Part Four
Destinations

Part four already?

The book continues to be “hip” about the “internet” and this time has a quote about ebay telling someone they can’t sell their soul on ebay because either it doesn’t exist or it’s considered a human part which you can’t sell on ebay. I think this is mostly there because the author just thought it was cool.

Then, proving the author is not at all hip, the chapter is titled Pawnbroker because yeah, those will totally still be all over the place a hundred years after ebay.

The guy explains he inherited it from his dead brother. He figured he could keep it and run it until he could find a better job. That was twenty years ago. Now he knows it’s a life sentence.

Step one: put stuff on ebay.
Step two: sell property.

There. You’re free!

Anyway, a boy’s entered the hated pawnshop. Of course it’s a boy. So far, the only female characters who didn’t have to be female were the teacher and the saferoom woman, and both of that was just playing on the women-like-kids-right? thing.

Not his usual type of customer. Most folks come into a pawnshop down on their luck, ready to trade in everything they own, from TVs to family heirlooms, in exchange for a little quick cash.

Uh, people also enter pawn shops to buy stuff. That’s where the money actually comes from. You can’t run a business that’s just based on giving money to people for their goods.

And then he goes on to say that also this kid doesn’t look like the kids who come in to look for stuff to buy! So why did he explain the kid doesn’t look like the usual person selling instead of going straight to assuming the kid was there for buying?

He looks more clean-cut than the kids that usually turn up in his store. And the way he moves, even the way he holds himself, is refined and graceful, deliberate and delicate, like he’s lived his life as a prince and is now pretending to be the pauper. He wears a puffy white coat, but it’s a bit dirty. Maybe he’s the pauper after all.

This book is really devoted to checking off every little thing I hate. Now it’s going on about how some people are inherently better than others in ways that tend to correlate with being richer, and all this makes them more deserving of consideration and respect.

So Lev walks up and asks if this is a pawnshop where he’ll give money for items. How many kids actually know how pawnshops work in the first place? Then add in that it’s a hundred years after ebay and Lev is supposed to be a rich sheltered kid who’s never even seen a live gay person, and how would he know about a lower-class institution like this?

The pawnbroker sighs. The kid’s just ordinary after all, just a little more naive than the other kids who show up here trying to hock their baseball card collections or whatever.

Kids today don’t have baseball card collections. The cards still exist, so I’m sure some few kids do that instead of Magic or one of the many, many other options, but the days where that’s the standard kid thing are long, long gone. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure anyone will even have cards a hundred years from now – there’s already been a huge shift in favor of games where you pay for digital goodies. Regardless, everyone knows you bring your cards into a game shop where they know the relative values.

This is why the internet stuff is so ridiculous. It’s hard to imagine a more out of touch author.

Usually they want money for cigarettes or alcohol or something else they don’t want their parents to know about.

Speaking of which, there’s plenty of reasons for kids to sell off their cards, such as wanting to buy different cards. Also, apparently cigarettes and alcohol are still generally legal, just not something minors can buy? So many coffee’s legal too, it’s just a controlled substance now.

This kid doesn’t look like the type for that, though.

Pretty people are inherently good.

Pawnstore guy explains he doesn’t deal with kids.

so take your baseball cards somewhere else.”
“Who said I have baseball cards?”

Continuing on my seriously, kids don’t have baseball cards point, how on earth would Lev even recognize that term? Even assuming they still exist and that this particular area happens to have kids who are into that, Lev’s from a completely different area, was busy with actual sports, and furthermore, really religious people tend to view the cards as gambling since they’re sold in packs. Unless he’s really into reading two hundred year old books, he shouldn’t have encountered many references to them.

Anyway Lev pulls out the diamond bracelet. This does not cause the pawnshop guy to reevaluate his whole perfect-little-kid idea, even when he assumes it’s been stolen from the kid’s mother.

He just lays the bracelet on the worn wooden counter with that same princely grace.

I mean seriously, what the fuck is going on with this book?

