1999 arrived with little fanfare for Tabitha, having elected to simply spend the evening reading with Hannah and then retire to bed at her usual time. Waiting until midnight to watch the celebrations on television and count down to the ball drop had never interested her much—and as fourteen-year-olds, none of her friends were doing much of anything for New Years Eve besides spending time with their families. The Williams family threw another lakehouse party, but invitation was only for drinking-age folk, and even Mrs. Macintire declined to attend this year.

An empty bottle and a pair of champagne glasses in the sink on the morning of January first was Tabitha’s only real reminder that they were entering into a new year. She wasn’t put out about it, as she’d seen it all before and the kind of New Years excitement one shared with friends and family had never had much to do with her. Perhaps that would change in the next few years to come, and maybe she had some romantic notions of having someone special to kiss when the clock strikes twelve in this lifetime… but not just yet, not while she was still so young.

“Did you stay up until midnight?” Tabitha asked.

“Just about,” Mrs. Macintire chuckled, smiling over her cup of coffee. “Might’ve dozed off a bit—hubby woke me up just before the countdown, though. I think I’m gettin’ old.”

“What’s that say about me, then?!” Tabitha teased. “I think I went to bed before nine.”

“Eh, you’re not missing too much,” Mrs. Macintire shrugged. “We usually go to the Williams’ for their big thing, but wasn’t really feeling it this year. Too much excitement for Darren, don’t want him goofing around at a party and popping out his cork.”

“Right,” Tabitha grimaced. “Gross.”

She wasn’t sure who had started the joke, but one of the topics the Macintires kidded Hannah about over dinners was that Officer Macintire simply had a wine cork plugged into the bullet hole in his sternum. He still wore a small bandage covering up the area, and of course refused to let the little girl peek under them to check to see if he actually had a cork there or not. Hannah was extremely skeptical, but that just seemed to make the whole thing even more amusing for the pair of parents. Tabitha put on polite smiles for their more macabre humor but offered no comment.

“You ready for your big day today?” Mrs. Macintire asked.

“Today’s not the day I’m worried about,” Tabitha quirked a smile at the woman in return to show her confidence. “I can even just fail each of the make-up finals miserably and still be fine. Springton final tests for a semester only count for twenty percent of the final grade.”

“Well, it’s not just the finals, right?” Mrs. Macintire gave her a look. “Weren’t you out for, what, two full months? Two and a half? October, November, December?”

“I was told it wouldn’t be held against me,” Tabitha tapped the scuffed fiberglass of her cast. “Given the circumstances. If I do fine on the make-up finals, I think they’ll sweep everything under the rug and just have me start second semester like nothing happened.”

“Hmm,” Mrs. Macintire nodded. “And, you think you’ll do okay on the tests?”

“I know I won’t fail them,” Tabitha assured her. “Even if I do poorly, I don’t see doing worse than a B minus. I’m not worried at all.”

“Well,” Mrs. Macintire paused. “That makes this awkward, but… to encourage you, I was going to say we’ll do something special if you do well.”

“Something special?”

“Yeah. It’s—I know it’s kind of sudden to bring up now, right before you do your make-up tests, but it’s something we should have talked about. When Hannah gets all E’s on her report cards—E’s are exceeding or exceptional or something, it’s an elementary school thing apparently—we reward her. The Williams have always done the same thing for Matthew. A lot of parents do. I, uh, well I hesitate to even ask, but did your parents…?”

“I don’t think so,” Tabitha shook her head. “I feel like they would get cross if my grades were bad, but they were never really bad. They were happy for me when I started to do well recently, but… that was it, really. How I do in school never really affected them.”

“Hmm,” Mrs. Macintire frowned. “Well. I’m not gonna judge them, because it’s not my place to—but if I were to judge, this is the face I’d be making. Hah. Oh, Tabitha lighten up, I’m kidding. It’s fine if they don’t care, I guess, but we care. Alright? What I mean to say is, I know this is sudden, but if you ace all of your exams, we’ll do something special. Spoil you a bit—whatever you want. You doing great in school is something that should be a big deal.”

“Um,” Tabitha gave her a nervous smile. “Just. The problem with that, is—you already spoil me. Tons. You’ve given me a place to stay, you, you handed me all of that money—”

“Uhp uhp uhp,” Mrs. Macintire held up a finger to stop her. “That was your money, it was just a little advance from your settlements. All of that’s getting transferred into that account thing, and your medical expenses will draw right from that. Remind me later this week, and we can go down and get you some checks and a balance book so you can start learning that stuff yourself.”

“Checks?” Tabitha repeated, going pale. “...A balance book?!”

“Of course,” Mrs. Macintire took another sip of her coffee. “You’re old enough to learn how to start managing your money and totalling your balance. Right?”

“Right,” Tabitha hid a wince. “I just—it’s a lot to wrap my head around?”

Writing out personal checks just wasn’t something people did much after the early two thousands. Nor was physically penning out numbers to calculate your own account balance like some sort of neanderthal scratching tally marks into the wall of their cave—digital banking tracked all of that with perfect accuracy and absolute convenience.

