I made it through the fifth grade as home and thought my young life was going okay. Friends to hang with, buddies who bought us beer and cigarettes, ...hat more could a budding teenager want?My aunt, the matriarch of the family because my grandmother was dead, lived around the corner and three houses away from ours. One of my uncles lived in the house exactly in the middle. If I had an argument with my friends I always had a bunch of cousins to spend time with.For some reason I never got along. ‘I can’t imagine publishers accepting ultimatums, Harry, not even if you were an A-list author. ‘Well, it sometimes pays to have a bit of mongrel in you, Carson. You know that, the jerk Diomedes Mantell doesn’t but you know who does, don’t you Carson?’ Carson knew Jessie Chicago did, Jessie had mongrel when it counted. By having that she’s managed to get them out of tight corners time and time again. Mongrel, eh. That’s never come to the surface with Harry before, and she’d never heard him. All excited they all got up and gathered aroundme, making me feel warmly welcomed into their little sorority. "Sit down," one of them said, "you are so tall and shapely you look likea model and make us look like everyday girls." I said no but theyinsisted that I sit, so I put my purse on the bar and with my bestfeminine manner I got on the barstool. Crossing my legs, my mini skirtrose to a dangerous height but with my pantyhose, I gave it no extrathought and enjoyed the feeling of showing of my. The cluttered front window contained a collection of old radios, hats, toys, books and a mannequin wearing a 1920’s Flapper dress. It was something behind the junk in the window that reflected the sunlight, something that from the curb looked like a large pile of gold that caused her to hold her hand in front of her eyes. It wasn’t like Frankie to do something out of her routine but she broke from the usual and walked over to the shop window and peered in. When her eyes focused on the large.