Sloth Read online

  In all seriousness, I think of you a lot and wish the best for you. Please let me know if you ever need anything. Or want to chat. Or meet up. Or whatever. And if you don’t, ignore my pushiness. I’m a take what I want kind of girl. I’m needy and wild and sometimes reckless. It’s just the way I was made.

  I hope that rubs off on you in all the right ways.

  Xo,

  Sloth

  April 26, 2012

  Sloth,

  That fucking sucks, about your sister. I’ll drink a shot of Snow Queen for her. It’s a high-quality vodka, produced from organic wheat and spring water in Kazakhstan. She, like any discerning tween, would surely enjoy.

  And you, too?

  Buy yourself a thong. Sign up for a pen pal service. Several dozen cans of hair spray? Go wild. Be reckless.

  -R.

  (If there’s not a VISA gift card in here, some asshole stole it.)

  May 24, 2012

  R.

  Generous man, with good taste. I enjoyed the Snow Queen immensely. On the 14th, I had my friend drive me to the cemetery, where I left a shot on my sister’s headstone. It was a semi-cloudy day. I didn’t listen to The Strokes, but to The Unicorns, “Sea Ghost.” It did the job. Afterward, I went to another friend’s house to play pool. I fell asleep that night watching X Men: First Class. I should have written you back sooner, but have been so busy getting ready for college! Squeeeee! I’m not going too far from home, but I’m excited anyway. It’ll be nice to get out of my dumb small town and be onto other things!

  I hope you’re doing great and are enjoying college/hiking/clubbing whatever is your thing. I still think about you a lot. In a totally non-stalkerish way. Please keep in touch. I will continue sending the same way as always. I have the feeling you’d prefer that to email or IM chatting.

  -Sloth

  P.S. I’m glad it was you. <3

  June 16, 2012

  Sloth,

  I hope you enjoy college. I hear Georgia has some great educational opportunities for its residents. I am…living life. It’s a shock I’m not sure I’ll ever get over.

  Feel free to continue corresponding at your convenience. BTM has my address, and will for a while I believe.

  P.S. – Your feeling of gladness is reciprocated. Also, multiplied.

  Yours,

  R.

  October 7, 2012

  Wow, it’s been a long time! I can’t believe how long it’s been. I came across your last letter the other day and was surprised to see the date. How the hell are you?

  I’m in my second semester of college, and I’m loving it! I found a job in my college town and worked my way through summer semester. I already knew my way around by the start of fall semester, so that was nice. I live in the dorms, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I kind of like my roommates.

  It’s so bizarre how much partying there is all the time here. Don’t get me wrong – it’s fun – but if I did it all the time I’d be flunking out of school. I have to keep my grades up for my sorority. Yeah…I joined a sorority. I know, I know. The clichés are sometimes true. But it was a good way for me to meet new friends. I’m trying to be a different person than I was in high school. Not in any major way or anything… In the normal way, I guess.

  I’d love to know what you’re doing. I hope B.T.M. has your address as long as I want it. I would be so sad if a letter came back to me.

  Sloth

  November 3, 2012

  Sloth-

  A college girl. I can’t picture it. What does a college girl named Sloth look like?

  (Your stalkerish tendencies may have rubbed off on me. I’m only just noticing.)

  I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.

  I’m in college too, actually. I, too, am enjoying it. Lots of opportunities to drink Snow Queen and read obscure poetry. (Don’t knock it. The two go well together).

  I hope you have a good holiday and keep in touch.

  -R.

  P.S. I did a shot for you 8/7.

  January 10, 2013

  R. –

  Every time I see someone drinking Snow Queen, I think of you. It doesn’t happen often. Gray Goose is the preferred vodka on my campus. I guess because it’s more affordable. (I can verify it definitely isn’t as good!)

  What are you studying? I’m undecided, which I guess is typical for someone my age. I like a lot of things, but I don’t know what I would want to do forever. It’s a long time. I’m caving under the pressure, know what I mean?

  Spring semester just started (I’m a sophomore now!), and I’m already dreading going home for the summer. My family has limited finances, so I don’t think I can stay here even if I work. There are worse things, I guess! I have a younger sister (the middle one) who will be glad to steal my thongs.

  How funny - I drank a shot of Snow Queen for you 8/7 also. Maybe in an alternate reality, we were drinking them together.

  <3 Sloth

  P.S. A college girl named Sloth looks lovely. Probably dressed in a gown for formal. Possibly giddy from too much vyvance or “Mary Jane”. Don’t knock it. It’s a good look on me.

  April 1, 2013

  Sloth,

  Do I ever get to know your real name? (All I was given was A.W.)

  Maybe next 8/7 we could make it happen. This year, I’m going to the Baltic Sea with my dad.

  Sigh.

  Did you hear that one?

  He is…not the most exemplary father.

  In my opinion.

  There are others. Some differ. Some do not.

  Be careful with the mixing of various goodies. I’d hate to lose access to you.

  My major is English.

  -R.

  P.S. Really. Be careful. Especially if you’re hanging out with frat guys.