I only ever HAD one checkbook, way back when I opened my first account with Commonwealth Kentucky Bank, Tabitha remembered. Don’t think I wrote a single check from it. I think I scribbled in like, two whole pages of my little personal balance book, and then just ignored it? Even back then it must have been 2002, and I could just click to the website and see my current balance, or grab one of the bajillion bank statements I kept getting in the mail. After that, everyone was just using debit cards for everything, and setting up automatic payments for bills online. They… they don’t like, actually write out and snail-mail checks to pay their bills here in the late nineties… do they?! PLEASE tell me they don’t.

“Don’t be overwhelmed,” Mrs. Macintire seemed to misread her expression. “When we sit down with the bank people they’ll walk you through everything.”

“I can handle it,” Tabitha promised with a sheepish smile.

Okay, so maybe my parents never spoiled me… but future conveniences ABSOLUTELY have. It’s no big deal. Write down the numbers, subtract what I spend, keep track of it. Simple stuff. Just a necessary hassle for a few more years.

“Well, let’s get this show on the road,” Mrs. Macintire said, finishing her coffee with one last swig. “You’ve got your backpack? Number two pencil, eraser?”

“I’m all set!”

School wasn’t back in session from winter break until the third, so Springton High was once again still, eerie, and quiet when they arrived. The bus loop was empty, but the adjacent parking lot was half-full, and Mrs. Macintire cruised on in and found a spot close to the offices, right where the spaces reserved for staff gave way to the ones for parents and students. The Student Parking sign had a laminated sheet next to it detailing how those with permits or driver’s licenses could apply for a student parking tag, and Tabitha nearly gave herself whiplash attempting to quickly scan through the large print as they pulled past it.

I could… actually have a vehicle in high school this time through, Tabitha realized. Not sure why that never really occurred to me. Casey drives already, Matthew’s just starting to. In my first life dad taught me to drive when I was seventeen, but buying a car was just absolutely out of the question, no one even considered it.

“Here we are,” Mrs. Macintire said. “I’m comin’ in with you, but I might not stay.”

“Oh—you can just drop me off, if you want,” Tabitha said. “You don’t have to—”

“Not just gonna dump you here and say ‘yeah good luck, figure it all out,’ and have you call me when you’re done,” Mrs. Macintire snorted. “Again, Tabitha. It’s a parent thing. Humor me.”

“Sorry,” Tabitha winced.

“Sorry?” Sandra arched an eyebrow as she switched off the engine.

“I mean—I shouldn’t be your problem in the first place. If—”

“Oh, stop,” Mrs. Macintire blew a raspberry at her. “C’mon. What happened to calling me ‘mom,’ huh?”

The pair left the Acura behind and walked on into the main office. To Tabitha’s surprise, she wasn’t the only teen there, a boy off to the side was waiting with his mother as well.

“Make-up exams?” The woman behind the counter asked.

“Yes… I think,” Tabitha said. “I need to re-enroll first, though, probably. And um, and also put in a change of residence, if I need to register or anything to be put on the list for a bus stop.”

“Hoo-boy, alrighty,” The woman said. “Name?”

“Tabitha Moore.”

Enrollment turned out to be such a tedious process that they had to interrupt it so that Tabitha could be led down the hall into a room to take the make-up exams. The boy from earlier was there, as well as two girls—one of the girls recognized her and clearly kept eyeballing her, the others paid no attention to her. None of the students there spoke with one another or otherwise seemed familiar with each other, and Tabitha wasn’t even sure what grades they were all in. In the end, it didn’t matter; their testing proctor passed out different packets for each of them, and in no time at all Tabitha was immersing herself in the whimsical world of high school algebra.

Write each expression in a different way using the commutative law of addition. 1 + 4 =

Tabitha actually cringed, embarrassed on their behalf to have such an easy question on their semester final. She scanned quickly through the list of multiple choice answers, found 4 + 1, and penciled in the bubble. Commutative law of addition wasn’t real high school level math, and proving that numbers added up the same no matter which order you added them in felt like something that had been exhaustively taught already in both elementary and middle school.

I DEFINITELY remember more difficult questions on the middle school finals—this is a joke.

The next three questions all followed suit, and then after that, Springton High delved into what must have been the real meat and jumped all the way forward to address the commutative law of multiplication.

10.1 x 2.8 =

The answer was—shockingly—2.8 x 10.1, and with an internal groan Tabitha took in the next three similar problems at a glance and penciled in the bubbles for the correct answers. Commutative law wound up being as simple as just writing the exact same numbers in the question, but backwards. Actually multiplying 10.1 x 2.8 would have been more of a challenge, although Tabitha did notice one of the multiple choice options was 28.28, which would have snared any freshman who failed to read what the problem was actually asking them to do.

Maybe that’s the real trick, Tabitha pondered. To get all these kids thinking that there’s no way it’s this simple, that they must be wanting you to solve. Nope, I’m reading it right. Says ‘write each expression in a different way,’ and 2.8 x 10.1 is right there in the answers.

The next section was covering associative law, and rather than the difficulty ramping up it was just increasingly annoying to double check the number sequences that began to spread the whole way across the page in parentheses and then nesting in several parentheses. It felt like busy work, and although it was frustrating, Tabitha knew that this was the way they were always going to evaluate their student’s comprehension of what felt like the basics of the basics. After associative law came what Tabitha considered to be the quintessential algebra problems, with missing numbers and variables, which was unerringly just using simple arithmetic to complete equations.

