Anatomy of a Double Shift

9:00 AM: Haha, suckers, sleeping with the lights on worked and I even have time to shower. 

9:15 AM: *back up alarm goes off, asleep-me gets up, turns it off and walks back to bed*

9:30 AM: Dammit. 

9:47 AM: Eyeliner in the morning is a precise measure of…right eye, can you not? 

9:52 AM: I wonder how many yoga pants I have clean. Let’s count. Did I take a picture of that thing? Gotta drink some water. Who needs SNACKS?? 

10:15 AM: How did it get so late?

10:57 AM: Yesterday, get on a train that ends up at Northeastern, sprint across the park and arrive eight minutes late. Today, do not wear headphones and show up on time. Progress. 

11:00 AM - 11:30 AM: *caffeine-induced haze*

11:35 AM: Bar-crawl number one is set to arrive. I feel hungry. We have not brought enough snacks for this endeavor. 

Noon: Bar-crawl number one cancelled. Out of snacks. Fifteen hours to go. 

2:15 PM: “Can I close my tab?”

        “Sure, what’s the last name?”

        “Falconi.”
        “Like Batman?”

3:45 PM: Someone asks for a “Sauvignon Blank.” 

5:00 PM: EMERGENCY SALAD.

5:08 PM - 5:40 PM: *transition back from starved-ghost-person to real-person-who-can-talk*

5:53 PM: “Two beers under Bud Light.”

        “Under Bud Light?”

        (gesturing a shelf) “Yeah, two beers, under, Bud Light.”

       “Are you asking for something cheaper than Bud Light?”

       “Yeah.”

       “Oh, we don’t have anything cheaper than Bud Light.”

       “Oh, I’ll take two Bud Lights, then.”

6:00 PM: Seven hours down, nine to…don’t ever say that again. 

6:21 PM: *bathroom break after drinking four million cups of water* WHO LET ME WEAR MY HAIR LIKE THIS? And why does no one tell me when I have makeup smudged under my eye? Right eye, stop being weird. 

7:02 PM: “It’s kind of a complicated order.”

        “It’s OK.”

        (sighing deeply) “OK, a Hendricks and tonic—“

        (Girl, interrupting) “Blue Moon!”

        “No, no one has a Blue Moon. A Hendricks—“

        “A Blue Moon!”

        “What? No, no Blue Moon. No one ordered that.” 

        (Girl wanders away)

        “A Hendricks and tonic, a Tito’s and soda, a Tito’s and seltzer, a vodka cranberry, and a Bud Light.”

        “Soda and seltzer are the same thing here, so you want two Tito’s soda, a vodka cranberry, and a Bud Light draft or bottle?”

         “Bottle—“

        (Girl, wandering back): “Vodka soda!”

8:58 PM: I tell someone they can’t order food because the kitchen is closing at 11 PM. 

Actual 11 PM: This is what it feels like to be old, right? Creating various angles to avoid being upright, seven different ways of launching toward the ground? There are 140 bones in my foot and they are all pushed against the edge of my sopped and stinky shoe. 

1:10 AM: “Can you make these shots - half Dr.’s, half Frangelico, a splash of Bailey’s, and half blue curaçao?”

        “Those amounts don’t add up, but I can see where you’re going with this. How many do you want?”

       “Four.” 

1:45 AM: Last call. There are three girls swaying with each other, singing Lil’ Wayne at the top of their lungs. 

3:00 AM: Let’s count money and…oh hey, left eye, not a fan of the eyeliner either, I see. Glad we’re all caught up here.

Fraud and Sons

Even though I’ve spent exactly no dollars in three days, and live no where near Ohio, it isn’t until the part about the hot dogs that I am sure this isn’t me. 

“Did you have a failed transaction for $238.26 at a Kmart in Toledo, Ohio,” she asks me. I am standing in the bathroom at work, where I go for all my serious conversations, and sometimes handstands on double shifts. 

“No, that was not me,” I say. 

“Did you buy something at a Toledo Express for 38 cents,” she asks. 

“No, that was not me,” I say. The speakers in the bathroom are only two turns less loud than the downstairs bar, and both spaces have played this same Mumford and Sons song twice since I got here today. Before man-buns were cool, Mumford and Sons came through Boston and hung out with one of my then-roommates, who told me they planned to go back to the same bar again the next night. Two of my friends and I posted up at the bar and waited to see them for two hours, during which time Kenzie decided she had a crush on some guy sitting next to us. Ron and I looked over to find a hulking man twice her age with what Kenzie herself called a “samurai bun.” We left. My roommate ended up hanging out with them again, but in their trailer after the show instead of mingling with us plebes. Apparently one of the Mumfords wore a head-to-toe purple fur coat and I decided it was all for the best. 

“Anything after the transaction at the laundromat on Tuesday isn’t me,” I tell my bank’s fraud claims lady. “Can you tell me every transaction since then?”

“Sure,” she says in her full-blown Southern that makes her sound a hell of lot nicer than me. “The 38 cents at the gas station, the $238.26 at Kmart, and the $36.88 for all the hot dogs.” 

In my second year teaching, I walked out to the parking lot of my school one day to find hot dogs in pieces, all over my car. Smeared on my window, oiled up on the roof, like some finicky baby-giant spit them everywhere, but only on my vehicle. No one ever owned up to it. 

Here they are again, following me everywhere and ruining my Friday with a slick of deceit. 

The last time I went to Paris, I called my bank and told them to expect foreign transactions on my account. They told me it was lucky I called, because they were just about to suspend my account. Someone had stolen my information and tried to buy a bunch of electronic toys on Amazon. I had to get a new credit card and change all my passwords in the five days before I left. 

“We’ll make sure you get refunded, but it’ll be five to ten days for a new debit card,” she says. This time, I have almost a month until I leave. 

The red, marble, bathroom sink, the one that knows what my forearms feel like when my heart is heavy, bears the weight of me again. It isn’t until much later, 2 AM, that I realize I can’t take an Uber, I have to take a regular cab like the Amish, and I decide it’s for the best.

Everyone Feels Awful All of the Time

There is a certain amount of denial and narcissism-via-optimism to think you can change the world with two years, fifty-six students, and zero experience, but there was never any way to finish what I signed up for without it. 

Today, I told someone that the only way to get better at teaching something is to let it be bad the first time you do it. Granted, today, with yoga, the stakes are a tad lower than then, with remedial, inner-city, fifth grade. I do wish someone had told me how bad I was going to be at it, though. Actually, they did, and I didn’t listen. I wish someone told me how that was going to feel, then. 

It has always stuck with me, except for the exact period of time it would have been useful to remember, that one of my college professors said, “The world is run by C students.” Because I am an A student. And what it feels like to fail at something when you have never failed at anything on the inside of a classroom before is that dream you have when everyone needs your attention, but the floor keeps moving so you have no footing, and also something is bleeding pretty bad. 

At our pre-induction week in Chicago, we had a mixer wherein alums told us their experience. Most of them ended their speeches with some positive charge. Some form of, “important work lies ahead and you can do it.” Somewhere in the middle, an alum got up and told us this was all terrible and we were going to hate it. 

