I, Jimmy Cheng

2. The Dreams Of Jimmy Cheng

2. The Dreams of Jimmy Cheng

When I was a little kid I wanted to be a cop. Then, at the age of 14 I wanted to be an astronaut. After that I wanted to be a pilot. And then later on I wanted to be a teacher. Right now I’m 17 years old. A senior in high school, and I haven’t the first idea of what to do with my life, also known as the not-too-distant future. I’ve taken electives in journalism, AP Spanish, visual communication, drama, accounting, debate, and back at freshmen year I even had some wild ideas about joining track.

But right now I’m at my last year of high school. And lately I’ve tried not to think about the future because it scares the living hell out of me every time I do. For Christ’s sake I don’t even know what college I’ll be going to at the end of the year, or what kind of a career I’ll eventually be suited for. I’m no smarter now than I was back at freshmen year. The only thing that scares me more than that is the fact that after all this time, the future hasn’t gotten any clearer.

Funny thing, that in reflecting over what I was thinking about back home after the game all those months ago, I’m thinking about the same things now as I write this down. I suppose that out of all my dreams, my most persistent fantasy has been the one in which I become an overpaid writer. I wouldn’t know if it’s the one thing I’m good at, but writing is the one thing I like to spend the most amount of my time with. So as far as careers went, I found myself banking on this one to work.

Fear of an empty future set me up all night on my computer to work on a manuscript I had yet to finish called Alex Frost. Alex Frost was a story about a high school girl growing up in the meta-fictional town of Suburnia. An uber rich, uber conservative gated community of sorts. She lived in Suburnia her entire life with the curse that she didn’t have a soul. That she wasn’t born with a soul meant that she couldn’t feel. She couldn’t get happy, sad, or angry, scared, or nervous. And she couldn’t feel pain. Like her entire body was numb, she could only feel enough to know she had fingers, but not enough to know if they ever hurt.

I was halfway through the story already, and doing a round of rewrites before I went on. It was five in the morning. The longest I’ve ever been up writing. My eyes were a little tired, but I didn’t let myself stop. Alex Frost was the one thing I was certain would work. The one thing in my life that could work. And I was going to get it done, and people were going to like it, and people everywhere were all going to want to read it. But for that dream to come true, I had to bust my ass off in front of that computer. And so, bust my ass I did. I had the whole weekend ahead of me to do it, so that was exactly what I was going to do.

The following morning I got a call on my cell. It was Veronica.

“What do you want?”

“There’s a renaissance thing going on at the fairgrounds. Michael’s inviting. You’re coming with.”

You’re coming with she said. As if it were a statement of fact.

“I can’t. Busy writing. Future livelihood depends on it.”

I hung up before I could sense Veronica squeeze her eyes at me over the phone. I continued to write until the sun came up, and then I slept. Once the afternoon came in full swing, I had a light breakfast of banana and oranges, and then set myself back to continue where I left off last night.

I went on for about a solid good hour or so. I was able to jot down about 900 words in one short sitting; ample enough progress to be worthy of a break.

I headed over to my neighbor’s place, Santos, to see if he was up for some Marvel V Capcom. I rang the doorbell to his humble town home abode (which, dare I say looked exactly like mine, except that everything was facing the other way). Santos answered the door, and the usual smell of incense and spice filled my nose. Irritating the first time I went to his place. Less so nowadays.