Kelly was so fucking bored that she thought she was going to die. August. Ugh. The long, drawn-out days of summer vacation. The isolation of the suburbs, nothing around for miles but other houses—most of them inhabited by no one under the age of 40. Both of the family cars taken to work by her parents. A whole month before her first year of college. At times she wished she had taken a summer job. Well, not quite.
With nothing else to do, she worked on her tan, lounging on the deck in her two-piece, her firm body glistening with sweat and oil. She did this pretty much every day, until the sun bleached her hair golden and her skin turned dark as cocoa.
So one day, lying on her belly with her top undone, she heard a strange kind of music coming from somewhere in the neighborhood. It sounded familiar, but it took her quite awhile to place it. Then it struck her—an ice cream truck? How fun!
She jumped up and ran into the house to get some money, and it wasn’t until she was inside that she realized she wasn’t wearing a top. Oh well, everyone in the neighborhood was at work anyway. After scrounging up a couple of dollar bills and some change, she threw on a T-shirt and headed out the door.
The truck rolled down the street toward her at around 5-mph, but there were no kids in the neighborhood, so it was pretty futile. When she smiled and waved her money in the air, the truck sped up the block and parked in front of her house.
When she bounced up to the truck, she got a bit of a surprise. The driver was Matt Walsh, from her graduating class. “Wow Matt!” she said. “How’d you score such a fun job?”
“Well,” he laughed, “it’s actually pretty boring. I don’t know how they even make enough money to pay me; there are never any kids outside. They’re all playing video games or something. So what do you want?”