“Your kids are going to hate you. They will yell at you, they will ignore you, and you won’t get through a lesson,” she said. She talked about the violence in her school, about how she didn’t always feel safe. She seared us with eye contact and flatly reassured us that everyone feels awful, all of the time. 

We stood there, awkwardly sipping our drinks and looking down at our name tags, filled out in marker and smiley faces. She left the stage in ringing silence. Two weeks later, we flew out to Los Angeles for training and tried it out ourselves, promptly wishing she had come with us to give a heads-up on the fresh terror of each new day. 

I have never cried so many times as those six weeks in LA, closely rivaled by my first six months in Chicago, second only due to the survival mode that kicked in with the flying chairs around week three. Denial got me in and denial would get me out. 

It’s the promise of success that an A student believes in as lord and savior. The light that gets in to the locked up rooms of America’s shame will bring redemption. One student, three students, seven, dream big for fourteen, souls who weren’t shaped for college are now risen to new heights. 

And then, you suck at this. The floor keeps moving and someone is bleeding and which face needs the most attention? Even tucked into a fold of the world that no one cares to dust, failure brings a searchlight and an audience of fifty-six.

To-Do List

For someone who can focus well when she needs to, I spend an inordinate amount of time purposefully distracted. In exactly one month from today, I leave for a month-long intensive yoga training in California. (Plus one bonus week at the end that serendipitously includes my birthday.) I’m physically organized and my room has systems, but mentally, I am chaos. My parents gave me a Passion Planner for Christmas. It reminds me of the raincoat-yellow Bachelor Bulldog planners we had in middle school, which were likely the single biggest reason I was a successful student from ages 12-14. That, great teachers, and not having friends. 

I like to spend a solid hour with my planner, making sure the week is set and I’m not missing anything I have to get done. Or at least wish I could get done, which is exactly the same thing. I had to work this Sunday, though, and that is my planning day, (it’s been three weeks so obviously it’s a solid “thing I do” now) and suddenly my brain is leaking out of my nose. Which creates today, wherein I made this list of all the shit I have to get done between now and February 27th. 

• find subletter for my room/apt - someone not awful
• put laundry away
• clean out closet (maybe do this first)
• change sheets, actually clean room, not the bullshit from last week
• sell books - how does eBay work?
• learn eBay
• figure out budget, pick a scenario with money
• find some money
• try to check only one bag
• how am I going to bring my yoga mat when it doesn’t fit in any bags?
• google “weather temps for March, LA”
• DO NOT BRING ALL YOGA PANTS
• email studio about yoga membership starting this week
• fall into rabbit hole of checking class schedules
• get up early every morning next week for the 9ams?
• lolololololololol
• omfg what am I going to do when I have to be at training every day at 9am??
• totes different when there’s sun
• sunblock (can get this there, nut)
• haircut (only if it’s in budget)
• j/k, let’s try some lightening shampoo and get into hats
• groceries
• but also eat all remaining food in the cabinet
• google “what goes with lentils”
• Target?  <— NO. Target ban since two weeks ago
• clean bathroom
• tomorrow: class, coffee, emails
• live off of acai bowls and coffee
• check that this is a thing

I feel better when I write things down. A little more focused, a lot more excited. Today was a long day of teaching and practicing, of staying focused and passionate. At 6:45 PM, the T stopped working at Boylston and I was forced onto a crowded train with all middle school students. I hadn’t eaten much and they were loud and it was miserable. I tried to think of their planners, possibly with folded-down pages in alternating directions like mine. Then one of them jumped on my back and I remembered how much I deeply hated 8th grade. 

In my haste to leave the whole thing behind, I tripped up the stairs out of Haymarket. No one saw, or cared, but now I have a lumpy bruise on my shin, and one more thing on the list. 

• ice leg

It's Fine Until It's Not

Last night the heat stopped working, but I didn’t believe the heat had stopped working. Instead, I stood in the kitchen, blinking at the blanked-out thermostat, shivering, and telling myself to stop being such a baby. 

Stop shivering, you dipshit, you’re inside. 

It’s probably not broken, it would be flashing some kind of “broken” message.

Plus, you get cold when you type on the computer. Or when you’re over-tired. Or when you’re sick. Oh, you’re refusing to be sick, too? OK, good talk.  

It was 58 degrees in the center of the apartment this morning. Colder in my room, where I slept for one thousand hours, avoiding contact with the wood floor. 

I am expert at excuses. Not the kind where you try to get away with something illicit or where you bend the rules - with those excuses I am rotten. No, my excuses describe the many reasons why everything is fine. Until it most definitely is not fine.

I passed out at a catering job in high school after taking too much cold medicine, pretending I was not sick. 

In fifth grade I broke my wrist, but kept making a fist, so no one believed it was broken for a few hours. It did hurt, but I didn’t want to wear a cast for the Bradford Woods field trip. 

Just after Christmas in 2012, I got sick enough to go to the doctor. He told me if my cough did not get better in the next two days, I likely had pneumonia, at which point I should come back. I did not come back. I did, however, give myself a broken rib from all the coughing. Which I obviously didn’t believe until a different doctor told me, while I leaned against things as a replacement for “standing.” But I was FINE. 

I may possibly be the only person who visits Web MD to confirm the things I do not have. 

“Oh, but see, here it says blinding pain in the abdomen, and I just have a pinchy thing, so it can’t be bad.” 

And I do it with everything. My frame of reference is “the worst experiences I’ve ever had,” and if it’s less than that, or new enough to confuse me, it must be OK. My first year of teaching was the worst year of my life. I only know that because the second year was marginally better, and I had some space to admit things. Every year since, if my job is a step up from dodging death threats and eating only peanut butter, I consider it a win. 

For almost eleven months, I lived with THESE psychos. It was slow. Like the beginning of a cold, when I think I’m just suddenly thirsty. I didn’t have much choice. I moved in after breaking a heart and a lease and I gave up all my stuff in a fit of guilt and convenience. It was fine, at first. It was slow and it was fine and then, somewhere in April it was NOT FINE. 

My current roommate sent me a snapchat of our thermostat this morning, with the caption, “I think the heat is broken.” Which is when I believed it. I did feel cold.

Scooter, Rebecca, and the Others

My pet squirrel fell out of a tree when I was three, which seems suspect only because squirrels don’t usually have so much trouble doing what they do. But he was young, and so was I, and unsure about the idea of either death or syntax, I told people, “Scooter dived.” 

In hindsight, it’s strange that a woodland creature followed my dad home from campus and set up shop in our backyard tree for weeks. When you’re three, though, you expect every living thing to be your friend. To see only the pure joy of a new pet squirrel and not wonder at its deranged state of being. 

The dog I got for my birthday that year was likely to distract me from Scooter’s failed acrobatics. It worked and she was way better at climbing trees, in that she didn’t try. We already had a cat, a mean one that I was determined to win over with my charms and ear-pulling. We made excuses for her when she got old. 

