NOVEL WEB 13. Unemployed
"See? Like I said, there really aren't any good options. Minimum wage stuff if I'm lucky, but half of these are below-minimum-wage, they barely even count as jobs."
"Yes I see," Lily replied.
It was about ten o'clock Monday morning, and I was sitting at my computer with a glass of juice and a couple pieces of toast. I hadn't bothered getting dressed yet, all I had on was a black nightshirt. And mom was still in bed, she had to work last night and didn't get in till midnight.
Now Lily and I were looking at job opportunities, but we couldn't find anything even halfway decent.
Part of it was because the economy sucked and capitalism was doing its best to crush the middle class. Most of the options were crap 'gig-work' where you worked for pennies without any benefits or security. If you were really lucky you might get an actual minimum-wage job, but even those weren't much better.
The other problem was all I had to offer was a high-school education, and I didn't even have a diploma. Or even a transcript. Not that it would help me much, I was a solid 'D' student and honestly that was the best I could do. I had no work experience at all, which just made it even worse.
Without any qualifications or training, before I died I was looking at pushing a broom or lugging boxes or maybe delivering parcels. I had a drivers license, that was about the only thing I had going for me. I didn't have a car though so that was another drawback.
Now as a girl I'd already figured out I was a lot weaker than before, so I knew I wouldn't cut it in any job that required a lot of manual labour. That limited me to working retail, working in a restaurant, or slinging fast-food at a burger place. Or maybe I could get work in something like a cleaning service, like I could be a maid or whatever.
The bottom line was there were very few good jobs for people in my situation, and those few jobs all had a lot of people fighting for them. It was only just sinking in now how lucky I was that mom could get me that summer job with Mr. Fredricks. Except that offer died when I did, so now I really was out of options.
"You planned to continue your education in the autumn," Lily mentioned. "That would have given you some skills, wouldn't it? What would you be doing then?"
I sighed, "College depended on me having my high-school diploma, and I needed a good summer job first so I could afford the tuition. I was going to take a welding course. If I'd done well at it and got a certificate, that would have opened up a lot more opportunities."
She pointed out, "Soon money will not be a problem. And I can come up with something to work around the lack of a diploma. So you could continue those plans in September."
"Huh," I thought for a few moments, then shook my head. "I never actually wanted to do welding. Mom suggested it because it was a one-year course to get the certificate, and she said welding is a trade that's always in demand? She said it could get me a way better job than I'd find with just high-school. But I'm not really into it. And anyways, I don't know if it's something a lot of girls would do? I really don't want to be the only chick in a class full of dudes."
After a moment Lily asked, "What about your friend? Do you know what Melissa's plans are?"
I shrugged, "She's already got that job at the home-reno place. And her family's a lot better off than me and mom. And Melissa's grades are way better than mine, she's like a B-plus or A-minus on most of her subjects. She's already been accepted into university, taking some business course or something."
"Though," I added after a moment, "I don't know if she actually wants to do that, or if that's just her folks telling her what they think she should do. And I don't know if her plans will change once she's out and starts transitioning."
Lily was quiet for a few moments as she considered that. Finally she asked, "Is there anything you'd like to do, Mara? Assume money is not a problem, so you could take any course you want, learn any skill that interests you? What would you study?"
That left me quiet for a while. I really didn't have an answer for her. I never had to think about it before, since I always knew I didn't have any options. I was never in a position where I'd get to decide what to do based on my interests. And I wasn't smart enough or creative enough to spend a lot of time daydreaming about what-ifs.
And the daydreaming I did find time for was always the wildly impossible stuff, like getting isekaied and winding up as a hot girl in a world of magic and swords and stuff. Which is sort of what happened, at least half-way. I didn't wind up in another world, but I did get hit by an SUV and brought back as a hot girl.
I smiled as I started wondering if I could use that to my advantage. "I wonder if there's good money in stripping? Or if I got a decent webcam, maybe I could be a cam-girl, or sell nudes online."
Lily was quiet for a few moments before she finally asked, "Excuse me?"
I was already on a new browser tab, searching how to get started as a cam-girl. As I browsed through the results I replied, "So there's lots of lonely horny guys who'll pay money to see hot naked girls. I could do like, strip shows and sex stuff I guess, while guys send me money over the internet to watch. Stripping is the same thing but you do it in person at a club or whatever. Though I'm already thinking I'd rather do this from home without any real live guys trying to grab me or whatever."
