Townies [Draft]

Townie (noun): an individual who has grown up and spent most of their life on Cape Cod.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" Kenny yelled, blaring on the horn of his beat-up station wagon as a white, pristine, clean BMW X5 pulled out in front of him, unexpectedly. Kenny flipped the driver the bird before proceeding to ride his ass.

"Stop it!" I slapped Kenny on the shoulder.

The white BMW stopped in the middle of the road, slamming on the brakes. We nearly hit it.

"Fuck, see what you did!" I rolled my eyes.

A man in a fresh, navy suit stepped out of the car, and I proceeded to hide my face in my hoodie.

"Come on, man! What's your problem?" The man yelled, arms to the sky and disapproving.

"You're my fucking problem, scumbag. Watch where you're going." Kenny retorted, rage in his eyes, screaming out the open window.

"Don't talk to me that way," the man stepped toward the passenger side of the car, my side.

"You didn't have the right of way!" I argued through my half-open window.

"That doesn't give you the right to act like morons," replied the guy in the suit.

"Don't fucking talk to her," Kenny started to get out of the car. "Don't you dare fucking talk to her," he made his way over to the man in the suit and got up in his business. Kenny stood nearly a foot taller, and his face was red with vessels of anger popping out of his forehead.

"Woah, man. Calm down. I have my kid in the car." The man in the suit began to back down, walking back toward his vehicle.

"Yeah, well you should have thought of that before you decided to cut me off, asshole." Kenny spit on the ground. "Do you wanna go? What are you gonna do little guy? Let's fucking go, right now." Kenny got right back up in the man's face, following him back toward the BMW.

The man reached for his driver's side door, jumbling his fingers on the handle before finding his way back into the luxury vehicle.

"That's what I fucking thought, pussy." Kenny spat on the ground one more time before making his way back to our car.

"Come on, dude," I started. "Why do you have to do that? Yeah, that guy's a jerk who didn't follow the rules of the road, but we didn't nearly need an assault charge from it."

"I'm so tired of people like him, Rain. They think they can do whatever the hell they want and no one will tell them otherwise. They need to learn that that's not the way of the world. There are consequences to your actions, no matter how much money you got." Kenny gripped the steering wheel tight but drove us safely back home.

*******

Name's Rain, Rain Monroe. I was born in Falmouth Hospital on June 5th, 1995. My mother was a hippie before she conformed to the "American Dream". Now she works at the same hospital I was born in so my siblings and I would have health insurance growing up. She gets to clean people's asses, watch people die, and get punched in the face by patients going through withdrawal. Pretty good gig, if you ask me.

My dad was an alcoholic, but he's better now, kind of. It's complicated. I don't even really know what he does for work. He repairs electronics and shit, I guess. He also grows pot, but he swears he doesn't sell it on the side... I wonder what paid for that new bass guitar that will be collecting dust in t-minus 2 weeks. Mid-life crisis, probably.

He and my mom almost got divorced a couple of times when I was growing up, but they didn't, and they still almost get divorced to this day, but they never do. It's like the boy who cried wolf with them. I'll believe it when I see it, and at this point, I probably won't care if they do.

I've been dating Kenny for two years now, but we've known each other for four. He grew up further up Cape before his parents decided to relocate to the armpit. He decided to stay here once he moved out cause it's nice I guess. There's certainly a lot more to do in Falmouth compared to Brewster. He used to be addicted to coke, but he swears he doesn't do it anymore. There was one time he "lost" $250 at the bar. I wasn't old enough to drink yet, so I didn't go with. He swears up and down he was robbed by somebody, but I know the truth. He was snorting some crap in the bathroom with God knows who. I had to make up for the loss too. Put every dollar of my tips that week toward the goddamn rent. He's better now though, I swear.

We live with two other roommates in a house off Davisville in East Falmouth. Splitting rent is the only way we could afford it in this economy, but we get by.

Our roommate, Todd, he's an alcoholic; for realsies. A functioning one though. He walks two miles to work and back every day and stops at the package store on his lunch break and then again on his way home. Boy can down a thirty-pack like it's no one's business, but he's skinny as a twig. Funny how it works that way. I'm sure the booze will catch up to him eventually. He's nice enough, but when he gets too drunk, he likes to try to pick fights with everyone else in the house, which always ends up going poorly for the bastard.

Our other roommate, Clara, she's real into psychedelics. I guess her boyfriend majors in Chemistry over at UMass Amherst or something. She's constantly selling tabs of acid out the back screendoor. Her boyfriend and his buddies make it in the lab at school or whatever. I don't know, she's also a pathological liar, so it's hard to know what's real and what's fake with her. She has a grey cat named Clementine who likes to piss on our shower rug, but other than that I like her. Since we're roommates, I get a discount too, only $5 a hit!

I work at a chain restaurant in town down near Main Street, and I hate it, but what else am I gonna do? The customers are so entitled, but my stupid general manager is one of those "customers are always right" kind of pricks. He talks to me like I'm a dog, and if I want to keep my job, I just have to sit there and take it. Thing is, while the job itself sucks, the pay is pretty good. At least people up here know how to tip twenty percent. It's always a nightmare when we get tables from out-of-towners, especially the Europeans. I think they know that we get paid $2.65 an hour, but I don't think they care, so they feign ignorance.

"We don't have to tip in my home country!" Shove it up your ass, Wilhelm.