So, Tabitha solved for X, then she solved for A, and moving down through the questions on the page at speed she solved for B as well. Algebraic expressions were a joke to most everyone who had been through higher level math, Tabitha didn’t fail to remember what exponents were and how they worked, simplifying linear expressions was easy, and there was nothing much at freshman level to give her pause until she reached quadratic equations.

Ughhh, they’re not even HARD, they’re just SO ANNOYING, Tabitha couldn’t help but make a face. Fuck. Just even looking at them pisses me off.

Simplify each expression by combining like terms. -3v² + 9 +5v² - 9v² +8.

She’d scrubbed a good deal of these nuisances out of her memory from her past life, and only the few months of school relearning them for homework refreshed her memory enough for her to reach -7v² + 17. It was humbling in a way, because while plenty of ninth grade math she could breeze through effortlessly, there were still definitely some areas where staring at complex sequences of numbers felt like it was turning her brain into mush. How were these problems just a page or two after busywork like commutative law?! In Tabitha’s opinion, the difficulty curve went right into the stratosphere, and she was forced to take her time working things out with a sour expression.

I’m more of an arts and literature girl, that’s all, Tabitha told herself. I swear I’m not stupid. It’s just that I used all of this stuff EXACTLY ONCE in my last life, and it was only whenever I was in school like this.

She had never had any love for math, so she found herself looking down on most of it for being too simple, and then infuriated when she couldn’t see past the numbers to what she was supposed to do. Because after arriving at the answer, Tabitha was always forced to accept that she had been overthinking things, and once she got the knack of it again the multiple choice bubbles filled up with answers one after another. Even more galling, right after the hateful quadratic equations, the test moved right back on to figurative smooth-brain stuff like simplifying basic polynomials.

Simplify each expression. Z - 1 + 4

It’s Z + 3, right? Tabitha glared daggers at the page. Right?! Why weren’t these shoved back into the kiddie section with the other stupidly simple ones?! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills! Are we going to—oh. Oh, I see. THAT’S how it is, huh?

After finishing the algebra semester exam, Tabitha double-checked through all of her answers and found none of them wanting; she raised her hand and the testing proctor came over and took her booklet and answer form and replaced it with a literature exam. While for the most part just as easy as the math had been, this one was more comfortable to Tabitha, like slipping on an old pair of shoes that was well broken in. Just like her language arts final had in middle school, this ninth grade English test ended off with an essay portion, but to her dismay she had to write in accordance to the given prompt.

Should high school students be required to wear uniforms?

This was a difficult one for Tabitha to sink her teeth into, because it honestly wasn’t a topic she cared all that much about. There were obvious pros and cons to either side that could be argued, and now it was up to her to turn that into an essay cohesive enough that she would hopefully be placed in Elena’s AP English class. Tabitha bit her lip for a moment as she considered which stance to take for her writing, and then finally put her pencil to the provided paper.

Why requiring student uniforms is missing the forest for the trees, by Tabitha Moore.

Isn’t it naive to think all students learn in high school is the provided curriculum? Teenagers are brought together to socialize, to share in experiences with one another, communicate, bond, and learn to experience their role within a team. Muting one of the dominant forms of self-expression throughout the most important formative years for the sake of simplicity or practicality teaches conformity by suppressing individuality.

Even just staring at her opening paragraph she wanted to cringe at it—but, this was hand-written, and she didn’t have the freedom to edit as she went on the fly like she did with typed documents. Normally, on her first read-through pass she would have eliminated or reworded that redundant ‘experience’ in the second line, and reordering her list of extra-curricular aspects could have given a stronger impact.

I certainly can’t discount that uniforms are simple and practical, so I’ll instead tackle why those points aren’t enough, Tabitha decided. I know one of the reasons always propped up for uniforms was that it supposedly increased solidarity among a student body and therefore would reduce bullying or kids being ostracized by the crowd—but, hasn’t Japan required uniforms for decades, and don’t they have a pretty horrifying bullying epidemic that leads to a ton of suicides?

The problem with bringing that up was that she couldn’t cite her sources on it. Was it a strong enough assertion that she would be able to spin it as a generalization? Tabitha wasn’t sure. The only other talking points in favor of uniforms she remembered were convenience, and cost. As someone who grew up in poverty, both of those could be difficult arguments to overcome—but not insurmountable. Convenience in this case meant choice was stricken away from them, and Tabitha now knew that putting together an outfit for the day could be enormous fun. Likewise, cost cut both ways, because while a set of uniforms was cheaper than a wide array of daywear… wasn’t the cost of things an important lesson in and of itself?

If one is to take a further step back from the problem and acknowledge WHY modern attire exists in such endless variation, we arrive at another conclusion; everyone is different. Color of skin, stature, weight, body type—we are NOT a homogeneous people, so how can a single standardized uniform be equally flattering to all required to wear it? Uniforms are a ‘one size fits most’ approach, and I find it a poor compromise that shafts many teenagers who would otherwise be learning to accentuate their strengths.

Tabitha wasn’t sure she should be using terminology like shafted in a school essay, but as she reviewed her draft with a wry smile, she rather liked how it came across. Word choice could use a little work, she liked using accentuate but didn’t feel like she was getting the most leverage from the words just by pairing it with something blunt like ‘strengths.’ A more visual example of a certain body type being made to wear a uniform that looked terrible on them would go a long ways, but for the moment Tabitha was drawing a blank on that.

