I usually dreaded the beeping of my 6 AM alarm, but it sounded as sweet as bubble gum pop when it blared out the blown speakers of my bedside alarm clock that morning. I shut it off and readied to brave the rest of the house outside of my locked bedroom which had a dresser pushed up against the door for an extra seal.
I slid across the ice-covered driveway towards the road where the man had been the night before waiting to hear the rumble of Clayton’s monster truck. The handyman for my dad’s construction company, Clayton was selected to check in on my parents’ house each night to make sure a party wasn’t going on. What my dad didn’t think about though was Clayton was only in his early-20s and worked out a deal with me where I would hit him with twenty bucks, a bag of a weed and a pint of Fireball on his way to work first thing in the morning each day in exchange for not ratting me out when I had parties.
I clutched a 20 which had been given to me for Christmas just a few days earlier when I heard the purr of Clayton’s F-350 coming up the highway. I shivered, readied the money and loot in a sack and watched his black truck race up to the edge of the driveway.