“She doesn’t mean it, she’s just in pain.” Pipkin, the abusive drug addict we knew and loved. 

We got another cat because she kept showing up on the porch and wouldn’t leave. I may have also dressed her in doll clothes and named her “Rebecca,” but who doesn’t like to make new friends? 

I had to babysit a bird when I was in high school. Not like anyone forced me to, but it was a paid gig to go to the couple’s apartment after school, open the cage and let the bird hang out for a while in the room while I watched Brady Bunch re-runs and pretended I lived on my own. I hated it. Birds make me uncomfortable, and you can’t pet them. They watch you with their mini-dinosaur eyes, blaming you for locking them up when they used to rule the earth, and then they shit in places you can’t find for at least thirty minutes. 

A few years ago, I took care of my friend’s two cats in my own apartment. One of them likes people more than the other, so it and I spent the week coaxing the other one out from under various furniture. My roommates and I had a party for July 4th, so I shut them in my room to keep them safe and the less social one scratched the crap out of me for it. I also, separately, broke my toe that night, and someone put a cigarette out on my yoga mat, so the cats were pretty much a highlight. 

Maybe I still expect every living thing to be my friend. Maybe it’s only the deranged ones that I take at face value. The ones that come back every day, even though I call them the wrong name. Or the ones that have trouble doing what they do. Go ahead, fall out of a tree. I’ll tell people you dived. 

Unless you’re a bird. Then you’re on your own.

Dynasty Etiquette

In the four years I’ve lived in Boston, the Patriots have been to the Superbowl twice, winning one of those appearances. They have made the playoffs and won their division every year. 

Every year. 

Every. 

Year.

Do you know how bizarre that is? I guess “bizarre” is a less apt word than “difficult,” but whatever. It’s fucking rare. 

People are sad today, here. I want to be sad, too. Not because I actually want to feel sadness, but because I want to feel a part of such a flaming steamroller of success. Not because this team is good and I like to win, but because this thing that would be mine is also having an extended moment of glory, and what, exactly does it feel like to be so effortless in the pursuit of the postseason? Or anything vaunted, for that matter. 

Not, either, because I want to go from expectation to crushing blow in the course of twenty nine whistles and too many held breaths, but It’s an odd and empty feeling to look on from the outside. Not any less so when things are bad.

The guy on the back side of the bar put his mirrored shades on after the last play. 

“Faggot,” he yelled at Peyton Manning’s face, blown up on the TV to show his concern for the onside kick. “You all can go kill yourselves now.” 

I assumed he aimed this at the blurry faces of nameless fans inside the pixels of the screen. Not the actual, humans, rooting for Denver sitting across the bar. Or the actual, humans, playing for the team or working on its behalf, serving customers much like him in much the same way, holding their collective breath on that last, decisive down. 

I assumed he meant this as a colloquial expression, this thing people say, a general insult. Not a real idea to plant in someone’s brain like a germ. 

I assumed as such because I can’t fathom anyone feeling so entitled to such a unique and mystical experience as seven straight playoff appearances that they would wish harm on others when it, inevitably, like him, wasn’t immortal. 

“Fuck you,” he yelled at Peyton’s face again. “You’re gonna die in five years anyway.” 

Then again, maybe mortality wasn’t where he was unclear. 

If the two-point conversion had worked, I’m 1000 percent sure some drunk guy in Denver would have wished the same for Tom Brady. This is not a story about how the fans in Boston are cruel with entitlement. This is a story about that moment, that sad, rare spot, when we stop believing in magic and start expecting hard work to look easy. 

But what do I know, I’m only looking in from the outside. 

The guy with the shades asked me for a beer. I gave it to him. He paid me $6. I thanked him. And all I could see when he spoke were his shades, and my own face reflected back in a greenish color.

Intercostals

The undertow should have scared me more than it did, but mostly I hoped no one saw me and even though we used to take those Stuntman shots, I didn’t figure the salt water would shave my nasal cavity quite so close. In the process of not dying in the Mediterranean however, I lost my second toe ring. The one I got in Los Angeles when I was super into the guy with the Che Guevara tattoo. The one I wore on my left foot and, for two years, never fully got used to. 

I remember sitting on the couch in Chicago, looking around the room at all the books, and photos, and furniture, thinking, “but what the fuck are we going to do with all this stuff?” For months, I had eaten only M&Ms and I had no idea how to stop something so huge in its tracks other than lay myself down in front of it. And after, on a Tuesday at the gym, I forgot to put my ring back on even though I never forgot to put my ring back on. Never once in the five years since I bought it, at an art fair in Aix. 

Since I don’t drink beer, we decided half-car-bombs would be a better bet, which really meant straight Jameson, and whiskey doesn’t treat me like friends should. One miserable cab ride later found me without one earring. The pair of which I got on the street from a student-artist dressed for homelessness when I was subconsciously scouting new places to live. I wore them in my license photo, when I moved away and fell for the boy everyone told me to avoid. 

It doesn’t surprise me to lose jewelry around relationships anymore. There are many other examples, after all. 

The four-leaf clover necklace that I bought in New Hampshire broke last week, though. Through all of my cities, all of my jobs, nearly every day for twelve years, I wore the silver chain with a painted abalone shell. I suppose it got sick of my sweaty class instruction and draft beer mishaps, and it dramatically jumped out of its enclosure in a mess of dirty metal and sand. On a Wednesday, with no heartbreak in sight. 

I’m teaching a creative sequencing workshop for other yoga teachers this week, so I’ve been bookmarking my anatomy book to validate some of the points I want to make. Specifically, I’m deeply in love with the oblique sling and I wanted concrete markers to explain it in easy pieces. 

“Notice how the obliques become the intercostals,” it said. The muscles that wrap your torso diagonally, start to work their way up and through until they become the muscles that wrap your ribs. The point is, it’s all connected. Sometimes so much that one muscle fluidly becomes another one. Until it involves your chest, your back, your shoulder. Until it’s one, big, hug of an oblique sling. 

I bought the ring in Aix, one day before I left for Nice, where I would stick my foot under a rock in the sea and lose my toe ring. I bought the earrings in Boston on vacation, the week before I ended everything and lost the ring in a locker room back in Chicago. And somewhere up in the intercostals, on Thursday, I found a place to stay in Santa Monica, and I booked my flights.

Hypothetical Flaws

Blame it on a desire to raise my severely low threshold for dumb, but I’ve been trying to flip my perspective more than usual lately. 

Maybe he wasn’t trying to steal a whole sleeve of plastic cups, but needed water and didn’t want to bother you. 

No, surely she was checking the time on her phone, not texting during savasana. 

What if he can’t actually speak and keeps pointing at an empty glass because he can’t say the words and then you will really be an asshole won’t you?

I read a quote on [insert intelligent dialogue journal here because I’m dead-sure I got it off of Instagram] that says, “There is not a person you wouldn’t love if you knew their story.” So I’ve been trying it out. I’ve been creating backstories for people as if I’m creating an army of my own, personal, flawed humans. You know, the ones I can root for. 

