn she had a dump truck. How did I miss that?”
“I'll keep that in mind.”