The Other Side of Me
Chapter One
At the age of seventeen, working as a delivery boy at Afremow's
drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it
possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide. I
was not certain exactly how many pills I would need, so I
arbitrarily decided on twenty, and I was careful to pocket only a
few at a time so as not to arouse the suspicion of our pharmacist. I
had read that whiskey and sleeping pills were a deadly combination,
and I intended to mix them, to make sure I would die.
It was Saturday-the Saturday I had been waiting for. My parents
would be away for the weekend and my brother, Richard, was staying
at a friend's. Our apartment would be deserted, so there would be no
one there to interfere with my plan.
At six o'clock, the pharmacist called out, "Closing time."
He had no idea how right he was. It was time to close out all the
things that were wrong with my life. I knew it wasn't just me. It
was the whole country.
The year was 1934, and America was going through a devastating
crisis. The stock market had crashed five years be ... read full excerpt from: The Other Side of Me ebook