I’ll think it over and come back to it, Tabitha decided as she continued. They gave me enough sheets that I can rewrite this completely at least once, and I should have plenty of time, still. I know for sure I’m absolutely keeping the em dash—the em dash is the SUPERIOR punctuation, and my teachers here—like it or not—are going to have to get used to seeing it more often.

“So?” Mrs. Macintire asked with an arched eyebrow. “How was it?”

“Easy,” Tabitha answered in an honest voice. “There shouldn’t be any problems.”

“See? What’d I tell you?” Mrs. Macintire asked the administrator woman manning the counter at the front office. “She’s some kinda genius.”

“Not hardly,” Tabitha denied, blushing with embarrassment. “It’s just freshman level stuff.”

The administrator chuckled at that, sharing another look with Mrs. Macintire. The two seemed to have been chatting throughout the wait while Tabitha was testing, and the social ease with which that kind of spontaneous interaction happened here still seemed strange and outlandish to Tabitha. The awkward disconnect between people gathered together in the same space for extended periods of time was still the exception, rather than the norm. It would be years until the ‘new normal’ was everyone being absorbed in their phones or tablets.

“Well,” the administrator woman smacked a sheaf of papers on the counter with a flap. “We will have to wait for your english and math results before we can figure out where we’ll place you in those courses, but I think we have most everything else filled out, here. What do you think?”

“Classes for… Biology, World History, Art 2D,” Tabitha read off the classes they were penciling her into for the second semester. “Computer Science? Is that typing?”

“Business Technology is typing, I think Computer Science I think is more on the programming side of things,” the administrator remarked. “What do you think?”

“Hmm,” Tabitha pondered it over. “I’m not sure. Technology is advancing so quickly now, I would worry that anything I learn there will rapidly just become outdated.”

“We have leeway to move some things around, still,” the woman said. “We could put you in Spanish 1, instead?”

“The only input I had was to keep you out of phys-ed courses for a while,” Mrs. Macintire said. “On account of your injuries.”

“Well, um, no—I would like to have a physical course,” Tabitha shook her head. “I won’t be able to do everything right away, but I do want to recover and rehabilitate and become active again, and it would be great to have an instructor who could help me with any of that.”

“Oh! Uh—we actually don’t have ‘phys ed’ as a course, anymore,” the office woman spoke up. “But, we do have Personal Fitness, and then Weight Lifting as freshman electives. I think Personal Fitness is half nutritional studies and such in the classroom, and then the other half of it is a lot like what you’d expect of a phys ed course.”

“Personal Fitness then, please, if at all possible,” Tabitha nodded. “Uh, for the performing or fine arts, do you have any availability for either creative writing or theater stuff? My mother was very keen on entering me into that as soon as possible.”

“We do have Theater, but it starts with sophomores and up, I’m afraid,” the woman shook her head. “Otherwise for fine arts, everything either starts at Art 2D as a requisite and moves into Drawing I or Painting I, or we put you into Band I if you’re more musically inclined. I think there is a creative writing class, but again it’s not for your grade level, and it would depend on how your English scores go from the testing.”

“They have your Art 2D down as your final class of the day, I thought you’d want that,” Mrs. Macintire pointed out with a smile. “Because, from what I understand, right after last class on Thursdays in the art room, it goes right into Art Club meetings.”

“Oh! That would be convenient, I suppose,” Tabitha mused. “Let’s go with that for now, then, and then I guess I’ll have to speak with whichever English teacher I wind up with about sneaking me into creative writing.”

“Alrighty!” The administrator chirped, taking one of the pages back and sitting again to click through menus on her computer. “Should be just a minute and I’ll get another one printed out. Your bus route should be there, we already have a stop just towards the end of your street. You’re all registered and good to go, your bus will be marked J-13, and you’ll look for that at the end of school days when you head towards the bus loop.”

“That sounds great, thank you,” Tabitha said, glancing over the paper. “Were there any other issues with missing coursework from first semester?”

“Nope nope nope, nothing like that,” the woman assured her. “Mrs. Cribb had you down on leave of absence, and then that turned right into medical leave. No one should be giving you any grief—all of your teachers were spoken to, nothing that happened was your fault, and none of your teachers had the slightest doubts you would have passed everything with flying colors—you’re the one with several recommendations to skip on up a grade level! You still don’t want do to that?”

“No, no,” Tabitha shook her head. “I’d prefer to be in with those my own age, right now.”

“If you’re really sure,” the woman gave her a wry smile. “It’s just—if you did advance a grade level, it’d open up most of the courses you were asking for. We could give you the testing for it today, even, if you’d like.”

“I—” Tabitha hesitated for a moment, shooting a glance towards Mrs. Macintire’s too-proud smile. “No, but thank you.”

“If you’re sure,” the woman said again. “Well, in that case I think we’re all set to to go—we should have your testing today graded in the next couple days, and then we’ll finalize you into either Algebra II or Geometry for math, and then it looks like you’re headed to either Honors English or AP English. We’ll give you a call once they know for sure.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Macintire beamed with pride in a way that Tabitha didn’t remember her own parents ever exhibiting. “I think we’re off to celebrate, then!”

“No! No,” Tabitha protested with a weak smile. “No more shopping—we, we don’t even know how the tests went, today. For all you know I could have flunked everything!”