But “root for” and “love” seem ages apart and I’m increasingly unconvinced that the quote’s author has any idea how the world works. I keep getting distracted by questions because there has to be an exception. 

What about Hitler? We know Hitler’s story and he’s a piece of shit. I don’t love him. 

I also don’t love the kid who made fun of me in third grade and told me I couldn’t draw a face on the marshmallow in the science demonstration. I don’t care what happened to him up to that point, he can go kick rocks. 

So, Insta inspo, I get where you’re going with this, but it’s just impractical. Then again, I’m not all that good with hypothetical situations. 

My mom likes to ask everyone what their “fantasy car” is. Which sounds like a flying car or time travel, or possibly something inappropriate, but she means if you could have any car in the world, what would it be? 

“But, what am I doing?” I ask. 

“What do you mean?”

“Like, am I me right now or do I have a fantasy life to go along with my car?”

“I suppose either, does it matter?”

“Well, do I have kids? Do I need to transport things? Do I live in the mountains?”

“OK, fine, say it’s you right now then.”

“Where would I park it though?”

“Anywhere, you’d figure it out.”

“But see, this is why I don’t have a car at all. So why would I get one all of a sudden?” 

“Oh my God, Kate, just WHICH ONE WOULD YOU WANT?”

The thing is, it’s never just a simple car. It’s never a simple person. It’s a convoluted story of the bumps and tears that got you where you are, sitting in a Corolla, and flipping somebody off. 

After all, there’s not a story you wouldn’t love if it was told correctly. Just maybe one not told by me when I have to make a decision about things I will never have.

Myriad Selfies

“Can you take a selfie with us?” She says this to her phone, but I know it’s meant for me. 

I freeze. I am a deer who believes headlights make it invisible. I am still and silent and I can smell my dirty hair from its perch atop my head. She fumbles with the Android while my beer-soaked bar rag hangs limply from my play-dead arm. 

“I mean,” she says, “can you take a selfie of us, but you can stay there.”

My deer eyes blink confusedly. 

“Like, can you take a selfie of our group?”

Oh. 

“Oh. You want me to take your photo?”

“Yeah,” she says. 

To be fair, a four-hour open bar will get the best of most people. But it was a scary glimpse, that quick slip. That all photos of people can be referenced as “selfies.” Not scary in a narcissistic way, because, hell I love some good lighting, but scary in a, “everyone’s doing it wrong and we can’t fight it anymore,” way. The way I fear for all the “you’re”s out there, fighting the good fight. 

Over Christmas, my dad and I tried to defend the grammatical use of “myriad” without prepositions. 

“You would say ‘myriad reasons,’ not “the myriad of reasons,’” we said. 

My brother said we were wrong, you could use it both ways. 

“No way,” we said. My dad and I often speak in tandem. We went to the same journalism school, it only makes sense. 

If the Internet is to be trusted, it turns out the original use of “myriad” is the one scoffed at by our alma mater today. Over time, people kept using it incorrectly, and eventually it changed. Not converted exactly, but the new version was allowed for — a sort of, “FINE, you can play with us,” concession. 

This is the natural evolution of language. The extra “e” at the end of Olde English words, the “u” in “colour,” the hallmarks of our laziness become our new, industrious communication. Plus, I can admit when I’m wrong. 

“That’s ridiculous,” we said. I can admit when I’m wrong after there are no other options, that is. 

For years and years, people straight up refused to learn a word correctly, so grammatical institutions relented, and then turned back on the OG grammarists, like, what? You’re not wrong, but we can make fun of you now. The concession, the truce of it all, was befouled. 

And I, being a present-day grammar snob, am now part of these myriad mean girls. 

Kid President says we need less selfies and more peoplies. So if the word “photo” just won’t do anymore, I’d at least like to stick with that sentiment. People are kind of dumb but we sure aren’t persuaded easily. 

I drop my bar rag, pick up the phone. I only hope “ur” never makes it into the Oxford Dictionary. But I take three peoplies, just in case one doesn’t work out.

Empath

I refused to go all the way in the house. 

“Kate, honey, let’s bring this stuff to the freezer,” my mom said as I stood by the front door, behind a paper Kroger bag of our food, slithering out of its ices, crying to be saved. 

The tornado had spared us and most of the town, but the power on the west side of the street had been out for 8 hours and most of our food would be lost if we didn't bring it somewhere. It must be nice to chalk $200 up to a loss, but if we didn’t salvage it, we couldn’t replace it. My jelly sandals glued themselves to the dark green carpet of the corner house on our street, proffering some cans of juice and ground turkey without sound. 

My mom returned from the depths of the kitchen, retrieved the bag herself. Our food made friends and we scooted out the door. 

“What was that about,” she said in a hush as we walked the 62 steps back home. 

“I didn’t feel good,” I said. 

“You felt fine before.”

“No, in the house. I felt sick. It was bad in there.”

It was bad in there. 

One of my Chicago apartments had broken heat for an entire winter. I would call the handyman, he would tell me nothing was wrong, and as soon as he left, it would stop running. As soon as he got there it would start. The shower would cut out for no reason too, and the bedroom door would slam shut with all the windows closed. The doorknob popped out one time without any screws missing. 

It was an old building, and sometimes you press a weird button on the heat settings, and who counts the screws in a doorknob you never use? But you can’t mistake that feeling. The pressure of a human sitting on the edge of your bed. 

The night I woke up, choking, scratching at some green light above my face and shoving it off, I decided I had to move. 

From ages four to six, I had recurring nightmares of a group of witches and assorted shadowy figures who would kidnap me. That was really all there was to the dream. They didn’t seem to know what to do with me and most of the dream was me trying to eavesdrop on their council meeting. 

Every time, the dream was cut short by this feeling that something was sitting on the end of my bed. A whole, adult-sized person. I would pull the covers over my face and breathe in the shallow ways of the dying until it passed. 

There had been one night it was too bright to sleep. When ambulance lights danced on the walls in swooping circles. It got better after that. 

My mom and I took steps 60 and 61 onto our front porch, next to my bedroom window. 

“Do you feel better now?”

“I just can’t go back in there.”

“Hmm,” my mom said, “You know, Mr. Gage, who owned it when we moved here? He died in that house.”

Lightning Strikes

Nothing happened today. Not in a watched-pot sort of way, but also not in a held-breath sort of way. 

Nothing happened today and it adds to the line of days that wall up January and build into 2016 and all of it conspires against my attempts not to rely on the idea of stasis. 

I drank coffee. 

My two pairs of pants do not feel warm enough. Wind is my least favorite weather, after all. 

I saw someone with purple hair and wondered for the fiftieth time if I could ever pull that off. 

Someone next to me chewed loudly. I wanted to stab something. 

My face looks the same as yesterday. 

Yesterday, my face looked the same as the day before. Nothing happened then either, so maybe it only changes when big things happen. Like when lightning strikes and shocks the hair white. 

Four years is the longest I’ve ever done anything. Jobs, apartments, relationships, schools. The calendar reaches four and I tap out and I don’t know if it’s boredom, lack of discipline, pure curiosity, or if, truly, each time the circumstances make for a correct, albeit opportune, ditch. 