There was another long silence from my friend, I wasn't sure if she was shocked or amused or whatever. I doubted they had anything similar last time she was awake, but I knew there'd have been prostitutes back then. I didn't want to get into that though. I wasn't into guys and I really didn't want to have sex with one of them, let alone a bunch of them.
Within a minute or so I was reading some first-hand accounts of young women who'd been very successful as cam-girls, talking about how much money they made and how it was the best job they'd ever had.
Lily finally spoke up, "Do you think your mother would be comfortable with you doing that kind of work?"
"Dunno," I shrugged. "If I was pulling in a few hundred dollars a week and still had time to go to college and stuff, maybe she'd be ok with it?"
Lily didn't seem convinced.
I smiled, "Wait does this bother you? Is my demon friend prudish about me getting naked on the internet for money?"
"Hardly," she retorted. I could almost picture her eyes rolling, her grin, and the faint blush on her cheeks. "I just want the best for you Mara, and I'm not sure that kind of work is the best option."
"Check this out," I pointed at the screen. "Look how much money she was making, and all she had to was spend an hour a day masturbating in front of a camera five times a week. That's five hours a week doing something fun. And she was making more money than I'd get if I scrubbed toilets seven hours a day, five days a week."
Lily was silent for a few moments then sighed, "And humans think demons are corrupt."
I suppressed a giggle, then opened another tab to start pricing decent cameras and lights, to figure out what I'd need to get started making decent videos and pictures.
It was strange but even though I couldn't see her, I still sort of knew Lily was watching. It was as if I could feel her looking over my shoulder. I could even tell she was slowly shaking her head in disapproval.
After another fifteen minutes or so I sighed, "Crap. This is going to cost more than I realized, just to get started."
The problem was everything sort of cascaded together. Lights weren't bad, for under a hundred dollars I could get a set of beginner 'studio' lights that would work. But a decent camera would cost more, then I'd need a solid tripod or something for it. I'd probably want a remote control so I could operate it without having to get up out of bed or whatever. Then I'd want proper software, and that might require me to upgrade my old computer. Suddenly I was looking at a couple thousand dollars just to get going, and that meant I'd be working a while before I even made back my investment.
Lily finally spoke up again, "Mara why don't you leave all of this for now. I have a suggestion for you."
"Uh, ok?" I asked. "What is it?"
"That box of Albert's things has been on your desk over a week now, you were going to do some research and see if anything in there was worth money."
I laughed, "Really? I should stop trying to find a job, and go through this little box of trash instead?"
Her voice was serious as she replied "Yes Mara. Perhaps you and your mother missed something the first time you looked through it. Maybe you should take a closer look at the stock certificates, for example."
"Ok Lily," I replied with a slight frown. "I'll have a look at them."
Something in her tone told me this was important, and to be honest I really wasn't doing any serious job-hunting by that point. I was just goofing around and thinking about a fancy webcam and a new computer.
I opened the old cigar box and dug out the little pile of stock certificates, then got started. One by one I opened them up and carefully examined them, then I looked them up on the web to see if any of them were worth anything.
And one by one I found the companies didn't exist. Or at least, they didn't exist any more. The fourth one was the closest to 'success' I had, that company lasted long enough to actually get its name on the internet, in the form of someone mentioning their granddad worked there till the place went bankrupt in the nineteen-sixties.
By the time I got to the last one I had no expectations it would be any different. But Lily made it sound important so I carefully unfolded it like all the others. This time, a smaller rectangle of coloured paper slipped out and wound up on the floor by my bare feet.
I bent down and picked it up, and found myself staring at a Mega-Millions lotto ticket, dated from last November.
My eyes flicked back and forth between the lotto ticket and the stock certificate. I pushed the certificate aside and opened a new tab on my browser, and a minute later I was looking at the lotto results from November twenty-third last year.
My heart started to race and my hands were shaking slightly. The grand-prize was fifty-one million dollars, and there were three tickets sold with the winning numbers. Two winners had already claimed their share of the jackpot.
The third ticket was still at large. It was worth seventeen million dollars. And the winner had five more months to come forward and collect their prize.
I almost had trouble seeing straight from the excitement I felt as I checked the numbers on the screen against the ticket in my hand.
After three or four deep breaths I checked again.
Then I checked a third time, just to be absolutely sure.
I took one last deep breath and shouted "MOM!"