  May 30, 2013

  R.-

  Whew! School’s out, and I’m “home.” It’s really just my mom and grandma, and my sister. I’ve only been here a few days, and it already feels like forever. Maybe your dad sucks, but the Baltic Sea? That’s so cool. I want a postcard. Can you do that? Send to me internationally without problems? I’d love it. Maybe a picture too. Just kidding. You don’t have to. I know that may be too much for you, and I’m okay with that. My stalkerish tendencies are being bred out of me over time. Is that a good thing? I don’t know…

  Weird is good. I still think that.

  I wonder what you’re doing now. Summer mini-mester? More traveling? Consider me your girl if you’re ever in need of a pen pal!

  Thanks for trying to look out for me. I am careful. Pretty clean, too. Drugs are kind of boring after all. Although I still want to try acid at least once…

  I hope you’re having a great summer so far.

  -Sloth

  P.S. I would tell you my name, but it’s so lame, I’m afraid it would put you to sleep. I have an interesting middle name. Maybe next note, I’ll tell you that.

  August 7, 2013

  Sloth-

  I wish I knew your boring name.

  This is a postcard from Świnoujście, close to the German border, where I’m drinking at a little bar called Still Waters.

  Here’s to you…

  R.

  September 4, 2013

  R.-

  I LOVE the post card. I bet it’s beautiful there! I hope you had a fabulous summer, and that your dad really outdid himself with uncharacteristic awesomeness.

  My summer was…interesting. It went by faster than I thought.

  I’m back at school now, living in the sorority quarters for the end of my sophomore and beginning of my junior year. It’s kind of insane, but I think I might like it. I’m a girl of the people. I’m not good by myself. I need friends and boys, and yes, even a little drama.

  I have a feeling I’m the yang to your yin. Or something like that.

  I still picture you chopping wood in a quiet forest with icicles in your nose. ;)

  Tonight I’m going on a date with my big crush from last year. I promise I’ll b
e careful, even though he seems like a nice guy. I’m not really looking for anything serious. I have to focus on my major: art!

  Keep in touch, and take care.

  -Sloth

  (Legally known as Autumn)

  November 21, 2013

  This guy reminded me of you. Hope you’re having a nice semester autumn.

  -R.

  December 16, 2013

  This one made me think of you! I had a very nice semester. You? Have a fabulous Xmas or Hanukah. How do I still not know which one?

  Xo,

  Sloth (Please Lord, never use the “A” word).

  January 25, 2014

  Sloth,

  Please lord? I’ll answer to that. Happy New Year.

  R.

  March 9, 2014

  R. –

  I’m going to let you off the hook for that one. I’m a Southern girl, remember? ‘Please Lord’ is something we say. It’s like…an old “sayin’”. How’s your year going? Is there some hot, R-loving babe calling you Lord? ;) I hope so.

  -S.

  April 1, 2014

  Seventeen of them. Some call me Lord, others Master, and still more Lucifer.

  When are you going to choose a name for me?

  Happy April Fools’.

  -R.

  P.S. Does your school have a good art program? Mine does.

  April 28, 2014

  My Dear R.~

  What a bad, bad boy. Guy? Man? How the hell old are you anyway? I’m thinking you must be in grad school. My school does have a good art program. Very good, in fact. Sadly, I am no longer in it. I have changed my major to art counseling. Don’t laugh. It’s a very serious field. Lots of balloon animals and papier mache. I look good in a dirty apron.

  How’s the English going? Going to be a professor or something? Me thinks it would suit your God complex.

  -S.

  July 10, 2014

  R.-

  I’m going to assume my note got lost in transit. Had to happen sometime I guess. Hope your summer is going well. Want to meet up 8/7? I’m game…

  S.

  August 9, 2014

  I’m embarrassed to admit, I’m feeling a little dissed. Hope you’re doing well. Drop me a post card? Even a blank one would do.

  Xox

  S.

  Part I

  “I was never insane except upon occasions when

  my heart was touched.”

  -Edgar Allen Poe

  ONE

  Cleo

  September 2014

  I might as well be a vampire. That’s how much time I’ve been spending in my closet lately. Being a college girl, constantly surrounded by dumb college guys, I can already hear all of the dumb-college-guy-caliber comments, so let me say, for the record: I’m not gay (I still fly the flag), and I’m also not rubbing one out.

  I’m in here writing letters I then shred, and packaging one of the Seven Wonders of the World into Mason jars. Also, obsessively Googleing the name “Robert,” paired with a few key phrases.

  Weird, I know. But weird is not a bad thing.

  The letters are personal. Private. I don’t write them very eloquently, but that’s okay, because no one is ever going to read them. I can’t seem to make myself mail any of them. It’s a good thing, I guess. A practical thing. But every time I listen to the grinding sound my shredder makes, I find myself rubbing my chest, because it hurts a little.

  The name “Robert”—well, that’s personal, too.

  As for the wonder, and the Mason jars...it’s business, baby. My business.