I’m coming up on the start of my fifth year in my current job, and in order to prevent myself from fleeing outright, I’m taking a one-month reprieve. To Los Angeles, which is sort of a debatable place to ground yourself. It’s not like I looked at the calendar and thought, “shit, it’s been four years, time for a break.” But it’s never like that. Never the lightning. 

In a year, I’ve had roughly 402 cups of coffee. I’ve worn two pairs of pants at once for too many days. Every time someone chews near my head, I think about felonies. And always, I think my face looks the same. 

When the temperature drops below 30 and the air rips awake my throat, I breathe into my scarf, and there’s something about the fold of a steaming, breath-wet fabric that smells exactly like childhood. Childhood, as a unit. I think of being small as a consistent state, a comforting permanence. 

The truth is that is was then as it is now. Nothing felt stable. Everything changed all the time. Days made up of moments no one could ever be sure of or predict. But there were enough days where nothing happened that everything in retrospect was still. 

My mom and I played musicals on records and sang while we cleaned.

How many Saturdays?

There was a Skip-It at the bus stop. 

How many weeks?

We ate dinner at the table as a family.

How many years?

I always had a practical winter coat. Except the one year I got to have the pink one with the rainbow on the side. 

Lightning. 

I keep searching for the unit, the package of what my life can be sold as. What I can rely on this to be. What’s the magic number? Anything more than four? Maybe breaking a pattern is the golden threshold, but I have a hunch that stasis itself is a lie. 

Nothing happened today, so I hope my face looks the same tomorrow.

A Life in Stuff and Things

“Goddamnit, Sadness, are you dumb? Stop touching everything.” - Me, watching Inside Out

No one I actually know has died this, January, week, but I’m unnaturally sad about David Bowie and Alan Rickman, and sometimes I sit on the train and Spotify plays something either moving or uninspiring, and I don’t know anyone around me and everything feels a watery sort of bland. Like soggy carpet or eating chicken for dinner for eternity. 

Sadness is a curious thing. Hijacks mental capacity as a whole unit, but there’s a bottom. It’s tangible in its dome of beige-ness. If I were to rank emotions, (and I have,) Frustration would be my least favorite. The feeling of frustration I get watching Sadness is usually at least seven times worse than just feeling regular-sad. This might explain all the crying about dumb stuff. 

Or why, on a Thursday afternoon in July, I sat on the roof, sobbing about moving boxes. 

None of us wanted to leave that apartment, but I suppose something had to drag us out and it might as well have been that the landlord’s secretary was embezzling money and stole our rent checks. A logistical scramble, and I had secured a sublet for the awkward amount of time between leases, and rented a PODS unit for all my things. I bought parking permits and flyered the street with signage for the impending 24-hour tow zone. 

Wednesday, 12pm-5pm: PODS to arrive. 

Wednesday, 1pm-ish: Some girl parks in marked spot.

Wednesday, 1:15pm: Call police, ask for tow.

Wednesday, 1:30pm: PODS arrives. 

Wednesday, 1:30pm and 2 seconds: Call PODS. Truck will wait another ten minutes.

Wednesday, 1:35pm: Call police about tow time check. While on hold, watch PODS truck drive away. 

Wednesday, 1:37pm: No way to get another PODS. “Universal moving week” and everything booked. 

Wednesday, 1:38pm-9pm: Call PODS repeatedly, yell at every person who answers. 

I finally talk to someone who assures me I can drive my things out to the PODS facility, load up my pre-paid unit, and all will be fine. Except I don’t own a car and I have no friends. No way to transport three years of a life in objects. How did this happen? How did I not have any stuff and now I have a truck’s worth of things too valuable not to release into the street? 

Thursday 6am: Pick up only Zipcar vehicle available. Thirty minutes to figure out bed must go on the roof. 

Thursday, 8am: Call PODS to reconfirm. 

I have to teach class in one hour, and I have to be fully out of the apartment by 5pm, and PODS now has no recollection of any arrangement, no evidence of my reservation, no clue who I am. 

Thursday, 8:15am: Sit on the roof and sob about the state of my things. 

There’s the soggy carpet you find your feet in, and there’s the dome with no sound that you refuse to call your home. He was an acquaintance and I didn’t feel I could take any ownership, couldn’t invest in being sad. People will judge you less for weeping over celebrities. 

The absence of color is more sinister than beige. Frustration is a never-ending scattershot of helplessness and anger. It eclipses curious Sadness, cloaks it in the darkest of blindfolds.

(July) Wednesday, 10am: Suicide confirmed.

Project Zero F**ks

Three years ago I would have said, “sorry.” But I didn’t and I’m proud of that and yet I feel as though I have to tell you about this so you understand it’s a good thing rather than a “I am a heartless twat-slice who doesn’t give a fuck about feelings,” thing. 

Not that you would know. You weren’t there when I sent back my latte because it was a regular latte and not the salted caramel version listed on the hipsterly chalkboard. 

But I did. And I didn't apologize. Because I am a fucking rebel. 

I’ve been on Project Zero Fucks for the past couple years. Don’t ask me what prompted it since who ever knows why they get sick of their own shit. The evolution of a doormat is slow and confused, and somewhere between middle school and now, the moniker “nice” fell flat. I don’t want to be nice. I want to be a dynamic force of life. Preferably one who sleeps until noon and is generally pleasant, but a force nonetheless. 

It has occurred to me during the course of this unofficial project, that contrary to my countenance and hopeful self-perception, in my spare time, I frequently find myself with a strong urge to punch everyone I see. Which means, more than anything, that no one is ever just naturally nice all the way through. Or at least I am not. And middle school was a ruse. (Separate concepts that are equally true.)

I feel strongly about giving people the benefit of the doubt. You didn’t like your vodka soda? I’m not going to take it personally. You threw your credit card at me instead of handing it over like a civilized human? Probably something terrible happened to you on a Tuesday, or when you were five, or today over lunch, and really I can handle it and pick it back up. People in general have terrible self-awareness and no idea that the way they act comes off any way other than what they hope it looks like in their own heads. 

Forced niceties do not make any of this any easier. It is, actually, much easier and more enjoyable to be nice when no one is making me. Including me. 

So my project has morphed. I have to give certain, controlled fucks about things in order to not combust into a scatter of disorganized emotions. (There is a whole article about this here that is much more intelligently written, and quite compelling.) Project Well-Timed Fucks, then. 

In the first episode of The Wire, (I can’t help myself, I am HOPELESS with this show,) someone who I didn’t know yet because I got all the characters confused until episode three said, 

“He gave a fuck when it wasn’t his turn to give a fuck.” 

In the show, it’s not meant as the compliment I see it to be. But how else do you ever start a revolution than to do exactly that.

Or, you know, send back a latte because you need more sugar. Fucking rebel.

The Merits of Lying

I lied to my parents exactly once. In fifth grade, I told them there would not be any boys at the movie theater with us girls, when in fact, there would be boys there. The fact that none of said lied-about boys had any interest in me was of no merit when I was ultimately found-out and grounded. 