Falmouth, Massachusetts is a vacation town, through and through. But this shit's gotten worse through my years of growing up. Long-term housing has been turned into AirBnBs, drinks cost nearly $12 at the bar, and forget about parking at the beach during the summer months. Nope, doesn't matter if you have a town sticker or not, you're not getting into those parking lots.

People are tearing down cute, little, Cape Cod cottages in order to erect gargantuan, hideous, McMansions all up and down Maravista. The Town Board is outlawing crazy thing after crazy thing, like, people can't even play pickleball down at Lawrence School cause it's "too loud" for the new neighbors. Live music has even been banned in certain places, like what is this, Footloose or something? Don't even get me started on the decision to ban pot shops. Grow up, people!

Kids my age are leaving in droves, but not me. This is my home, and I'll stay here as long as I possibly can. My family came here as poor immigrants, and now we're thriving as poor Americans. Working class grit brought us here and it's gonna keep us here, so help me God.

Anyway, I'm a Falmouth Clipper, class of 2012, represent! They modeled our high school after a prison. No, literally. The guy who built it also designed prisons, and it sure felt like it, I'll tell you that much. The dude was so into himself he tried to change our mascot and school colors. That's why when you go into the field house, you'll notice the bleachers are blue... I don't know about you, but I bleed maroon and white baby, always have, always will.

I got bullied pretty bad growing up and Falmouth schools didn't do shit about it. They always preached positivity but they could care less. Didn't help that my bullies were North Falmouth kids, while I was not. They got away with whatever they wanted, and of course they did, there are certain privileges in place when mommy and daddy own the school board. Whatever, that's old news. I had enough friends, and I got by just fine.

I was happy to graduate when I did cause I almost didn't. Nearly failed out my senior year. Oopsies. I was one of those kids whose teachers were always saying stupid shit like: "You would do so well if you just tried!" Shove it. If I wanted to try, I would try. Mind your business.

My favorite teacher growing up was a heroin addict. He taught 11th-grade English. Mr. Spenser. Super smart dude. He was a doctor's son, he had a 4.2 GPA from Harvard, perfect SAT scores, star athlete, you name it. Those labels didn't protect him from trying dope. A lot of people do it around here and your background won't save you. Only you can do that.

But yeah, he was pretty chill. He was fresh out of college so he was relatively close in age to us and he talked to us like we were human beings instead of babies. I remember reading The Iliad and actually being interested in class discussions because he related the content of the story to the present day and talked about big ideas instead of stupid bullshit like "what happened on page 17 paragraph 2?"

I remember the first day of class he got caught throwing up in the bushes outside. He was sick as a dog, probably nervous as hell. Halfway through the year, he kept nodding off during Socratic seminars. We were all like "Bro, what's wrong?" And he was all like, "I have a disease, but I can't talk about it." Yadda, yadda, yadda.

We found out what disease he had that summer when he was arrested for possession two days after school ended. They printed that shit in the God damn Enterprise. He was barred from teaching ever again, which is a shame because he really was a phenomenal instructor. It is what it is, I guess. Last I heard he's clean. I hope he's doing well in life. He deserves to be happy.

Me? I've never tried heroin, and I don't plan on it. I'm even afraid to take the opiates I've been prescribed by doctors like for my wisdom teeth and appendix removal and shit. I don't even wanna risk it. Mary Jane is just fine with me, thank you very much. Okay fine, a little bit of acid here and there never hurt anybody either. No hate to those who take opiates, by the way. I'm friends with plenty of people who struggle with addiction, so I know that shit is no joke. At the end of the day, you have to want to get clean, and if you don't, it'll kill you. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Truly. I might take risks in my life but that risk is too big of one for me to take. I've already got way too many dead Facebook friends for my age. Shit is such a shame.

Hold on, I'm getting a call:

"What?"

"Hold on, hold on, slow down?"

"What do you mean he's dead, Rachel?"

"Fuck, I'll be right over."

"I know, I'm sorry."

"I love you too. Give me five minutes."

They found Terrance McKenna's body outside of Bebee Woods. He didn't come in for his shift last night, which isn't out of character for him. I didn't think anything of it. None of us did. Fuck. This is bad.

*********************

Hey everyone, if you made it this far, thank you so much for reading. I am looking for critiques so I can polish this up before the competition. This is intended to be my one and only entry for this contest unless another book idea crosses my mind.

A few questions to consider:

Does the flashback scene in the beginning work to establish the theme and mood or is it out of place?

Is my narrator's voice captivating, aka, does it keep you reading? (I was going for a Catcher in the Rye type vibe, ie. unreliable, stream of consciousness, unfiltered, etc).

What's working well?

What's not working at all?

Are you hooked/Do you want to read the rest of the book?

First chapters are so important. This is an idea I've had for a while but I've never it put down on paper. This challenge was the perfect opportunity for me to try. Let me know if you have any other concerns with style, voice, authenticity, etc.

Edit 07/22 - Wow. I was not expecting this to get Top Story. Thank you so much, Justin and Vocal. I've gotten a lot of great insight on how to make this piece better, and I'm looking forward to editing it in the coming weeks.

Since it's for a challenge, I think I will be editing this chapter as a new story instead of tweaking this one. I think it will be good to keep this one up and see my progress, but I also want to check with moderation/judges to make sure that won't cause problems for the judging process (ie. two of the same story just slightly different submitted to the same challenge.)

If anyone has any ideas of what I should do, feedback for that is also appreciated. Keep the critique coming if you have it. It helps me immensely. And obviously, thank you to everyone who has left kind and supportive comments. It means a lot to me that you enjoy my work.