Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 55093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
That day I’d climbed out of bed feeling even worse than I had before Simone had given me hope. Sometime during that hectic night I’d caught her fever and had actually started to believe that this might be the answer. The way she’d priced my old barely used stuff would, if sold, bring in a cool hundred grand. Wishful thinking I know, but at least I was doing something purposeful instead of feeling sorry for myself. Therein lied the hope.
By the time I woke up that first day I knew it was just wishful thinking and the dream died a quick death, that is until I made myself look at the website. My heart had gone into overdrive when I saw the notices and the hits from just that first night and early morning. Almost half the stuff had been ordered. My head spun as I tried to make sense of it and I’d called Simone in a panic.
“Girl it’s fuck this shit o’clock what’re you doing up? Didn’t we just go to bed?” She yawned on the other end and I heard the sheets rustle as she sat up. “You’ve got to get over here, half this stuff has been ordered. How am I supposed to ship this stuff, where am I gonna get…”
“Calm down. Do you really think I haven’t thought of all that already? The shipping boxes should be here sometime today, all we have left to do is set up business shipping with the post office, grab you a PO Box and voila.”
Shit, I forgot about a return address. Crazy Simone had used the physical address of our old high school for the website and I hadn’t thought much of it, I was just happy not to be using my own. “I’ll be right there once I get my ass out of this bed, see you in a few.”
True to her word she’d been here an hour later, helping me sort through orders and keeping me from losing my mind. Once the boxes had come in later that day I realized that she’d been thinking about this for much longer than I first believed. Pink boxes with Diva’s Closet emblazoned in silver with a butterfly clasp; my signature if I ever had one.
“You planned this? What if I’d said no?” She gave me her resting bitch face and her patented look that said ‘no one messes with the princess’ making me laugh. “Then I would’ve made you do it because it’s for your own good. I never doubted. You’re a sensible woman, I only surround myself with sensible people haven’t you noticed?”
She had a point. It’s the reason she never hung out with my friends and I on a regular basis. Her barbed tongue had started many a feuds in our little world over the years, but she and I have always been close. Her dad had once sued a magazine for splashing her picture on their front cover and had actually won, even though she was eighteen at the time. I still don’t know how he’d pulled that one off, but ever since then no one else ever dared. Whereas the rest of my crowd lived to have their faces splashed across every conceivable surface.
We’d set up business shipping online, and I learned I could ship everything from the privacy of my home without ever having to step foot outside.
With the first set of orders neatly packed in their boxes with purple tissue paper lined up against the wall, ready to be picked up my the mail person, we’d had a celebratory drink of champagne which she’d brought.
There was a cool forty grand in my account and I didn’t even let the thought that that was a little less than my monthly allowance, get me down. Those days were obviously gone. And the orders kept coming in all that day and into the evening.
Now it was day two and I was down to five pieces of the fifty or so that I’d first uploaded. I knew that this money would barely breach the surface of the debt my dad had left behind. Bills that I never knew existed, of which I was now ashamed, needed to be covered. He’d seemingly taken care of the bigger loans and such, but we were still about half a million in the hole with household expenses and then there was the mortgage. At least he hadn’t taken out a second one.
I knew we might be forced to sell the house at some point but was afraid of what that would do to mother. I never realized until now just how fragile she is. For that matter I’d never been very aware of my own strength. Sure I could hold my own in a fight, but this was different. This shit was worse than an episode of Survivor.