The “found-out” part was mostly my parents taking one look at my face because I am a terrible liar. I am inherently too honest for my own good. I believe in the case of the movies, I had been instructed by my friends to omit the part about the boys coming to meet us. I clearly failed. Death by smirk. But generally, it does not occur to me to say anything other than what is true. 

Except when I travel. Then I’m on some kind of espionage binge. Lies I’ve constructed while traveling range from wearing a fake wedding ring to pretending not to speak English. I’m sure this stems from my deep-seated desire to be a spy, and being somewhere else entirely is the only time I can try that out without any real-life application, training, or knowledge whatsoever. 

I’ve been watching The Wire, which is not helping in either my spy/detective fantasies nor my ability to function without deep suspicion. It may be important to note that by “watching,” I mean, I’ve been staying up until 4 a.m. every night, six episodes deep, unable to separate West Baltimore from my own life. I’m writing this now to keep myself from starting Season 3 in the middle of the night. 

I will refrain from telling you all the reasons I’m hooked on this show. But I will tell you it’s making me wish I were better at the whole lying thing. Because it leads me to believe that if I were better at lying, I could:

1) Interrogate like a boss.

2) Be an actual boss. 

3) Go on a stakeout. (People-watching and snacks!)

4) Instead of my face only looking bitchy when I’m concentrating, I could make it look fierce at anytime. 

5) Drive a brand-new car. I don’t know how this relates to lying, but I feel like the first step to stealing has to be lying. 

6) Stall for more time. (I’m a procrastinator, this is key.)

7) Be in one place while telling people I am in another place. Did you know this was possible? 

8) Instead of waiting to be on an airplane to go off the grid, I could ignore my phone whenever I pleased. 

9) Tap someone else’s phone.

10) Have wild stories of things I’ve done and seen. Perhaps something more exciting than being grounded for going to the movies. 

11) Create an alternate reality to fall back on in case this one really tanks. 

12) Make an undercover drug deal.

13) Bring down an entire drug ring. 

14) Meet Idris Elba. 

I realize these last three are probably only applicable to the TV show, but hey, that’s lying for ya'! Or is it? I don’t really understand how it works.

Multiverse Theory

“You can’t believe in Multiverse Theory,” he said. 

“I can’t? What do you mean?” Because maybe he meant it was impossible. I missed an article or read the last one too quickly and now, here on a bar stool in Cambridge, had talked too far out of my league. Which wouldn’t be an extraordinary circumstance. For all the charm I wish I had, I will trade it for the chance to be right every stupid time. 

This had been going badly from the start. It never really had a chance, though. I don’t know what possesses me to say yes in long strings of positivity. 

I suppose I’m either all in or all out, and sometimes I just so fiercely want to be in.  

He was a badly shaped ghost of a man I thought I loved. And I do love those ghosts. So when he asked me to go to dinner during a week of my tireless yesses, I suckered myself into the exact conversation I knew I’d get with such a hologram. 

“It’s not a thing,” he said. He patted my back for reassurance. A flick like a pop top pricked my spine.

“But, in the last…” 

“It’s not proven.” 

“Well, that’s why it’s a theory,” I said. I smirked. 

“Look, it’s just impossible,” he said. He reached for my back but hesitated. Hovered. Took a sip of fruited bourbon and huffed. 

“What, because you’re an astro-physicist?” 

“Well, yeah. I’m an engineer.”

I stopped smirking. I was eighty percent sure the engineering degree that got him to snowboard for a living did not equate to fielding NASA-level concerns. But I also spent an entire year without an HDMI cable for my HD TV. 

So.

“OK, so then, explain it to me. It’s not disproven right?”

“No…”

“So, why is it impossible?” I wanted to know now. Where was the article I could have read? What is actually happening out there in space? 

When I was little I used to lie awake in bed, paralyzed with fear, because WHAT IS SPACE. What happens when there are no edges? No limit, all infinity. Multiverse Theory is like someone recorded my interrogations of my dad at bedtime and made them real. That not only are there no edges, but there are pockets with no bottom, and maybe even parallel lives. And suddenly, there is a tangible result to my lying in bed, stricken with an endless amount of information and ideas. Tangible being the exact wrong word, but there is no word to make real what theories provide for a restless brain. 

(For the record, Horton Hears a Who really capitalizes on the panic I have with the endless possibilities of space.) 

“You just can’t believe in it.”

“But WHY?”

“Multiple universes just don’t exist. They can’t. If they did, that would really freak me out.” 

My run with saying yes drew to a close. Maybe in another life, he wouldn’t bear any resemblance at all. Maybe in another place I wouldn’t tempt myself with a shimmering illusion. But we’re here, on a Wednesday, and it’s just me and the universe(s), spooking a ghost. 

HolidayJewels, Part 3

My bowl of butter and I attempted an air of mystery on our walk. The deli counter guys gave us a stare as they wrapped up for the day. Cellophane wrap flashed between their hands. The taller of the three men undid four buttons on his butcher’s coat and it flapped open on a diagonal. It didn’t seem to help with ventilation or comfort, but it did expose a maroon t-shirt with a picture of a tongue. 

“You boys better cool it with that wrap before Brad sees yous,” said a voice directly behind my right shoulder. I glanced carefully to see a small woman stocking limes in the produce bin across from the deli counter. Her words scolded, but she giggled and reddened at the top of her cheeks, straight into her hairline, back into her ponytail pulled tight at the middle-back of her head. Her bronzed skin spoke of years past mine, but likely we were about the same age. In another life we might have met in a high school hallway, but we were there now anyway.

The taller deli guy winked at me. I raised my butter bowl as some kind of response and quickly tapped my way to the bakery pen. Awkward suits me better than mystery. 

The butter swirled into something else, and all the elses swelled into something mores. We powdered them, primped them, plated them. I washed our dishes as Paige re-packed the baking tools back into the box. The power washer in the industrial sink made washing a lot faster than at home, but it also splashed me with an uncomfortable amount of spray. If only my terrible roommate could get soaked while doing chores as well. Per the typed chore chart on the refrigerator, it was my turn to clean the unused guest bathroom for the second week in a row and I had already plotted how to get out of it. 

The roommates, sisters, hadn’t yet shown just how terrible they would get. There would be the fallout from all my chore revolts. There would be the time I would forget to drop off the rent at the appointed hour and would wake up to a screaming phone call. There would also, separately, be my financial downfall of teaching yoga full time. Three months later, I would be living on CVS brand, sale-price, trail mix, taking three buses to pick up my car from the impound lot. But this was October and it wasn’t quite bleak yet.  

We had a packed house of 17 people squirming in their metal folding chairs. Brad had secured an amp and a microphone for me, and now stood at the end of our folding table poking at the display products. 

“So, how long have you been doing these,” Brad asked. He meant it to me, but he spoke to the plastic bottle of ground cinnamon. 

