The Wonder Bread Summer by Jessica Anya Blau Read Free Book Online

have coke to sell, I know someone who would buy some. So, you could sell the coke and then you’d have the money to pay for the gas.”
    “Oh, okay!” Allie heard the excitement in her voice and took a deep breath. Mellow, like Kathy Kruger, she reminded herself.
    “I try not to do that kind of stuff.”
    “Yeah, me too.” Or at least Allie had been the kind of person who tried not to do that kind of stuff. But who was she now? Now that she’d watched a man masturbate, done coke (coke and whatever it was cut with), and stolen enough drugs to buy a house in the Berkeley flats! For the first time, Allie was relieved that Wai Po wasn’t alive. Her own shame compounded with Wai Po’s disappointment would be too much for her to carry.
    “Why don’t you pull up there.” The guy pointed toward the little market attached to the gas station. “I’ll call my friend and get him over here anon.”
    “Anon,” Allie winced, as she started the car. Anon was a Marc word. He had even used it when she handed over her cashed-out student loan and scholarship money: “I’ll pay you back anon!”
    Allie spaced out, staring at nothing while waiting for the gas-station boy’s friend to arrive. After such an intense high, she felt depleted and empty. In no time, she was asleep.
    A knuckle rap on the window made her jerk awake. A guy was standing outside the car: blond, skin the color of browned butter, eyes like a doe. He had on a Mr. Zogg’s Sex Wax T-shirt and was obviously a surfer. Allie turned the key in the ignition, pushed the button, and the window slid down.
    “You the girl Jimmy told me about with the blow?” Sex Wax asked.
    “Jimmy?” Allie asked.
    “Jimmy.” Sex Wax pointed to the gas-station guy with his thumb. He wasn’t smiling. Allie wanted him to smile. She wanted him to flirt with her.
    “Yeah.” She said it slow. And she smiled.
    “How much?” Still no smile. He was probably four or five years older than Allie. His body looked like it was made of hard rubber: smooth on the outside but dense as rock.
    “How much do you usually pay?” Allie wished she had just once asked Beth how much she paid for the coke she loved to do. Although most of what Beth did was given to her by Jonas, so maybe even she didn’t know the price.
    Sex Wax cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. Allie could tell he was trying to figure out how and why she was dealing coke.
    “It’s my friend’s,” Allie said. “I told him I’d sell it for him and he wrote down a price list for me, but I lost it.”
    “He wrote down a price list for you?” Now Sex Wax smiled. He seemed incredulous. Allie’s face burned. “What else you selling?”
    “Just coke.” Allie sat up straighter in the seat as if that would give her more authority.
    “And he gave you a price list? Are you sure you have coke?” He leaned his forearms on the window ledge and peered in toward the backseat as if he were expecting someone with a billy club to be hiding there.
    “I’ll give you a taste,” Allie said. “But shut your eyes.”
    “Shut my eyes? What are you talking about? Are you going to pull out a hidden price list?!”
    “I don’t want you to see where I keep it.” Allie’s heart was thumping the way it had when she’d done the coke.
    “I’ll turn around.” He leaned against the car, the giant triangle of his torso filled the window in a perfect silhouette.
    Allie unwound the Wonder Bread bag, took out a pinch of coke, and put it in the center of her left palm. She put the open bag on the floor in front of the passenger seat. “Okay.”
    Sex Wax turned around, looked at Allie’s palm, and laughed. “You’re the funniest fucking dealer I’ve ever met!” With his hands on the windowsill, he dipped down as if he were doing a push-up and snorted the line from Allie’s palm. He straightened up, shook his head, and then bent down again and licked the dusty remains off the center of her palm. “Wow,” he said. Even his eyes looked