My Drug, Intoxicated

Dannys P.O.V.

I tossed the ball up in the air, catching it again as it feel back toward me. It seemed like such a simple thing really, playing catch with a ball, but if you look under the pretense of playing catch, theres a whole other layer of impossibility. Atoms, formulas, gravity, inertia, acceleration, it was like it's own seperate entity. Playing catch with a ball is so much more than just playing catch.

My life looks like that ball to other people. It's a simple story, overplayed but still amusing. Sad, little, dark-eyed boy, raised in then slums, bringing himself out to become something great; but my life wasn't that simple. And i'm not that great and I don't know if I ever will be. Does it take any talent to tell what's already happened?

"Where are we?" I tossed the ball back up again as Jean looked up at me.

"We're in New Jersey actually. We're staying here tonight, then heading into New York tomorrow. You have three different book signings over the next two days, in different parts of the city." I glanced over at her.

"Three? Really?" She nodded and looked back to her book. "So what're you reading?" She glanced back up at me, annoyed. I smiled apoligetically.

"Nothing really," she said while covertly trying to cover the front page. Oh. I understand. I sighed.

"Again?" She blushed at me. This is probably the tenth time she's read my book. And everytime, it gets slightly less embarrassing and more annoying. I turned away from her groaning. "How can you read it so many times. I mean, geez, I lived it and wrote it, and twice was definitely enough for me." She gazed at me wide-eyed.

"Danny, this is possibly the best book i've ever read. How can you even say that? I mean, everytime I read it, I find out something new about you." I gazed at her amused.

"You know as my friend, you have the right to ask me questions about myself instead of finding them out from my memoir." She blushed again.

"Sorry," she mumbled, ducking her head down. "It's just hard asking you about this part of your life." I turned away, looking out the window and thinking of the day that I actually met Jean. They amazing day.

I had just been released from my foster home. I had been kept in the city by my social worker, because I was almost 17 and it's not like they'd have to keep me long. Almost a week after my eighteenth birthday had passed, I left the place I had lived at for the past year and a half, walking into the sunset and never looking back. I felt like I had never truly fit in there and once I was gone, I still didn't fit in anymore. The small amount of money I had made over the years, coupled with a small check from the state helped me rent out my first apartment.

I took two jobs to help cover the rent, and pay for food. By day I was a waiter at a small diner down the road. The boss was an asshole, and always seemed to find something wrong with what I did. By night, I was a night watchman at some nice apartment building, where people could afford things like that. Sometimes I stole their stuff and sold it later. I never got caught, but I still think about those days sometimes. I tried to sleep whenever I could, catching it on work breaks and the few hours I had between jobs.

I met Jean in September of last year, when school started at all of the Universities. She was an English major at some college nearby and got a job waitressing at the diner with me. She was 22 years old at the time and we became fast friends.

One day, during a slow day at work, we both grabbed some coffee and talked about our past. She had good parents, was born in the midwest where her older siblings and their spouses still lived, working 9-5 jobs and having kids. She wanted to travel, and meet new people, so she came to L.A. Sadly, all she got was me.

As I explained to her certain things about my past, but not all of it, she grabbed my hand and looked me straight in the eyes. "Write it down," she told me. And I did too. When she wasn't busy with school, and I wasn't trying to survive, she'd bring me her laptop and i'd just type everything, letting it all out. It took me almost a year to finish it all. When I was done, she declared herself my editor and read through it, fixing it and leaving me extensive notes. When that was done, she printed out a manuscript, brought it too a major publishing company and bargained with them until she got the best deal possible, including copyrights, a book deal and all sorts of little perks I didn't know possible.

I quit my two jobs that day. She graduated college. Neither of us have ever looked back.