A Teenager's Journey Read Free

fact that so many papers were turning up for recycling, this went on for some time. Eventually, though, it became too risky. He asked me to no longer drop them off at his house, as he was having to explain how he came by prebundled newspapers, papers that looked like they had never been unbundled, let alone read by anyone.
    The next disposal site was the best. It was convenient and well hidden. Soon after the truck left my driveway each Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at 2 A.M. , I would take the bundles to the trees behind the apartments where I hung out during the day. The papers provided warmth when burned, as well as seats to place neatly around the makeshift campfire my friends and I had built deep in the woods.
    Many nights I spent sitting with a few friends, from well after midnight to dawn, smoking joints and drinking bourbon at that simple homemade campsite. As I took on more and more paper routes I spent more and more time in the woods behind the apartment complex near the end of Crestline Avenue. At first it was almost every night. I was saddened when fewer and fewer friends were able to spend the entire night out. Before we left Daly City I was spending most nights in the woods at “Camp Paper,” and that’s when I realized that my preference was for drinking alone. More times than not I was alone in the woods. Just me and Jim Beam, my new best friend, and my small campfire; although he didn’t share anything of any value with me, my new best friend gave me more comfort than even Josh used to do. (Josh lived across the street, and had been my best friend since elementary school.)
    Sad as it is to admit, being alone in the woods with a small fire to keep me warm, plus whatever it was that Jim Beam put in those dark square bottles, kept me together, mentally and emotionally. By now I was making nearly three hundred dollars a week not delivering newspapers. Almost all of it went up in smoke, up my nose, or down my throat.
    Whenever Mom drove me and my brother Scott down to the Crocker National Bank near Serramonte shopping center I’d shake my head in disbelief. My brother would cash one or two checks while I would be cashing over a dozen. Mom never said a word—she never asked nor did she even care. She had no idea I was not delivering on all those routes. She assumed I was slow at delivering the one or two she knew of. And most of the time she never cared, either, that I was out of the house nearly all night most of the school week.
    The only time she would have a word to say about it was when I was still asleep when the truck honked after dropping off another load in the driveway; then she would yell for me to get out of bed and deliver those papers.
    As I reached into the sugar bowl I knew there wouldn’t be much left. I had been using the money on booze and drugs almost as fast as I wasn’t earning it.
    Finding just slightly more than I needed for the gun was a relief.
    As I stuffed the bills in my pocket, I looked down the hallway to Mom’s room and smiled.
    I’m going to beat you at your own game
, I told her silently.
    I turned around and walked out the front door. The normal walk to my old elementary school took about forty-five minutes. This time I wasn’t going there, but to a friend’s house just past the school yard. I didn’t have many friends—I only knew a couple of boys about my age who didn’t make fun of me or treat me poorly. They simply accepted me.
    Jonathan was just such a friend. In the classroom, where other kids would tease me about the way I looked or smelled or about the clothes I had on, Jonathan would somehow make me feel better. He was smaller than I was and was picked on for different reasons. Together we sort of kept each other’s spirits up.
    He was one of the few people I had confided in other than my best friend Josh. He knew about Mom, how she beat me and how she constantly made me feel less than human. Jonathan couldn’t truly know how bad it was, yet he