Chapter 2

I woke up at ten thirty. It was Saturday.
I stood up and made my bed and put some clean clothes on, I needed some towels. So I went out and in to this cute little store, with bathroom things. I didn’t care what the towels would look like; my goal now was to spend as little money as I possibly could. So I bought three large towels and two hand towels. They where blue-green, with yellow stripes on them, really tacky, but I didn’t want to spend money on nice things until I had a job. That’s when I remembered Tony, and after I bought the towels I looked for Tony’s pizza place, and after about ten minutes of searching, I found it. I went inside and heard Tony’s voice in the kitchen, he was yelling something in Italian, but soon he came out of the kitchen, realy angry. I laughed, “Did I come at a bad time?” he looked up and smiled “oh, it’s you, did you like the hotel?” he asked, I nodded, smiling. “I never got your name,” he added. I walked towards the counter “Cassie” I said, “my name is Cassie”. He smiled, “welcome, to my pizza place, did you come for a job?” he said, “yeah, I’m a little low on cash, I had to buy ugly towels” I said and showed him the bag. “Well, Cassie let me show you your new coworkers” Tony said, “Stupid! Useless! Get your Asses out here!” he yelled. Out of the kitchen there came two guys. One African-American probably around seventeen like me and the other guy probably the same. “I’m Samuel, but everyone calls me Sam” the black guy said, “and I’m Zack,” said the other one. “Why don’t you start tomorrow? You don’t want to start on the busiest night of the week” Tony said smiling “okay, I’ll come back tomorrow!” I said, waved and went out, Tony waved back. I didn’t have any plans for the day so I got a cab and asked the driver to take me to the nearest library. When I got there I asked for an application for a library card and after I filled it out, the old lady at the desk and in to a back room to get the card made, and in about five minutes it was ready and I started to look for a good book to read, and I found a book, about making it on your own, it was for young people starting to live on they’re own. But I was more than young, I was just a teenager, but I needed something to help me through the beginning so I borrowed that book and went back to the hotel. The girl at the front desk, was smoking, she was kind of good looking, long black hair, long legs from under her mini-skirt, probably around nineteen. “Want one?” she asked and held out the cigarette pack, “sure” I said and walked towards her, I took a cigarette out of the pack and she lit it for me, “so, who are you?” she asked carelessly, “I’m Cassie” I replied “. And you?” I asked. “Melanie, but everyone just calls me Mel, it’s shorter,” she said. “Thanks for the smoke, see you later” I said and went up to my room, still smoking the cigarette. I locked the door and sat down on the floor and finished the cigarette, and then I put the towels in the closet and threw the book on my bed. I was sweaty “oh, shit, I’ve got to take a shower” I said to my self and grabbed one of the large towels from the closet and went in to the bathroom, I threw the towel on the floor beside the shower, “oh, fuck! No shampoo”. I went out of the bathroom, grabbed my keys and went out of the room, I ran downstairs and out of the hotel, across the street there was a drug store I went in to, I picked the cheapest shampoo and conditioner and was going to buy it when I realized I didn’t have enough money for it. I scraped of the barcode and put it under my shirt and went out , then I ran across the street again, in to the hotel, up the stairs and in to my room. Finally I could take a shower! I practically ripped of my clothes and went in to the shower, I had never been so relived to just be in the shower, I had been on the road for so long and I was sweaty and disgusting. After I got out of the shower I quickly dried myself, put on some clothes, laid down on my bed and took a peek in to that book from the library. That book was just a big load of crap, so I stopped reading it, I figured I would need something to get around on, so I decided to go look at bikes when I would go out for dinner. So around six thirty I went out, and into this café, I got a sandwich and a cup of coffee. I ate slowly, because I wanted to enjoy my only meal of the day. After I finished eating, I noticed that everything was so busy, that I could walk out of there with out paying and no one would notice, so I did, and afterwards I felt good, because that place wasn’t cheap and that was a realy large sandwich I had eaten. So, then I went on the lookout for some bikes. I came to this garage sale that was closing up and I noticed a red mountain bike and I went to a lady that was cleaning up, “hey, how much is that bike over there?” I said and pointed at the bike, “oh, that’s twenty five dollars” she said and smiled. I thought about it for a while but then I decided to buy it, it would make all my traveling around town a whole lot cheaper. “I’ll take it!” I said, gave her the money and went back to the hotel on my new bike. When I came to the hotel, I asked Mel if there was some sort of storage room I could keep the bike in, but she said there wasn’t, so I just paid for the night I had stayed there and went up to my room, in the elevator, and took the bike with me in to my room and put it behind the door, beside the closet. I locket the door and threw the key on the table. I was realy tired and put on my “sleeping clothes” and went to bed. After a few minutes, I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I was happy.