“Uh, I think this is my eighth,” I said, smoothing the white tablecloth over the opposite end. I feigned uncertainty, as if by being sure I would be found out of my financial status. I knew exactly how many we had done because I knew exactly when and how much I should be paid. 

“Oh, so you’re a pro now, huh,” Brad chuckled. He set the cinnamon down on top of the nutmeg, built a tower. 

“Oh, something like that,” I said. I re-tied my white apron over my white, sleeved, cotton top and black tailored pants that I had almost definitely pulled off of the floor that morning. There was nothing left to set up or do before we began, but I found it hard to stay still with Brad hovering in our performance space. My job, in all seriousness, was to connect with the people sitting in the metal chairs. This wasn’t an uppity cooking show, this was a demonstration of how to take products most suburban moms would buy for the holidays anyway, and turn it into something the neighborhood families would talk about. 

“Did you try those cookies with the piped frosting? Can you believe Sheryl has three kids under five and she whipped that up?” 

To get Sheryl to believe she could do this, and to get her to believe I didn’t think it was totally disgusting to spray frosting out of a can like Easy Cheese, I had to suspend my actual self. I could have been Sheryl. I was headed for Sheryl. And then I had freaked out and I had run away for a different life. The life of hiding in my room from my terrible roommates, where I picked out a city to move to on a map and budgeted how many Zone bars I could eat that week. Not only did I have to gain Sheryl’s trust while also not wanting her life, but I so badly didn’t want it that I had become a human wrecking ball to bust up any path that led there. 

And it was difficult to be all those things while standing next to Brad and his spice tower. 

“Alright, well Paige and…” Brad paused. “Katie? I’ll let you get to it.” 

I sighed. Baby steps. 

“How are you all doing tonight, are you ready for the holidays?” I asked. Out of the amp echoed a singsong that belonged to an adult I had heard once.

Holiday Jewels, Part 2

“Is there somewhere we can put our things,” I asked. 

“Yeah, you can put your purses over against the wall,” Rhonda said, waving in a general direction as she coughed and walked away. “Hillary, I’m off at five, so I’m out.” 

Hillary stopped the power washer in the sink and turned to face both us and Rhonda. She was the youngest of the three by far, with only faint faint creases in her face. Her warm, blonde hair tufted away from her cheeks in waves. 

“OK, Rhonda. You have a good night. Yeah, you two can put your bags over there in the corner,” Hillary said to us. “A couple of my girlfriends came to that holiday demo last year and said it was real fun. They made some par-fit kind of thing for Christmas and it was a big hit.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said. I was out of steam. We had exactly one hour to make all of the recipes and I had eaten exactly one protein bar and a coffee for the day. 

“It’s perfect for parties,” said Paige. “The recipes are really crowd-pleasers.” Thank goodness for Paige and her positive attitude. I had lied for one sentence and gave up. 

Paige and I left our things in the safety of the bakery and wandered the aisles of the full grocery store, shopping for all the ingredients we would need for the demo. Some for actual cooking, and some for the display. The experience was sponsored by a big-name food company as a way to plug their products for the holidays. Everyone knew to buy the trusted brand of sugar or the big-name spices, but did you know that you could combine these products to make a huge lump of sugared, spice bread and call it something weird? Neither did I. 

By the time we returned to our home base at the bakery section. Hillary had left for the day. We stole as many tall racks as we could find to house our materials and finished products. The demo went in order of the recipes. For each one, I would chat up the crowd with small facts and anecdotes as Chef Paige whisked and mixed and prepped. Then we would take finished products from the racks and hand them out as samples. 

It had been a month since Paige had called me and asked me to help emcee this project. She had already been hired as a chef to tour around suburban Chicago grocery stores. I called her after she put out a Facebook message asking for people with entertainment backgrounds to apply for a new gig. Entertainment was a stretch - I was an independent contractor teaching mostly art-based workshops to students and teachers through a museum. Though, I had a background in theater circa high school and college, and I wasn’t afraid of talking in front of large groups of humans. 

I don’t have a “how yoga saved my life” story. I’ve been doing yoga since I was a very strange 12-year old and I’ve never had an issue with substance abuse. In the fall of 2010, when I started yoga teacher training, I was also living with terribly mean people, having just abruptly ended a serious relationship. I had taken this job as the host of a grocery store cooking demo because, while it was sort of acting, it was definitely paying me enough to eat just more than one protein bar and a cup of coffee per day. 

So, yoga didn’t save my life. And it made me pretty broke. And the fact that I was the most sad just before and during teacher training would be what you would call “circumstantial.” If you want a “how yoga saved my life” story, you will have to read a different story. But, before I was a yoga teacher, I had one million weird jobs. And this was one of them. 

“Does the rack have enough room for the rest of these buckeyes,” asked Paige. 

“Um, I think? I’ll check,” I said. I walked into the walk-in freezer adjacent to the wash pit in the bakery. The bakery, as evidenced by our sprawling co-option, was the hub of the Jewel. The fridge, the wash pit, the counter space, the massive oven, all cordoned off with a sweet little swinging door behind the cake display. The bakery women, called girls, were the envy of the store, and it was obvious we didn’t deserve to play in their space. 

“Yeah, we can fit like four more trays,” I called from the walk-in. I swung around the rack taller than me to face the chilled shelves. Piles of paper sacks labeled “cookies,” “oatmeal cookies,” “chocolate chunk cookies,” all stared back at me in their miserably disheveled state. The bakery deal was a scam - none of these baked goods started from scratch. They were all portioned out and pre-packaged. They were the frozen tater tots of desserts, passing off as a real operation due to their surroundings. 

I shuffled out of the walk-in with my careful, metal taps. I had just discovered Santa wasn’t real, and his stand-in had bought toys at a wholesale, discount retailer. But we had a show to do, and no one but me was surprised that the Jewel bakery did not measure sugar by hand. 

For all of its false old-world charm, the bakery also did not have a microwave. In order to melt the butter, I had to take a bowl to the break room, up the stairs and around the corner. The stairs were lined with cardboard stars, reminding employees to smile, help out the customers, and most importantly, shine. 

Every microwave is a little different, but they all smell vaguely like soup. I’m not sure if I learned this from the script or from Paige, but to accurately melt butter and/or chocolate, you use 10 second intervals and stir it between rounds. 

“Employee of the Month” Erica stared at me from above the microwave as I waited. There were no criteria listed, so I had to assume that regardless of her mugshot, Erica must really “shine like a Jewel” as the stairs instructed. 

No one seemed concerned with me or my bowl of butter on my way back down to the bakery. Although judging by the strong scent of soup, employees seemingly walked around with mysterious bowls all the time

Holiday Jewels, Part 1

There was supposed to be someone to greet us, but there never was. Paige held the box of equipment, carefully packaged to fit in one trip from the car. I leaned my heavy shoulder bag against the customer service counter and pedaled my feet. We had done eight of these so far; we were contracted for ten. The balded heels of my shoes gave no support, but they did tap a soothing metallic sound against the grocery store tile. 

“You’re here to do what?” Lynnette said from behind an inordinately tall, wooden wall. 

