Kicked Out of the Nest

The last year of my apprenticeship was totally different than the first two and a half years. Suddenly, everything had changed. Hodgi started to deal coke more and more at work. He got John, the director of food and beverage, hooked so bad that he was outside the hotel in his BMW waiting for Hodgi to get off every single night. John had a master’s degree from Cornell in hotel management. What a waste. He got fired and a couple of years later he decapitated himself in a single car accident flying down a canyon going to get just a little more from Hodgi. Hodgi was fired shortly after, and within a couple of years he was pulled out of a lake with a bullet in his head.

First place. First bust. First syringe of coke.

I started selling quarter ounces at school and work for thirty bucks. Mike had dropped out, and was working with his dad putting glass in buildings. It only took me a month of selling quarters to get together enough money to rent a three bedroom house for Dawn, Mike, and me. We must have looked at a hundred houses before we found someone who would rent to two seventeen-year-olds in Bountiful, Utah. Dawn and I went to school every day, and I had a great business selling pot. It paid all of the bills plus bought food and clothes. This was great because it meant I could spend my paychecks from work on my new girlfriend Stacey.

It was getting too cold to ride my bike to work so I rode the bus. One time I left my backpack on the bus, and it had thirteen quarter-ounces in one of those fake oilcans designed for stashing shit. I called my mom from work and asked her to go to the bus station and pick up my backpack for me. She went there with my Grandma and when she tried to pick up my pack there were cops there trying to arrest her. I guess they figured out the oil can.

My Exit Strategy

I had spent my spring break and my seventeenth birthday constantly working.  I hadn’t been home in a week.  I decided to go home since I had school the next morning.  I remember thinking on the way there that all I wanted for my birthday was more than three hours of sleep. 

When I got home, there were some birthday cards on the kitchen table and a film container filled with pot from my oldest sister, Kris.  I noticed that there were also some suitcases in the living room.  I wondered who was there.