“In which case… we’ll soften your sorrows with some shopping,” Mrs. Macintire laughed. “C’mon, kiddo.”

“I—I was just at the mall not that long ago!”

“But, this is back to school shopping, it’s different! Hannah needs her new things anyways—you wouldn’t leave poor little old me alone shopping with Hannah, would you? That’d be downright irresponsible, honey.”

Mrs. Moore’s vision swam with pure terror in the unforgiving overhead lights of the supermarket, and simply functioning was already the limit of her abilities. Her mouth kept filling up with saliva and nervous gulps and swallows in case she was suddenly expected to speak had her feeling off-kilter and short of breath.

“Did you get that hon, or you need me to show you again?” Tracy asked, doing a performative slow turn away from the Food Lion register to give Mrs. Moore that unreadable stare again.

Just beyond Tracy in the checkout aisle, a bearded man who was waiting on them to finish the sale and hand over a receipt regarded Mrs. Moore with visible impatience. A gamut of grocery items had already been piled onto their conveyor by the next customer, who was also standing there, and beyond him there was the next, and the next—a line of them had formed.

“Uh, it’s—I think I got it,” Mrs. Moore lied.

She absolutely couldn’t bear the pressure of holding everyone up, and she had no way to articulate that she didn’t understand the sales process, that Tracy was moving through things too fast for her to follow, that there was no way to ask her to slow down when everyone was standing there in a row, irritated, staring them down. The gallon jugs of milk were forming beads of condensation as they warmed, frozen goods were surely thawing out, vegetable stalks tied up in those transparent produce bags wilted in the roaring overhead heat of the Food Lion.

With nothing else but a dismissive look, Tracy turned back to her job and ripped off the receipt paper to hand to the man.

“You have yourself a nice day, now,” Tracy rasped.

“Have—have a nice day,” Mrs. Moore pleaded.

The man’s receipt was already crumpled in his hand, and he strode off without comment. Although at first glance the exchange seemed impolite, Mrs. Moore was recognizing now that the man wasn’t that miffed by the glacial speed of service. The customer, one of countless streaming by in an endless queue, wasn’t even thinking about them at all anymore. While waiting he was maybe annoyed, but the moment the hangup was resolved and he could move on, he had already forgotten them.

Mrs. Moore wasn’t sure if that was a relief or not. It was better to be invisible, scarcely noticed by them and quickly passing out of thought. Surely. But, also—the entire cashier clerk experience was strangely dehumanizing, in ways she had been unable to realize until forced to stand on this side of the counter. When she dared to glance past their station and to the Food Lion cashier working at the next one, or the next, the same encounter played out endlessly.

As workers here they weren’t people, really, they were fixtures of the Food Lion, they played out their same task in repeat ad nauseam, forever, or at least until their shifts were over. Trapped in an unceasing horror of repetition as an endless array of products and faces streamed through their checkouts. The simple act of paying for groceries at the checkout was such an ordinary, trivial thing that she had taken for granted her entire life. Watching as that simple moment was instead stretched unnaturally into an unending revolving cycle of checkouts and nothing but checkouts, in what she was told were four-hour-long unbroken blocks—it was more than a little maddening.

“Hi, how are you,” Tracy asked the next customer in her personless monotone.

It was a greeting without any greeting in it; it was unconvincing script delivered in such a way as to indicate that while a courtesy was being offered, a response from the customer was neither expected nor particularly cared for. A dead voice.

With practiced motions Tracy operated the conveyor switch with one hand and drew item after item past the glimmering red laser of the barcode scanner with her other. The movements were so smooth they were almost hypnotic, and Mrs. Moore watched in what felt like a trance as with a blip, blip, blip the terminal registered barcodes and fed numbers to station eight’s point of sale device.

The store was crowded, and there was altogether too much motion and activity pressing in on all sides for Shannon to even begin trying to perceive everything at once. A sort of numbing tunnel-vision had formed until her awareness shrank to just her immediate surroundings, and still it was all so overwhelming she wanted to burst into tears. The Food Lion cashier clerk apron she’d been given hung from her neck and struggled to wrap around the coat she wore—she felt she looked ridiculous, in the heat of Food Lion’s furnace system blowing hot air near the doors she was stifled with sweat, and she knew that if that assistant store manager John didn’t rescue her soon, she was going to hyperventilate.

“Now—hey, watch what I’m doin’, yer gonna be on yer own tomorrow,” Tracy admonished, waving Mrs. Moore in closer to the terminal. “These here? These, an’ any of the stuff in produce bags like this, they ain’t gon’ have a barcode. You gotta punch in the PLU y’self, and set ‘em on here jus’ like—so, like that, an’ the machine’ll weigh ‘em. The codes are…?”

“The codes are, they’re on the laminate thing?” Mrs. Moore was frantic to answer, because twenty minutes ago when Tracy asked this, she didn’t know, but should have. It was one of the first things Tracy had explained. “The laminate thing hanging on the ring there below the, the—”

“That’s right, have the sheet hanging right here at all the stations,” Tracy narrated as if by rote. “You won’t need it ‘fore too long, you’ll remember ‘em all. But, look here—cauliflower. See here at cauliflower? Read me this PLU. For cauliflower.”

“Th-the PLU number, it’s four five seven two,” Mrs. Moore leaned in to read the listing off at a stammer. “Cauliflower; four, five, seven, two.”

