Joyride - Anna Banks Page 0,1

but. He acts like I’m his peer, which is both a little weird and a little cool, that I could be a rich old guy’s sixteen-year-old peer.

Mr. Shackelford purses his lips. “Money can’t buy happiness.” This is the root of all our discussions, and his usual comeback.

I shrug. “Being poor never delighted anyone.”

He chuckles. “Simplicity has its merits.”

“Being poor isn’t the same thing as being simple.” And surely he knows how hypocritical it sounds, coming from him. After all, he’s about to hoist himself into his brand-new colossal pickup truck and drive away to his family’s plantation house. He’ll probably watch some TV before drifting off into his nightly vodka coma. Sounds like the definition of simplicity to me.

But he sure as heck isn’t poor.

Besides that, things can get real complex when you’re just poor enough to have to choose which utility bill to pay and which one to let go. When you can’t send enough money along to your family without missing a few meals yourself. When school makes you buy a calculator that costs one hundred something dollars just to take a calculus class—and if you don’t take the calculus class you don’t qualify for the scholarship you’ve been working for since Day One.

Being poor isn’t simple.

“How is it complicated?” he presses. He counts to three with his fingers. “Work. Eat. Sleep. The poor have time for little else. There is a kind of peacefulness in that simplicity. A peacefulness that the wealthy will never know. Why? Because of the drama, Miss Vega. Higher taxes. More ex-wives. A cornucopia of lawsuits. Lengthy, tortuous family vacations with stepfamilies of stepfamilies. Slavery to hideous fashion trends—”

The list continues to escalate in ridiculousness. Not to mention, I doubt Mr. Shackleford has ever found himself the victim of a fashion trend. In fact, it doesn’t look like he’s even acknowledged fashion since somewhere in the vicinity of 1972—and the extent of that acknowledgment appears to cover what was hot among rednecks back in the era of starched flannel.

“Surely this exhaustive list of rich-people issues has a point,” I cut him off, unimpressed.

He grins. “I haven’t heard your counterargument, Miss Vega.” He pulls the package from his armpit and slides the paper bag off the bottle. Fixing his eyes on the cap, he slowly unscrews it. “I require of you a list to match my own. Prove that a poor person’s life is so terrible.” He takes a swig and waits for my answer.

And suddenly I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

I know Mr. Shackleford is wealthy. Everyone does. And he knows that I’m not working the graveyard shift at a gas station because my family uses hundred dollar bills for toilet paper. This conversation has become personal. Hasn’t it? I mean, his list is full of things that everyone already knows about the lives of the rich and famous. All the drama they create. It’s public knowledge.

But the poor people list? That’s a different story. The media rarely covers the glamorous life of poverty. It’s this hidden gem of truth that only the impoverished get to polish. For the list to be genuine, it can only be created from firsthand experience.

So Mr. Shackleford isn’t asking what I know about poor people. He’s asking me about me. He’s asking how bad my circumstances are. Mine, personally. At least that’s what it feels like. And I don’t like it. Before, it felt as though we were equals in these conversations. I doubt it will ever feel that way again. Have they been personal all along? Have they all been an attempt to … what, exactly? Get me to admit I’m poor?

Or am I being weird?

I just hope he doesn’t want to make me his charity case or something. I could never take anything from him. How do you explain to someone that you were born with the need for self-sufficiency? And anyway, Mr. Shackleford should recognize this.

Just ask him if he wants help getting to his truck. Nooooooope.

“I have to get back to work,” I say.

A glint of disappointment passes through his eyes, a reaction slowed by the liquor swimming in him. I’ve never spurned the Question of the Night before.

“Of course.” With shaky hands, he finagles the cap back on the bottle and lowers it into the now-crinkled brown bag. “Some other time then.”

No other time, I want to say. Anything theoretical, but nothing personal. Instead I take the bag and twist the top of it for him, as if doing so