Chapter Text
2013
It’s a rainy day and fourteen year old Rey Johnson doesn’t have the right shoes for it.
There’s an awful storm and she has no idea, doesn’t even own rain boots anyway. She’s only been in this new foster home for a month.
Her feet are squelching in her shoes when she gets to her homeroom, and suddenly she hears laughter.
Ben Solo is staring at her, openly eying her up and down.
“Get caught in the rain, Johnson?” he asks, tone teasing.
Ben has never spoken to Rey before, and she feels her cheeks heat up with shame. Next to him, Poe Dameron laughs wildly.
“Those are some seriously messed up shoes my dude,” Poe says.
Rey doesn’t have anything to say, she’s mortified at being called out. She tries to shrug, turns away from the boys and sinks into a seat, desperate to ignore the soft laughs still coming from behind her.
She won't talk to Ben Solo again for years.
2015
Rey didn’t mean to start selling weed. It’s not like she’s weed crazy or likes the thrill of it or something. It’s just that weed is something there is a lot of lying around at Plutt’s and she’s already working night shifts at the movie theater downtown so it just sort of makes sense to make extra money where she can.
She’s only sixteen, a junior in high school, she sells dime bags to other kids, nothing crazy. Still, she sells a lot of weed. She’s able to double her income in the first two months and it just sort of sticks.
She buys herself a cell phone. She bikes around after school and brings a stash to school to sell in the bathroom and with her at work for the old dudes who come to midnight movies, the ones with the money to buy bigger if only she could supply.
But it’s scraped together dime bags, under Plutt’s radar. He will just think she’s smoking it and it’s not like he really cares. Not about that.
***
She sells a bag to Gwen Pharis after first period and one to Paige Tico during lunch but it’s not until sixth that she’s approached by a boy she’s been avoiding for two years.
Ben Solo has never bought weed from her before.
“Hey,” he says, in that causal way that guys do with her when the know exactly what they want and that she’s going to give it to them. It’s as if he has no memory of the last time they spoke, of how much Rey replays that memory in her head.
“Sup?” she asks, shifting her backpack, praying he doesn’t notice the holes in it.
“Hux said maybe you could hook me up.” It isn’t even a question. It’s a fact. He knows she can, and she can.
“What did you need?”
Ben shrugs, so casual.
“Whatever Hux normally gets, I like his shit. Just tell me how much.”
“Twenty five,” Rey says, which is five dollars more than she charges Hux but Ben Solo is rich; his backpack has no holes and he has a silver watch on and she sort of hates him.
“Sure,” he says, fishing out a leather wallet.
“Not right here,” Rey says, and Ben blinks, looks around the classroom.
“Meet me by the flagpole after school. Have the money already in your hand. You’ve seen movies, right?”
Ben nods, still looking unaffected and bored.
“Sure,” he says again, shrugging.
Then he goes back to ignoring her.
***
He does meet her at the flagpole after school; and then it becomes a weekly thing for them. Friday is flagpole day. Ben gives Rey a little handshake and they swap, a gram of weed for his crisp bills.
After two months, she drops the price, a little ashamed at overcharging him. He’s kind of harmless, even if he is kind of a douche.
He even plays lacrosse, which just seems douchier than football for whatever reason and he always has clean, crisp clothes and she saw his socks once and they were from Barney’s.
She googled them. They cost $92. For socks.
So Rey sort of figured five dollars for him isnt the same as it is for her.
It just cant be.
Still, the guilt wins out in the end.
Ben eyes her a little wearily, as if he thinks she’s cutting him a deal because she likes him or something so she shifts her bag onto her shoulder and says, “I only charge Hux twenty.”
Ben’s face shifts into another unreadable expression but he drops it, he will to fact check her later, she’s sure, but whatever.
He doesn’t push it, just nods and takes his five back and walks away.
***
Rey doesn’t really remember her parents. Sometimes she remembers a pattern on a rug, and reaching for a woman with long, thin legs.
She doesn’t even remember her first two foster homes, doesn’t remember anything until Maz.
Maz is the closest thing she’s ever had to a mother, and Rey lived with her from the time she was six until she was ten. It was the happiest time of her life.