  Yeah. I have my own business. I’m proud of that. I never have to ask Mom or Grans for money. I never have to want for anything material. Sometimes I buy things I know my sister Mary Claire wants, pull off the tags, and mail them home, posing them as “second-hand.” One day soon, I hope to set up a Chattahoochee College grant for a hearing impaired student from my hometown. Yeah, you guessed it: Mary Claire.

  I do business on the black market, but I keep it as classy as possible. When I deliver orders, I have everything all cute and tidy: product inside a baggie, tied at the top with a little strip of ribbon (sometimes I even do different sorority colors), then the baggie tucked into a Mason jar with an adorable colored lid.

  Like most things I do these days, I make dealing drugs look effortless. And it is—mostly.

  For the record, it’s not really “drugs.” It’s marijuana, which is legal in some states and will probably be legal everywhere in another decade. That makes me a trailblazer.

  Getting my cute Mason jars organized and ready to blaze is no easy task. For starters, my bedroom is the size of a square of Chiclet chewing gum, and located in a sorority house, which is officially drug free. Even worse, it’s wedged between the bedrooms of Milasy and Stephanie—my sorority’s president and vice president, neither of whom, you might have guessed, is showing up for any pro-marijuana rallies.

  So yeah. I have to be covert. And that means packaging in my closet. It’s where my desk is, and also where I hide my LELO. The walls are bright pink, courtesy of the last Tri Gam treasurer.

  Right now, I’ve got less than thirty minutes until our Wednesday night chapter meeting, and here I am: slaving away over my precious buds. Picking out stems and seeds that Kennard told me wouldn’t be there this time. Freaking Kennard. Medical grade my tight, tanned ass. This shit is barely even mid-grade. Bitches like Holly and Neda will probably try to get a discount. I can’t do discounts. Not this week or any week.

  I look down at myself: at my Seven jeans, my Gucci boots, my pink Kors sweater. These things don’t buy themselves. I need money to survive here, in this lifestyle. Without my dealing, I’ve got nothing but a scholarship and a room down at the mold-infested swamp dorms. I might have good grades, and I might go to a lot of trouble to keep myself in good physical condition, but you think the campus’ most exclusive sorority would let me in if I wasn’t forking over giant quantities of the green stuff? (Not that green stuff. I’m talking about Benjamins). Not a chance in hell.

  People here think I’m a rich girl. A rich, delinquent girl who likes pushing boundaries and breaking rules. It’s so not true. I was the girl found crying in the first grade bathroom because I wasn’t coordinated enough to put one foot right in front of the other as the students in my class filed, in a line, from our class room to the lunch room.

  My mother is a seamstress, and my dad died when his eighteen-wheeler rolled over, hauling logs from Dawson up to Memphis. Mary Claire gets free lunch at school. I did, too. And it was fine—for high school. I made up for being poor as dirt by being reasonably well-put-together and doing really well in gymnastics and concert band. Oh, and dating Brandt Kessler, a doctor’s son.

  But college is different. Poor girls don’t rush, and on my campus, girls who don’t rush have a hard time getting noticed. After eighteen years on the outside, window-shopping, I want to be an insider here at Chattahoochee College. So when I graduate, I can start a life that doesn’t include a sewing table.

  I place the last of my Mason jars in a little row on the edge of my desk and mentally tick off my regulars. My sorority regulars, that is.

  Holly buys half an eighth a week, and so do Megan, Kelsey, Lora, Chole, Amber, Ricci, Katy Peterson, Hannah, Solena, and Lindsey. They all get charged $65 instead of my regular $70. Greek discount. Neda only buys a three-fourths of a gram, because she says when she smokes at the same time she’s Vyvancing, she gets a rash. I charge her $50, because geez, I’ve gotta make some money off her. And then I’ve got a bunch of quarter-ounce customers. I walk my fingers over these jars: Julie, Sarah, Molly, other Molly, Forrest, Anna Maria, Christy, Elizabeth, Joanna, and Jordan. These chicks are where I make some real money. I make them cough up $145 a jar for a quarter of an ounce. More, when the weed is really good.

  This week, it’s pretty much my norm: some barely mid-grade diesels, purchased from Kennard, my old across-the-street neighbor down in Albany. Chattahoochee College sits right on
the Alabama-Georgia line—about one hundred miles southwest of Atlanta, and one hundred miles northwest of my hometown of Albany, Georgia. Every Sunday afternoon, I drive an hour and a half home in my ancient, white Mazda Miata, and drive back up with several grocery bags full of my Grans’ cookies and brownies, plus a pound of bud concealed in patterned Tupperware.

  I peek into the portable cake carrier on my closet floor and cringe.

  Just like last week, I’m running through my stash too fast. I take the Ziploc freezer bag out of the cake carrier and sit it on the scales that stand on the carpet, in the nook under my desk. These are adjusted for the weight of the bag, and...

  Shit. After I get rid of all my Mason jars tonight, and if I sell about a fourth a pound tomorrow at the bars, I’ll be running really low. And I still have to make it through the Friday frat parties, and there’s a home game this weekend, which means I could make a mint at Saturday tailgates. But I’ll almost definitely be out by the Saturday night post-game frat bashes.