Habbits

Prologue

It was another day in Whitecrest- I mean Woodcrest. It's inhabitants came and went talking about the weather or how "Terry got a new promotion at work" or how their daughter was in the school play. Today I even heard someone talking about how they didn't get the new iPhone for their birthday.

That's all a bunch of bullshit.

I used to live in Chicago. It was good. I was surrounded by my own people, who were admittedly a usually unreachable when I tried to explain my thoughts and opinions. But it was good, everything was good. Then my parents died. All of the sudden I was removed from my natural environment and thrust into Woodcrest, Maryland.

And these people have some crazy problems. I went from having those around me struggling to make sure everybody got food, to people complaining about how they didn't get a $800 piece of technology. I saw this and wanted to change it, I mean who could really look at these contrasting situations and not say anything?

My grandad had a health scare a few years back. He liked to joke around and call himself Mr. Medicinal. When me and my brother Riley we're finally able to drag him to the doctors office, he was told that he had high levels of stress and was prescribed a whole lot of pills that were supposed to take care of that. Then Grandad got scared of taking them when a commercial came on and said a side effect of the pills was that his testicles might explode.

He decided to not take the pills and ended up buying a bunch of joints from someone that the ex rapper "Tugnificent" knew. That was cool, I ain't really never had a problem with weed. Studies had shown and proven that it isn't bad for you, and they also showed that it could be good for you. Of course I was concerned that he would get too attached to them as an antidepressant, but that wasn't my main concern.

When the doctor had checked him out, he had also said that while grandad did have high levels of stress, he also had several dieseases that could become harder to fight in a few years. Nobody really paid any attention to that, but I felt kind of uneasy. Who knew when they could suddenly activate and we would have another health scare? Grandad might not make it out of that one.

When I was sixteen he had his second health scare. He was able to survive this one, but money was tight. Ed. II had Grandad on a leash with him owing millions of dollars on the house because of his extravagant "Mr. Bitches" lifestyle. So when he was in intensive care, money was an issue.

That was when I turned to Riley. He was a year and a half younger than me and was 15 at the time. No matter how many times I tried to stop him, he was already smoking weed. He had gotten it from Thugnificent and purchased a lot. Often. He still had a candy bar business on the side, but this time had kept it on the low and was constantly supplied with money.

One day I saw that he was high again and had the idea. I don't use when people are high to ask them for stuff, but since he was already in a state where he would agree easier, it was a good time to ask him. He agreed to my request partially because he saw that he could make money, and partially because he had grown up a little over the past few years and saw that Grandad did need some help.

We decided to go into the flour business together and make some dough at school. Riley introduced me to his friends who smoked and we went and stocked up at Thugnifigant's place. They were the first ones that we sold to and made some money. It took some work setting up discrete ways to let other students know that we were selling, but pretty soon we were making a couple grand a month. It helped that there was virtually no competition in our school and that most of the student population that smoked came to us.

Riley took 15% of the money. He had introduced Cindy to the business too, something I was very against, and she got 15% too. I didn't really need any money, but I took 5% since we were making so much. The other 65% went to Grandad to pay his bills. I had told him that I had gotten an online job coming up with political strategies and made the money that way. He knew that wasn't the case though, and we had an unspoken agreement that we wouldn't discuss where the money really came from.

It wasn't a bad situation. We were paying off our debts, Riley had found some self control and we weren't fighting all of the time. Grandad was eating right and had retired his "Mr. Bitches" title. Overall we were pretty good. But we worked for it, and that was how we did us for a year. And then we were out of debt, Grandad was mostly healthy and we were living pretty normally.

Even though everything was going well for us, and I knew that I should stop selling, I didn't. Something about it attracted me. Doing this had gotten my family out of struggling, and I was making cash. Maybe it was the fact that I had gotten addicted to the feeling of being able to do it in secret, or that I was smoking to feel more relaxed about politics, but I didn't stop selling when I should have.

End

So I guess that was the beginning of a story. I got inspired and decided to write it. Not sure if I'm going to keep writing it or not. I guess it'll depend on the reaction from the people reading this. Because it was the prologue I wrote it a bit differently that I will normally. There wasn't much talking in this, or really any at all, but there definitely will be in the future. It will be less of a summary and more of an actuall story if this continues. Chapters will probably also be longer depending on my time. Thanks for reading.