“We’re here for the holiday demo,” I said, craning my neck to look up at Lynnette on her customer service throne. She could seemingly survey the entire Jewel store from her perch, but still could not find Brad, the store manager. 

“Paging Mr. McCarver to customer service. Brad McCarver, you are needed at the front,” Lynnette said into a hidden microphone, in a tone much different than she used with us. 

“I don’t know where he’s got to, but he’s the only one who knows where to put you,” Lynnette said. Back in her regular voice, the kind parents use with bored children. She gave us a wave to move to the side, and furrowed her brow under her nicotine-yellow, ramen curls. 

I took out the scripts to review while we waited. It was an hour presentation and we had done it enough times to go off book, but it was a security blanket and I always felt like we missed something. Plus it kept my brain from wandering to my dangerously low bank account. 

“Hello girls,” Brad McCarver said, loudly, as he walked toward us. He had a stunted gait for someone so tall, and a voice that bellowed lower than his thin frame could likely support for long periods of time. “How’re we doing today?”

“Good, thanks,” we said. I wanted to say, “well,” like a good grammarian, but I couldn’t get it to come out. 

“I’m Brad,” said Brad. He smoothed his white button-down with his hands, flipped his Bears tie up at the end. His hair, if he were a woman, would be described as “mousy,” but since he was a man, he paired it with a signature mustache. “It’s Kate, and…?”

“Paige,” said Paige. 

“Great,” said Brad with too much enthusiasm for only learning two people’s first names. “So, what do we need to get started?”

I began to worry that Brad wanted to do the demo with us since he kept saying, “we.” I pictured trying to talk him through how to cook the braided cherry dessert and making jokes at his expense to the audience. He would get cherry sauce on his tie and we’d all laugh at how bad Jay Cutler was.

“We need to use the bakery, so if you can help us set up there,” Paige said. 

“And we have a list of things to get - do you have a card for us to use, or how should we buy them,” I asked. 

“Of course, of course,” Brad said. “Let me get you over to the girls in the bakery, and then you can get started.”

We walked through produce section. Workers stocking the vegetables gave head nods to Brad, stared at us. 

“Girls! How’re we doing today? Smells good in here,” Brad said. 

The “girls” in the bakery were three women with an average age of 58. The bakery section smelled mostly the same at the rest of the store, with a cloud cover of chocolate cookies. The three women blushed at Brad’s presence. They glared at us. 

“This is Kate, and…” 

“Paige.”

“Kate and Paige. They are here to do the holiday cooking demo for the store. So can we show them around, let them set up? How’s the baking today?”

“Oh, Brad, you know how it goes on a Monday,” the woman washing dishes against the wall said. 

“Yeah, and Rhonda’s been gone all weekend so she don’t know where an’thing is no more,” the second woman said from behind a rack of rolls. 

“Psshh, this place,” the third woman, presumably Rhonda, said as she pulled two trays of cookies out of an oven the size of a futon. 

“Haha, alright ladies,” Brad said. He stuck his hands in his pockets like he just realized he had pockets and should put them to use. “Well, I’ll let you get started, you let me know if you need anything.” 

Brad backed out of the bakery pen and disappeared past the dairy case.  

“So, you girls professional bakers?” Rhonda asked as she peered into the box of equipment Paige had set on the steel counter. 

“She is,” I said, pointing to Paige. “I’m here to talk to people.” 

“Hmph,” Rhonda said. “What kind of recipes you got?” I handed her the small, magazine-paper booklet we were to hand out to the audience. 

“They’re pretty good,” I said. They were not. I feared her reproach as a professional baker herself - us, using processed cans of crap to make recipes that tasted fine but not interesting on any level other than you could make them and keep four children alive at the same time. An underrated selling point, sure, but not what one could call “fancy.”

Find My Eyes

In the hallway between After and Before, there are exactly 82 steps. 

“Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,” she whispered. It helped to say the numbers out loud, to visualize the march down that immortal hall. It helped. Since it was better to wake up drenched in sweat than not to fall asleep at all. 

“They say sweat, t’s good to clean out though, so eff my body’s doin t on ts own, t’s a good thing, uh?” He had asked her. When it was May and he was 13. 

“Who says,” she had asked him. “Did you tell the nurse?”

“Nah,” he said. His gaze broke free and wandered upwards, to the heavy blinds shading the classroom from the afternoon sun. 

“Find my eyes, James,” she said. “Find my eyes and try that again.”

He blinked toward her face but couldn’t stay put. Something, a tentacle or a shooting star, waved him away again. 

“No, Ms. Carson.”

“Any reason you get so hot when you sleep, James? Do you have nightmares? Are things happening when it’s nighttime?”

“Nah,” he said. His eyes flitted but landed on her shoulder for a solid second. “No. Just gets hot.” 

“Do you get hot when you take the medicine, James?” Her face was level with his. He sat, squirming, at his desk. At the mention of the medicine, James grabbed a pencil in his right hand and her arm with his left. She bent the pencil toward the desk and removed her arm from his aim. “James, focus.”

No one had told her about the Aripiprazole at first. She had approached the school nurse on her lunch break after finding James less jittery, but at a complete loss with forming sentences. By April, he had seemed more aware again.

“Psh, I’m int takin’ that stuff,” he said. 

“Why not?”

“I int have it. Big James took it.”

“Your dad took it? Do you know why?”

James shrugged.

“I unna know. He said he’s a use it.” 

All packaged away at the front end of the hallway. Inside the classroom before she ever opened the door. Steps negative 12 to zero. 

“…Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four…” she continued. It helped. It wasn’t perfect, and the sweat had already beaded under the bottom of her hair, ran like a goblin along the waistline of her shorts. By morning she would be sunk in it, laid in her own, damp shadow as a liquid coffin. The opposite end of the hallway, tucked away in this room with no light and no shade. 

And in between, those steps. Step 64 is where she had known something was wrong. The door to the library room was open too soon. The students were too quiet. If they weren’t in a line, they would generally be in a scatter, leaping, touching anything they could find. Instead, it was a crescent shape she found. A small moon curved around its stars. James. A thin line of blood streamed from the end of a pencil stuck into his left forearm. His right hand gripped the throat of the girl he loved. Her feet dangled an inch and a half above the ground, her head dimpled the bulletin board butcher paper. 

Her gurgled gasps barely broke the surface. They made as much noise as her right, untied shoelace did as it tapped the ground. All those steps and all that time, and this last bit expanded to take up all the room. 

One kid to the room across the hall. One kid to the principal’s office. One kid to stand beside her while she tried to pull him away. 

“James,” she said quietly. “James find my eyes.”

But even as she said it she knew his eyes were gone. No longer hummingbirds to every object around, now they were locked in, focused in the way no one intended. The girl had turned him down. Said he smelled like piss and sweat. He stared down her insults, watched her eyes roll back.

“…Eighty, eighty-one, eighty-two,” she says, choking. She fills the space between the After and the Before with a pool of sweat every night. Every night hoping against what she knew, and reliving what died. An endless loop of echoes and steps.