I looked at my watch, it was nine a.m. I got up and made my bed. I went in to the bathroom and washed my face, opened the medicine cabinet, got out mascara and a lip balm and put it on myself, I put some clothes on, took my keys and my bike, and went out, I was going to work. I rode my bike to the pizza place and went inside, “Hey! Tony!” I yelled when I got inside, he came out and waited for me to continue, “Is there some place I can keep my bike?” I asked, “Yeah, you can bring it in the back door, keep it in the storage room” he said and went back into the kitchen. I took my bike and went in the back door, put it in the storage room and went in to the kitchen. The guys had some music on and where dancing, while they got the kitchen ready for the day. I laughed quietly and waited for them to notice me, and when they did they stopped dancing, turned the music down and stood still, “Hi!” I said, trying to stop the laughter. Sam went out of the kitchen and started to dry some tables, but Zack just stood there, like he didn’t know what to do. He finally moved when Sam came in to the kitchen and said that we had customers. He turned on the oven and took a big bowl of pizza dough, took a big handful of it and threw it on the table in front of me, Zack got a big bag of flour and put in on the table, “use a lot of this” he said and sprinkled some on the table. And before I knew it, I was making pizzas realy quickly and time just flew by. I didn’t get of work until six thirty p.m. And I was so tired I almost couldn’t move my hands, but I got to make myself a free pizza to take with me to the hotel. So after I made my pizza, I got my bike, my money and I went to the hotel. I was so happy and proud of myself for taking care of myself, I got five dollars an hour, so that day I made forty five dollars. When I got back to the hotel, I sat on the floor and ate my pizza; it was so good to get a free meal, even if it was my only meal of the day. That’s when I started missing my mom, she used to make pizza every other Saturday, nobody made pizza like my mom. My little brother, Max would try to put as much pizza in his mouth as he could but he couldn’t chew with his mouth so full so he’d spit it all out, and everyone would lose their appetite. I went downstairs to make a phone call, there was just one payphone in the entire hotel and someone was using the phone before me, so I needed to wait for ten minutes before I could use the phone, when it was my turn I called Tony and got to go to work a little later that I was supposed to, cause there was something I needed to do. So then I went up to my room and started cleaning it threw out the pizza box and dried the table and the floor and in twenty minutes the room was clean. When I was done cleaning the room I wasn’t tired at all so I went out, I got Mel to come with me, so we could get in to some good places. I put on a mini skirt, a top, denim jacket and some high heels. We went in her car to some of her friends, three guys and a girl, there was Frankie, a realy cute Spanish guy, Paul, a fairly cute realy nice guy, Oho, a cute Chinese guy who didn’t understand a word of English and the girl was Hannah, a real tramp, who had sex with everything that moved, even girls. We went to a party at Frankie’s friends’ house, this was like Barbie and Ken town, it was horrible, I felt like a troll there with all those bimbos. That is, until I noticed that Frankie was paying a lot of attention to me, he was always looking at me, so I just wanted to rip of his clothes and eat marshmellows of his chest, but of course, I didn’t. But when I was getting myself another beer, he came and started touching my hand, I put down the beer and turned to him, he looked straight in to my eyes, I couldn’t move, he took me to a couch and we started making out. He tried to push me down on my back but I pushed him away, he pushed up my skirt and tried to pull down my panties, “no! Stop! Stop it!” I said and pushed his hand away so he let go, I stood up and started to walk away but he grabbed my hand around the wrist and pulled me to the couch and held me down, “you’re a tough one, huh?” he said and smiled, “yeah, right!” I said and pushed him of me, he pulled me towards him again, and hit me so I fell down on to the floor, I tried to get up but he kicked me so I got slammed against the wall and cut my cheek so it started to bleed. He took some pills out of his pocket, and came towards me, tried to open my mouth, but I kept it closed, I knew that they where sleeping pills something. “Open your fucking mouth!” he yelled and hit me, then he got pulled of, someone started beating him until he stopped moving. It was Paul, “are you okay?” he asked, I nodded. I couldn’t stop myself from crying, Paul went over to me, went down on his knees and held me “hey, its okay, it’s over” he said. I tore myself from him and ran out of the room, I found Mel, on the dance floor, told her I needed a ride home, but she told me to take a cab. I went out of the house and got a cab, my cheek was still bleeding, and I couldn’t wait to get to the hotel. So when I got there, I ran straight to my room and locked the door behind me and went straight in to the bathroom, and took a shower. “Jesus Christ! I can’t believe I was so fucking helpless!” I yelled. I was so mad that I couldn’t even dry myself or put clothes on, I just went straight to bed and cried myself to sleep.