"No! Fuck you! I'm not doing it, and you can't make me!"
I could hear the girl next door screaming at her parents again, and I knew that this time, it was about me, or rather, the deal that I had offered her parents.
Amber was 18, very beautiful, a bit thin for my tastes, but a raging bitch and brat. An only child, she basically got what she wanted, and when she didn't, she yelled and screamed.
Ever since I moved into this house, 10 years ago, I've known that Amber controlled her parents, and it only got worse every year. Her mother was a stuck-up bitch herself who controlled her husband, and thought that her daughter could do no wrong, and her father was only concerned with his hunting and fishing, without any apparent concern that he was at the bottom of the totem pole in his house. Neither of them apparently believed in disciplining their child, and now they were paying the price for that belief.
This time, however, it was different. That night, Amber came home drunk and hit my car, which was parked in front of my house, as she was trying to park. As her mother, Jill, looked on, I told her father, Joe, that unless they could come up with a way to pay for the damage, I would have to call the police. The damage wasn't major, but I wasn't about to cover it, and didn't want my insurance to go up because of her.
I made the choices quite clear. If they didn't come up with a way to cover the costs, their precious daughter would lose her license for under-age drunk driving, which meant no driving until she graduated High School next year, and she would most likely spend the night in jail.
I knew that Jill would object to any plan that involved Amber taking responsibility for her actions, so I took Joe to the side to talk to him. As soon as we started to walk away, Jill naturally started to bitch, loudly, about not being involved.
When she started to yell and scream, I stopped and stepped right into her face.
"Jill, I want you to listen to me, very carefully," I told her, remaining calm, "right now, I REALLY don't give a shit what you want. You may walk all over your husband, but I'm not him. Now, you can either shut the fuck up, or I'll simply call the cops, and you can deal with them, AND your insurance company."
"You're an arrogant bastard," she yelled at me, after glaring at me for a couple of seconds.
As I watched her walk away, I thought to myself, "I can see why Joe was attracted to her, at first, but NO ONE is worth putting up with THAT kind of crap from!"
"Yeah, pretty much," I replied, walking to Joe.
"Joe, I don't want to be an asshole," I began, "but the way that I see it, you've got to make Amber understand who's in charge, and that it's NOT her."
"What do you want me to do?" he asked. "I don't have the money to pay for your repairs, and either does Amber. Plus, I have to deal with her mother."
"I understand that," I told him. "I think that leaves you with two options. I'll pay for the repairs up front. My suggestion would be to have Amber pay me back, over time."
"How? She doesn't have a job, and I can't force her to get one."
"Yeah, you can, Joe," I told him. "Our generation never got away with this kind of nonsense. Our parents made us go out and work."
"That'll never work with her," he countered. "She'll keep saying that she can't find anything, and her mother will back her up."
I stood there for a couple of seconds thinking, before I came up with an idea.
"I'll probably regret offering this, but, here's my final offer. If she doesn't want to get a real job, she can work for me, doing things around my house, until it's all paid off. She can work it off at the equivalent of minimum wage, and she can do things like clean up the house, cut the grass, that kind of work."
"I don't know if she'll agree to that," he mumbled.
"Don't give her a choice, Joe. Tell her it's either that, or she loses her license, and goes to jail."
"That's easy for you to say," he told me. "You don't have to deal with her mother."
"Joe, again, I don't want to be an asshole, but it's time you proved you've got a pair. You know that this is the best option."
"I'll give you one hour to talk to them, and then I want her to sign a contract that will explain EVERYTHING, including the fact that this all happened because she was drunk," I told him, hoping that neither of them knew that it would never hold up in court.
Joe looked at me for a second, and then turned and walked away without saying anything.
Just under an hour later, after all of the screaming and yelling, some of it actually from Joe, he and Amber came over and agreed to my offer. While they were gone, I quickly drew up the "contract", and had them sign it.
"You can start work tomorrow morning," I told Amber, knowing that she would be hung over, and wanting to piss off her mother even more.
After they went back into their house, I heard more yelling and screaming, and finally, two doors slamming.
The next morning, I was almost surprised when Amber showed up. She was looking quite haggard as she walked in the door, wearing her customary short shorts and tank top.
Her normal dress this time of year was either a pair of shorts that barely covered her ass or a mini-skirt, and a tank top. She also made it quite obvious that she often went without a bra when she dressed like that.
"I'm only doing this because I'm being forced to, and because my father's almost as much of an asshole as you are," she said, as she walked past me.
"Actually, you're only doing this because you were stupid enough to get drunk and try to drive home while you're underage, and you're a bad enough driver that you couldn't get your compact car into a space 50 feet long without hitting my car," I replied. "Also, for some reason, I feel sorry enough for your father because you and your mother walk all over him, that I made him this offer so that he didn't have to put his hard-earned money up to bail you out of jail, and get a lawyer for you. Your father deserves a hell of a lot more respect than either you or your mother give him," I told her. "He busts his ass going to work every day, so that you and your mother can live the way that you do."
"Yeah, whatever," she muttered, as she walked past me into my house.
I spent the next half-hour walking her around the house and explaining what I wanted her to do that day, when she commented, "Your house is a lot nicer than I expected. My mother said that this would be a pig sty."
"That doesn't surprise me," I told her. "Your mother doesn't have a very high regard for anybody, other than herself."
"Don't you talk bad about my mother!" she yelled at me.
"Don't yell at me, young lady," I replied. "I'm not one of your parents, and I sure as hell won't tolerate it. I will send your skinny little ass right back home, where you can wait for the cops to come and pick you up."
That seemed to shock her, and it took a short while before she could respond. "You don't have any right to talk about my mother like that," she said finally, much calmer that the last time.
"Why not? Your mother is an arrogant, self-righteous bitch, who loves to rip everybody else around her, and she's teaching you to be the same way. THAT is part of why you're in this situation right now."
Amber stood there glaring at me for a few seconds, until I told her that she could start her work in the kitchen.
The rest of the day went relatively smoothly, and just before Amber went home, she stopped to talk to me.
"How long am I going to be your slave?" she asked.
"You're not my slave," I told her. "It's more of an indentured servitude."
"A what?"
"Look it up when you get home," I told her. "I'm waiting for the repair ship to call me with an estimate, and then I'll know how much you have to work off."
"You know, it's not ALL my fault," she said.