“And, we punch in like so—and—there,” Tracy tapped the code in, saw the price pop up, and had the baggie of cauliflower off the scale and into a grocery bag before Mrs. Moore could even back out of the way of the woman’s elbow.

It was busy, too busy for Tracy to be training her, and in truth Tracy wasn’t supposed to be training her—either assistant store manager John in the intimidating vest and tie hadn’t communicated this properly, or Tracy didn’t care. Every other minute or so, just long enough for Mrs. Moore’s panicked attention to lapse in the direction of something else, Tracy would explain a single facet of the job or quiz her on something she’d explained earlier.

I-I’m not supposed to be training yet, this, this shouldn’t be my REAL job training, right?! Mrs. Moore fought off the creeping grasp of hysteria. I was supposed to just, just stand by and watch one of the cashiers, so I could get a better idea of what I might be doing. That’s what he said! It’s been, what, AN HOUR of this already?! Where the hell did assistant store manager John even run off to?! Please, PLEASE come and save me!

A little over an hour ago, Mrs. Moore had been seated in a cramped and cluttered back office for her hiring interview. Food Lion was the only place she’d put in an application that had called her back, and after her insides wrenching into knots with nervous anticipation and nearly throwing up her breakfast, Shannon Moore had dressed up as presentable as possible, stiffened her chin, and gone in for the job interview.

Except, there was no interview.

Assistant store manager John instead ran her through what she realized was orientation, explained how great it would be to have her because they were so short on seasonal help, and immediately threw her to the wolves. When he suggested she don the Food Lion apron today and observe for a bit at one of the registers, Mrs. Moore had been thrilled and quickly agreed—it seemed like despite all of her fears, she had this job in the bag! Of course she would agree, she was eager to prove herself to her prospective new employer, show that she was willing to learn and work.

The reality of the situation, the incomprehensible cashier terminal with its too-simple numbers display she didn’t understand, and the manner with which Tracy rattled off details she needed to remember while multi-tasking the backed-up checkout line at station eight sheared away layer after layer of Mrs. Moore’s fabricated confidence until she was millimeters away from giving up on everything and fleeing the Food Lion.

The cash drawer had its own nuances she needed to pick up, personal checks had to be on this one side, beneath the magic pen she was supposed to mark every denomination of bill over ten dollars with. She was supposed to mind her change at all times and be ready in advance to call a manager over for assistance for new rolls of quarters, dimes, nickels, or pennies as necessary. She would have to be careful to never ever close the drawer until she was absolutely sure she had the correct change for a customer in hand, because once the thing was closed it wouldn’t open again until a new sale started, and calling a manager for keys held up the line for everyone.

And, if my till is more than five dollars over OR under, it’s a write up, Mrs. Moore remembered Tracy’s warning. Three write ups and that’s a suspension, but I’m not supposed to worry too much about getting fired for it, because she says everyone’s drawers are always a little off. The suspensions are only in effect when they’re not short-handed, which is never, and are just an excuse to never give anyone the ten cent raises John said everyone gets after the three month evaluation.

There were PLU codes to learn and memorize, she would have to ask each customer if they had a Food Lion MVP card which gave them various small discounts—something Shannon noticed Tracy didn’t actually do—but also there was a separate system for coupons customers might clip out of the monthly ad inserts that went out. Those involved one of the many terminal buttons with abbreviations she didn’t understand, and then you also had to tuck the given coupon beneath the drawer in a ragged messy pile, and not lose any of them, because if you didn’t have proof of the discounts you applied, your drawer would be off by however much the coupon was for and you’d get written up.

“Hey,” Tracy called over her shoulder. “What was your name again, hon?”

“Uh—Shannon,” Mrs. Moore answered, wringing her hands. “Shannon.”

“Well, I’m fixin’ to go on break here in a minute,” Tracy said. “Do you know what you’re supposed to be doin’ after this?”

“I—um—no,” Mrs. Moore admitted with a wince. “I, I wasn’t told. He said—John said I was supposed to, to observe, right now. I’ve been waiting for him to come back by and, um. Tell me whatever I’m supposed to be doing next. But, I haven’t seen—”

“John?” Tracy gave her a confused glance. “Store manager John? Hon, he went home a half hour ago, he’s already off the clock.”

“O-oh, okay,” Mrs. Moore let out a nervous laugh. “Um. Then—?”

“I dunno hon, you need to head back through the office and find whatever manager came in for afternoon shift. I can’t be watchin’ you all day, that’s not my job.”

Tracy then turned away in clear dismissal, flicked off the light for station eight, and continued ringing up the last customer who was waiting on them there.

Relieved to be done observing checkout line work—but finding herself more stressed than ever—Mrs. Moore disengaged her focus on their single area and forced her awareness back to the larger context of the entire grocery store. It was strange, and it felt like being startled awake from a fitful, restless nightmare. She took one uncertain step away from the checkout, and then another, and then was forced to hurry forward several more to move out of a person’s way, nearly clipping the bulging grocery bags the guy was carrying.

In a daze of confusion, Mrs. Moore picked her way back across the sales floor towards the back office, weaving around customers with their shopping carts and passing by a young worker crouched along the dairy coolers who wore the same kind of Food Lion apron she had on.

