Read The Roommate Situation for Free Online Page B

Public Speaking assignment. Fuck my grades, fuck my future employer, and fuck them.
    “Keep. It. The Fuck. Down,” Chuck groans. He’s a lump under a Panthers comforter, nursing his hangover from the party. It’s maybe the seventeenth time he’s pled for quiet. I have to admire his persistence.
    “Shit,” Pete says, dropping his controller. “I need to get ready anyway.”
    “Hot date?” I ask.
    “I’m returning the shirt,” Pete says.
    “Loser,” Chuck says from under the blanket.
    Pete shrugs. “I’m hoping to leverage it into coffee. Or maybe ice cream. Not dinner. I don’t have the funds for dinner.”
    “Poon,” Chuck says. He pushes the comforter back, revealing torqued and twisted hair. “Come on, why else would she have you bring her shirt by on a Saturday night? She’d have scheduled you for an afternoon if she wasn’t interested in taking your pecker for a joyride.”
    “We’ll see where it goes,” Pete says.
    “Probably she just wants her shirt back in time for her real date tonight,” Chuck says. “You know, the one she’s going on with some other guy. Who can afford dinner.”
    Pete shrugs again. He looks at the controller. “Anyway. I guess I’ll make myself presentable, just in case.”
    “Good plan,” I say.
    I have no plans myself, so I head to my room, thinking maybe I’ll work on my speech. If I get my grades up by Christmas break, I’ll be able to show I’ve applied myself, and maybe I can come back with my guitar—without catching a lot of grief over it.
    The room’s empty, Derek probably out grabbing something to eat. My stomach growls at the thought of food. The care package from Mom saves me a trip out of the room. I tear open the gummi bears.
    Sitting on my bed, I pull up the outline I’m working on for the informative speech and find myself thinking more about music than “How to Improve Your Foosball Game.” Music and guitars and a particular beat-up Silvertone that I can still feel under my fingers as I slide them down the sides of my laptop.
    Before leaving, my dad slipped me some cash. I had it stuffed in my pocket, two twenties and a ten. I’d been planning on wasting it on albums, but fifty bucks is decent money. I pull up eBay and click my way to the vintage guitar listings, where I find some beauties I wouldn’t mind owning. The gap between what I have in my pocket and the going bids is a little too wide to straddle, though. For fifty bucks, I can’t get much more than shipping on a decent guitar.
    Damn.
    I suppose I could get a job; my parents don’t have to know. It’s not like they have a tracker on me. That I know of.
    I pull up the student job board…and that entertains me for all of five minutes. Jobs I don’t qualify for, jobs I can’t imagine doing, jobs I probably wouldn’t get.
    The only job I’ve had in my life, my mother got for me, in the office she works at. I can’t even envision applying for a job. Is an interview involved? Do I need a suit? I have clothes for church that I never wear, because I never go, but then what if I’m overdressed?
    So that’s my evening.
    With a sigh, I crumple the gummi-bear bag. Instead of tossing it at the garbage, I lean against the wall, sighing again. There’s foosball. If I can get good enough to beat Chuck consistently, maybe I could pull in some money.
    Or lose what little I have trying.
    Putting a guitar on the debit card is out of the question. Getting enough cash out of an ATM to pay for a guitar: also out of the question. How do I explain why I needed a few hundred dollars? Um, all my textbooks burned in a fire. No, it was a small fire; the only thing damaged was my textbooks. I don’t know why I didn’t just put them on the debit card. I think the machine was offline when I went in to buy them. Receipts? Um…I know I had them somewhere. You know what? I think they went through the wash.
    I pull my computer into my lap. There’s always studying, getting As, getting my own guitar