​     Katy tried. She really did. ​She tried to fit in. In the morning, preparing for work, she fought to conjure up a bright attitude as she put on her store uniform, black slacks, white-collared shirt, bright yellow vest with a matching cap for her head, yellow like the sun because that's the name of the mega-store where she worked, Sunny Days, or, as it was more commonly referred to, Sunnys, a nameplate clean and white and pinned perfectly straight over my left breast. HI! MY NAME IS KATY! But then she made the mistake, just before she left the apartment she shared with a roommate she barely knew and who obviously couldn't stand her, at looking at herself in the mirror of the bathroom, and her optimistic attitude went down the drain. 

​     Oh my God, she thought. I look like a goddamned cartoon. I look like a parody of someone in a TV commercial. I graduated at the top of my class as an English Major, and now I have to dress like Tweedie Bird just to be able to go to work? How depressing is that? Plus, the blue streak she'd put in her hair in an effort to seem young and artistic and creative, a total mistake. All it really did was announce her desperation to the world. Well, at least she had a job, even though she hated it with every fiber of her being, and even though it only paid minimum wage. She owed tens of thousands of dollars on her student loan, and she didn't have a penny in her savings account. She didn't even have enough money to own a car. She had to catch the transit to work.

​     A bus dropped her off in front of Sunny Days fifteen minutes before she had to use her plastic ID card to log in and begin her shift. The Sunny Days mega-store took up four square blocks, just the one store, a combination grocery,  clothing, jewelry, furniture, and every-other-damned-thing store. Throw in a deli, a florist, and an auto-repair shop, and that was Sunny Days. Katy used the sensor on her plastic ID card to beep her way through the employee's entrance. The actual entrance, where the customers entered, was only thirty feet away, but if Katy used that entrance she would get fired. Well, maybe she wouldn't get fired, but it would be very bad. She passed the mascot, someone who Katy never saw the face of but who danced around the floor in a fuzzy six foot high shining star costume and who waved at Katy as she dropped down the stairway to the basement where the men's clothes, hardware and furniture were sold, and, at the rear, where the employee's break room was located. 

​     "Have a special sunny day!" exclaimed the fuzzy sun as it danced and waved. 

     "Have a special sunny day!" Katy smiled broadly and waved back  because, again, there were cameras,  and if Katy didn't respond in that exact manner it would be very bad for her. There was an elevator and an escalator for the customers. All employees used the stairs. 

CONTINUE