He gave her a brief should I know you look, before losing interest and returning his attention to the jugs of milk in the milk crate he had carried out. Mrs. Moore felt herself flush with embarrassment, feeling like an imposter. She hadn’t been introduced to anyone except Tracy, and she knew from the brief orientation that the jacket she was wearing beneath the apron wasn’t up to code for their required employee uniform. She didn’t even have a nametag!

I’m—I’m not actually on the clock! Mrs. Moore reminded herself. I shouldn’t even be in their system, yet. I don’t REALLY work here, not until, until—I don’t know! I can’t believe the manager just… LEFT. Did he just FORGET about me?!

It took a moment of steeling herself before she worked up the courage to push past the employees only door in the back. Was she allowed back here? It felt like she shouldn’t be back here, but she did need answers as to what on earth she was supposed to be doing, or what was going on—because she felt completely lost in whatever part of the hiring process this was.

The back hallway was empty, but in the break room area across the way, a young cashier woman and a tall, thin stock boy of some sort were conversing. Too timid to approach them, Mrs. Moore crept over to peek into the office where assistant store manager John had spoken with her—it was empty.

“What’cha lookin’ for, sweetie?” The cashier woman called over. “You lookin’ for Bob?”

“Um,” Shannon froze. “I might… maybe? John, uh, the store manager John, he was havin’ me through the hiring stuff, and then he had me watching…um…”

In a sudden and shocking betrayal, the name of the grumpy cashier woman she’d stood with for most of the morning and part of the afternoon momentarily vanished from recollection. Panic flooded her veins as she realized she’d lost part of what she had intended to say. The two employees were both staring at her with bemused expectation.

“—had me with, um, she was—it was one of the cashier clerks—”

“Tracy?” The teenage stock boy supplied with a grin. “Think I saw you over there shadowing Tracy.”

“Tracy! Yes, I, I lost her name for a moment, hah,” Shannon gave them a cringing smile, so embarrassed she could die. “Tracy. But, she said that store manager John had already left? I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next?”

“Ah, yeah, Tracy’s real nice,” the young cashier woman finally nodded in understanding. “Probably just wait here ‘til manager Bob’s back on through—or, if you want I could call him?”

“Oh, I can wait here I guess,” Shannon flushed.

“I’ll call him,” the cashier woman stood up and slipped past her into the office.

“Brandon,” the stockboy introduced himself, offering Mrs. Moore his hand. “An’ that’s Cindy. You’re just starting?”

“Shannon,” Mrs. Moore hurried to take his hand. “I, well, I hope so? I feel like John just… forgot about me? Hah ha…”

“He’s a real asshole,” Brandon leaned in to confide in a low voice, never losing his grin. “Manager John.”

Mrs. Moore didn’t know whether to laugh or cry—the first impressions she personally had ran directly contrary to what each of these associates told her. Assistant store manager John had seemed super friendly and personable but apparently he was an asshole; Tracy was supposedly ‘real nice,’ but had in actuality been standoffish and cold towards her.

“Manager, line one,” Cindy’s voice resounded—both from the office next to them, and crackling over the store intercom. “Manager, line one.”

When Shannon whirled to look back through the door, she saw Cindy was holding a phone above the messy desk there.

“Should just be a sec,” Cindy promised, looking pleased with herself for grabbing a chance to show off using the intercom. “He’ll either pick up over in bakery, or just head right on back here.”

“Th-thank you,” Shannon said, trying to recollect herself. “Thank you so much.”

Thus far, everyone save for Tracy appeared to be younger than Mrs. Moore, but it was difficult to determine by how much. Tracy had possessed a stout figure and bulldog face with drooping jowls, but sported the most artificial burgundy-red shade of dyed hair Mrs. Moore had ever seen. Cindy here was a slightly dumpy young twenty-something with dull blonde hair—her first assumption was ‘young mother,’ and then Brandon here from his height and gangly stature she would guess was perhaps eighteen or nineteen.

So far, no one had seemed to judge Shannon for being too old to reenter the workforce, or too fat, or questioned why she had the gall to think she could work here. Certainly no one had recognized her as previously being Shannon Delain. Part of that was comforting, but then the cynical side of her—still frantic with stress from the past few hours—insisted that it was simply because she was no one to them. Invisible, an absolute nobody that no one had any cause to care about, for better or for worse.

The idea was liberating in a very depressing way.

“Who called?” A balding middle aged man leaned through the employees only door.

He wore a vest and tie instead of an apron, which meant he was a person in charge, so this must be the store manager Bob.

“I did,” Cindy said. “Manager John started gettin’ this lady set up an’ had her with Tracy, but then he took off without leavin’ her any instructions or nothin’ on what to do.”

“Great. Figures,” Bob said with a frown, stepping the rest of the way into the back and offering Mrs. Moore a handshake. “Bob. It’s usually me or Phil managing at night. Did John get you set up with a file, yet? What was your name?”

“Shannon,” Mrs. Moore said, quickly wiping her clammy hand against her apron so she could shake. “And—I, I’m not sure. I was just first in for my interview today.”

“Huh. I guess it went pretty well, then?”

“I—” Mrs. Moore gave him a helpless laugh. She really wanted to start crying. “I guess?”

“You guys went to the mall without me!” Alicia accused into the phone handset.

“Yeah…” Elena replied through the little speaker. “Sorry.”

