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Description
Sixteen-year-old JESSICA lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with her mother CARMEN. Her father, PETER, sends enough money for them to live in their 8 000 square-foot house and have servants, but never comes home to enjoy it. Jessica is apathetic about her life and puts no effort into anything she does. She is calling Pete to inform him that their gardener, STEVE, has just died.

[machine beeps]
JESSICA: Dad – it’s Jessica. You need to send us a new gardener – Steve’s dead. I hope you have insurance, and a good lawyer, because he fell off one of your ladders and he was drunk again. And maybe I’m dead too, because I don’t care. He always hated me anyways… said I creeped him out. You always said you loved us. But then, he was always around, so he’s probably right after all. And if you loved us, you would be here right now.
I’ll do the weeds, anyhow, if you don’t tell Carmen – she wouldn’t like it. But when did any of us ever say anything unnecessarily? You two hate each other – you don’t have to pretend anymore. Someday, Pete, you’re going to have to get up the guts to divorce her.
And I don’t talk either. I’m probably using up a month’s supply of words right now. I just don’t have anything I care enough to talk about.
You’ll have deleted this message by the time I said you didn’t love us. But I’m going to keep talking anyways because maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll mean something.
Yeah. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe Carmen’ll stop hating the people she can’t control. Maybe you’ll stop hiding from the things you don’t wanna deal with. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow in New Zealand.
I don't want to stay here. I don't want to be Las Vegas’ rich kid of the month, every month. I want to live somewhere cold and far away. The Dakotas, maybe, or even Canada. I think I'd like snow.
I want to be nobody. I want to live in a paper-walled nicotine-stained one-bedroom apartment in the part of downtown where you walk home with pepper spray in one hand and 911 already dialed on your cellphone in the other. I want to have my heart broken.
I want the stuff I have to be real enough to care about.

You know what? If you're still listening to this, don't bother searching for me. I've been gone for a long time already.

[JESSICA puts down the phone and exits the room]