Then Maz got sick, too sick to keep custody of her, and Rey was forced back out.
Maz died a year later. Rey wasn’t there.
She landed at Plutt’s at fourteen and as much as he sucks, he isn't as bad as some of the other places.
He doesn't care what she does as long as she keeps the house tidy and stays out of his way. She is an extra source of income to him, but he has a fridge full of food and she has her own room and he even lets her work nights and skim his weed.
It could be much, much worse.
Rey finds the house empty, she can hear Plutt and his friends playing poker in the garage, can smell the cigar smoke carried by the wind.
She goes upstairs to her little room, deadbolts the door— a habit she can’t drop, and one that Plutt has never minded. He even bought her the deadbolt, back during that first week.
Rey sighs, pulls out her own pipe and packs a bowl. She doesn’t usually smoke, prefers to sell everything she can scrape together, but she’s thinking about Ben solo. She wonders if he has a bong, if he uses papers or maybe a pipe. She wonders what he looks like stoned, dark eyes red and squinted, smiling.
Rey doesn’t like thinking about Ben Solo. Doesn’t like thinking about anything she knows she will never have.
So instead of dwelling she uses her phone to watch Netflix, and then falls asleep on top of the covers.
2016
Every Friday and Saturday night Rey works the midnight movie showing.
This week it’s Casablanca. She’s never even seen it, doesn’t really care to.
One of her regulars comes through, smiling at her.
“You looking for some extra concessions?” Rey smiles at the man. Luke Skywalker.
Luke smiles back and shakes his head.
“I have a proposition for you.” His voice is low and laced with something secret, something mean to entice.
“Oh?”
“I recently came into possession of some… concessions. Larger amounts. Could you move it if I cut you in?”
Rey thinks, tilts her head.
“I overcharge already, but if you’re willing to go halfisies I think we could make it work.”
“Excellent,” Luke hands her a piece of paper with an address.
“Come by on Sunday,” he says, winking at her, and then he walks past her and into Casablanca.
***
Luke’s place is cool, Rey has to admit. He is a self proclaimed collector.
When Rey asks what he collected, he replies with “What don’t I collect,” which seems fitting.
He has swords, bottle caps, beanie babies, Pokémon cards, spice girls toys, Barbie dolls, Nike shoes.
A little bit of everything, all stacked neatly on shelves. It’s not hoarding, it’s too clean, but it is… different.
He leads her through a few rooms and into a sunny den. There’s two giant bags of weed.
“I can’t carry all that,” Rey says, because it’s her first thought. She’s on a bike, she just has her shorty backpack—
“We don’t have to start with all of it. Just some of it. Half the first bag?”
Rey has never seen that much weed in one spot. She wonders if there are other drugs here. If there are guns. Maybe it was dumb to come here. She doesn’t let her facial expression shift.
“Okay,” she says, trying to be as causal and Ben always seems.
But she calms back down when Luke helps her ziplock half of the first bag and they pack it into her empty backpack. He’s just a weird old hippy dude, not a druglord.
Luke eyes the straps of her bag.
“You should get a new bag.”
“First thing on my list once we move this,” she says.
Luke eyes her and she can see his brain working. Limes he can see how poor she is, why she does this, just a sad girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She squirms.
“Hold on,” he says, and he disappears. He comes back with a new jansport after a minute.
“I’m never gonna use this, I have six.”
Rey doesn’t like taking gifts, but Luke’s house is so full of stuff that taking something out seems like a good idea.
They switch everything over to the new backpack.
“I’ll meet you back here next Sunday with your cut,” she says happily, following Luke to the trash cans outside his house, where he throws away her old backpack and she unlocks her bike.
“See you then, kid.”
Luke waves as she takes off back down the road.
Rey feels the first pangs of excitement hit her. If she can move all of this she will have $300 just for herself. She can’t even imagine what she will do with that much money. Especially since she doesn’t even need a new backpack now.
Rey smiles as she coasts down a little hill, enjoying the October sun on her face and the feeling of freedom as she cruises.
Now all she has to do is sell more weed.