Excerpt fromTHANKS FOR THE TROUBLEby Tommy Wallach
You cant speak?
the silver-haired girl asked.
I shook my head.
So you just write in this, I suppose.
She flipped my journal open to the first page: Journal #105.
Return to Parker Sante, parkersante@gmail.com.
Does this mean youve filled out a hundred and four other journals?
I nodded, and I wondered if she could tell that I was proud of that fact.
Sure, I was a freak, but at least I was a super-freak.
It was as if Id archived myself inside themmy own private horcruxes.
I suppose you dont have much of a choice, do you?
We all have things we need to get off our chests.
Most people just talk and talk until theres no one left to listen.
You talk to your journals.
I have Practically a Poet printed on all my business cards, I wrote.
How old are you, Parker Sante?
I held up ten fingers, then seven.
What a horrible age.
I bet you spend most of your free time playing computer games and watching pornography on the Internet.
I put on an expression that I hoped conveyed offense and denial simultaneously.
The girl didnt buy it for a second.
Grubby little seventeen-year-old-boy hands.
Are you older than me?
Time flows differently for girls, she said dismissively, then flagged down a passing waiter.
Two more coffees, if you would, and make it snappy.
I gave her a funny look, because really, who said shit like that?
That word seemed like a perfect fit for the silver-haired girl.
She didnt seem like a normal teenagermore like something between a space alien and a homeschooled kid.
Or maybe she was just a lot older than she looked.
Basically, a palm readers wet dream.
What a remarkably asinine thing to do.
That was not the usual things.
My father died, and I never wrote a single word about it.
My therapist said it might help, at least until my voice came back.
But my voice never came back, because I wouldnt go to speech therapy.
Before I could answer, the waiter returned with two fresh cups of coffee.
The girl poured cream and dropped a big boulder of brown sugar into her cup.
She went to do the same to mine, but I put my hand over it just in time.
Ive never understood people who take their coffee black.
Isnt life already bitter enough?
Thats what I like about it.
Why should coffee be?
The first reasonable point youve made, Parker Sante.
We toasted coffee mugs.
But we were talking about your strange condition.
You refuse to go to speech therapy, and instead you rob innocent strangers in hotels.
Do I have that about right?
Innocent people dont usually have fat stacks of hundreds in their purse.
Then I am the exception that proves the rule.
This money is everything I have left in the world.
Then you should probably go put that in a bank or something.
But I just took it out.
The girl stared at me for a few seconds, as if weighing her options.
Then she opened up her purse and took out a cell phone.
She placed it between us on the white tablecloth.
I am waiting for a phone call.
And when it comes, Im going to give this money to the first needy person I see.
Then Ill take the trolley to the Golden Gate Bridge and jump off it.