Lev then admits to being an unwind, prompting:

First of all, runaway Unwinds who show up at his shop never admit it.

Okay so far…

Secondly, they always appear desperate and angry, and the stuff they have to sell is shoddy at best. They’re never this calm, and they never look this . . . angelic.

Holy shit what is wrong with you.

The other kids are inherently evil because they display emotion and didn’t steal expensive stuff and don’t look pretty?

The pretty seems like what it’s all coming back to. I’m going to go with very, very repressed gay pedophile here. All it needs is a bit about Lev’s full lips.

“The bracelet is stolen, but not from anywhere around here.”

This triggers even more about how Lev isn’t like the other kids, because the other kids don’t tell the truth. Clearly it’s more moral to not give a fuck about the theft except to explain that on a practical level the stolen bit won’t be an issue.

Also he assumes this is true but actually a smart kid would be lying about the second half, assuming that being up-front about the first bit would make it more believable.

The pawnbroker will usually listen to their stories for their entertainment value. If it’s a good story, he’ll just throw the kid out. If it’s a lousy story, he’ll call the police and have them picked up.

People in this book are just so terrible.

Lev demands five hundred dollars. The guy attempts to bargain Lev down saying it’s a piece of crap. Lev assumes it’s a lie and explains that if it was really worthless the guy wouldn’t be offering a hundred dollars and the bracelet must be worth thousands at least. He knows this because Lev the sheltered tithe is totally streetsmart.

What’s most annoying is that Lev could actually have a valid reason to know the value of the bracelet – he’s from a rich family, his mom definitely has nice stuff and there’s a good chance his dad has some fancy stuff himself. In that case he might not be sure the guy was lying about price, but he’d know he could get more for it and he was better off just trying the next place instead. I don’t know if it’s that knowing about jewelry is too girly or if the author’s just generally incompetent.

Also, Lev explains he knows the guy won’t call the cops because if he does, the bracelet goes with them. Seriously getting annoying. This is the sort of reasoning I could see Connor using, and while I’d be mocking the book about how Risa knows so much about the outside world it would at least be consistent with the book’s belief she’s somehow streetsmart, but the book explained Lev is a sheltered kid.

The guy keeps bargaining, which is getting kind of dumb since he really should just get the thing and get the kid out. Lev refuses to budge and demands five hundred.

“Deal.” The pawnbroker sighs as if he’s been beaten. “You drive a hard bargain, kid.” That’s the way these things are played. Make the kid think that he won, when all the while he’s the one who’s truly being robbed!

Seriously, though, everyone is a piece of shit in this.

I’m not even asking for the guy to be nice to Lev. But there isn’t even mention of the fact he’s taking advantage of a desperate little kid. He doesn’t rationalize it as that since the kid stole it that makes what he’s doing okay, be doesn’t think that probably the kid was always a thief and getting unwound because of that so he doesn’t deserve any help staying on the run. (Seriously, how can the book be so stupid? It even compares what he’s doing to “robbing” the kid when it’s a stolen bracelet in the first place!)

Lev then explains that the guy needs to get the money first. And that he wants to see the guy go to the safe instead of waiting, which the guy thinks is somehow a reasonable request because It’s understandable that the kid doesn’t trust him..

Anyway Lev smashes something over the guy’s head, takes all his money but leaves the bracelet, so the guy still comes out ahead. Except for the brain damage and possible death that’s coming, I mean. And how did Lev think up this whole plan and know how to knock someone out?

Author says so. That’s why.

The pawnbroker rubs the painful knot on his head, furious at the kid for what he did and yet admiring him for the strangely honorable nature of the crime. If he himself had been this clever, this honorable, and had found this kind of nerve when he was a kid, perhaps he’d be more than just a pawnbroker.

Lev is shaping up for Jesus. This is all particularly bizarre in light of the way the author constantly bitches about entirely understandable lawbreaking, but I guess it’s consistent with the general nonsense moral code we saw earlier where lying to a girl to get food is better than eating people’s leftovers.