“I mean—c’mon, what the hell?” Alicia grumbled. “I totally would’ve gone with you.”

“I know. Just…” Elena let out a sigh, and Alicia felt a surge of panic.

Was Elena about to launch into a difficult explanation for why they would no longer be friends? What did her and Tabitha talk about? Did they talk about her? About her maybe having weird feelings for Tabitha? What was going on? The sudden exclusion from something like a mall outing stung, and Alicia’s biggest fear was that this was just the beginning of the end for her halcyon high school days with a pair of close friends.

Halcyon is such a cool word.

Alicia grit her teeth as she wrestled back the urge to tell Elena to quit with the dramatic pauses and just spit out whatever it was she was about to say. The friendship insecurity that always surged back up was getting so exhausting, and she felt stupid for falling back into it over and over again. After all, she’d spent the past several days playing the cherished atomic purple Gameboy Color Elena had gifted her for Christmas, immersed deep in Pokemon. The Gameboy itself was proof of how solid their friendship was. Alicia’s team was led by her badass Gyrados—incidentally named Halcyon—with a supporting roster of a Pikachu, a Ponyta, a Ghastly, and a Vulpix. Between her own research and some tips from Casey, Alicia had only the most absolutely awesome monsters, but her last slot remained empty until Casey could trade her a Meowth to evolve into a Persian.

“Just what?” Alicia finally demanded.

“I guess I kinda… messed up,” Elena admitted. “I did something stupid, it was about Tabitha, and we—we needed to talk about it with just the two of us.”

“Stupid how,” Alicia’s temper flared for a moment. “What did you do?!”

“I… went to my mom with some of the future stuff,” Elena said. “Sort of. Not all of it, and not even really the ‘future’ parts. Just, I—I thought maybe Tabitha was trying to, uh, to say something with the way she was telling us all of that. I guess. I thought we had to make sure she wasn’t being… abused or molested or anything.”

“You snitched?!” Alicia found herself in disbelief. “And, and—what happened? What did your mom say? What did Tabitha say?!”

“My mom doesn’t know about the future stuff,” Elena clarified. “Just, I told her Tabitha told us that she knew a girl named Julie who was being abused. So that we could make sure that if that was something really happening, something would be done about it. Okay?”

“Except, Julie is negative two years old right now,” Alicia remarked with a dry laugh. “So—”

“Negative one, right?” Elena interrupted. “Since it’s 1999, now.”

“Oh, yeah. Negative one,” Alicia growled. “Still, to go and like, snitch about it? What were—”

“It’s not like snitching,” Elena defended herself. “I thought someone was in danger from things I heard. Maybe it was this Julie girl, maybe it was actually code for Tabitha just trying to talk about herself without like, actually talking about herself. How am I supposed to know? It’s like—better safe than sorry. Right?”

“I dunno,” Alicia refused to agree. “You should’ve talked through it with Tabitha first.”

“Yeah,” Elena sighed again. “Maybe. I don’t know. Tabitha believes the time traveler stuff, though. So I—I don’t know. It didn’t feel like she was the reliable person to go to, in case someone really was being abused.”

“And you told Tabitha all of this?” Alicia pressed. “Are you two okay?”

“We are,” Elena said. “She wasn’t very mad, she mostly understood. She still thinks she’s from the future, I still don’t think so. We just… agreed to disagree, on that. We’re still friends, though.”

“Okay,” Alicia finally allowed herself to slightly relax her shoulders. “Okay. But, like. Still.”

“Yeah,” Elena said.

“Yeah,” Alicia grunted back while she felt a smile forming. “Sooo—have you been playing Pokemon Yellow? What’s your highest level?”

“Oh, God,” Elena snorted. “Not even twenty, yet. I’ve only been playing a bit. Tabitha’s already beaten the whole freaking game, I think. She went on and on about strategies and theories and stuff for a while. She’s really into it.”

“I figured,” Alicia said. “Buuut—I’ve got a Gyrados, so. There’s no way in hell she’s beating me. Not a chance.”

“Gyrados?”

“Yeah. It’s this giant badass oriental dragon looking thing,” Alicia boasted. “I named him Halcyon. My dad said it’s Chinese for clear waters after a typhoon.”

“Huh. I have… a Butterfree.”

“What’d you name it?”

“Uh… it’s just called ‘Butterfree.’”

“Are you not naming any of your Pokemon?!”

“No? Should I have?”

“I mean. Yeah?” Alicia laughed. “I thought you of all people would’ve come up with something I dunno, super cool and goth for each of them?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know! Something cool!”

“Like what?!”

“I don’t know! Butterfree. Bitterfree? Beetlejuice? How… about… ‘Chaos?’ Like ‘cause he’s a butterfly, and the chaos theory thing with butterflies flapping their wings? Neat reference to sneak in. ‘Chaos’ is pretty cool. What’s the Chinese word for ‘Chaos?”

“Oh, sure. Let me just whip out my Chinese-English dictionary I keep on hand.”

“Pfft, well—I don’t know. I’ll ask my dad?”

“How about I name him… ‘Sushi?’”

“‘Lena, that’s Japanese, not Chinese.”

“Alicia—” Elena paused again. “You do realize Pokemon is Japanese, right?! It’s from Japan.”

“Oh, shoot,” Alicia froze. “You actually might be right?!”

“Of course I’m right!”