Chapter 1
Madison
I may not even really exist outside of zeros-and-ones
NoBody: You got that package for me yet?
mermaidav: Working on it. Tomorrow.
NoBody: Yeah, that works. Wait, what are you still doing online?
I send him the middle finger emoji.
NoBody: Real nice. Aren’t you going to be late?
My eyes flick to the clock at the bottom right of my monitor. Shit. I’m gonna be late.
I tab over to the main window and shoot a quick goodbye to my odd little collection of internet strangers, which is answered with some genuine farewells from the newbies and some affectionate profanity from the people who’ve known me longer.
It makes me grin as I log out of the various windows and chats I always have up, and start shutting down the programs that don’t need to run while I’m gone.
When one gets stuck, I jiggle the mouse and curse—unsurprisingly, no help—and it throws a spinning wheel of frustration back at me.
This damn computer. With her white housing, black monitors, and gray internal components, she’s basically my Frankenstein monster I built two years ago for a fraction of what she would have cost new.
She’s overpowered as fuck, which is necessary for both the redundant security protocols I use and the reason I have those protocols.
And while her pieced-together form has served me well, I’ve been pretending to ignore how slow and unreliable she’s been getting for months now.
It’s past time for an upgrade, but my sporadic paychecks keep getting split between pesky things like food, insurance, rent, and nursing home bills.
Damn, I miss not having to worry about money.
Once upon a time, I had a cool apartment in a good neighborhood in downtown Ulysses, NJ.
I could afford the best weed, I bought new tech when I felt like it, and I even had an emergency fund.
Then, Abuela had her bad fall, and we decided to move her into the nursing home, and it’s…
very expensive. Well, good care is. With people who know what they’re doing, who show empathy and like their jobs.
After a ton of research—I toured over a dozen facilities—I found the perfect place, but it has pretty strict visiting hours…
Shit. I am going to be late. Abuela hates when I’m late.
I sniff the armpits of the hoodie on the back of my computer chair, shrug, and tug it on as I hurry through my bedroom door into the hallway and living area, ignoring the state of an apartment in desperate need of a clean.
Even dirty, the inside of my apartment looks like an old Mexican lady decorated it.
Because she did. I took over Abuela’s much cheaper lease when she moved into the nursing home, and I didn’t really change much about the place.
The couch is comfy, the art and pottery and little ceramic dishes everywhere are colorful, and while I haven’t subscribed to the ideology of it all in a long time, all the little gold-inlaid statues of various saints and prayer candles with the Virgin Mary decals bring me comfort in their familiarity.
My cat opens one accusatory eye from his curled-up position on the couch, irritated at the interruption.
My furry son is a handsome tuxedo lad named Some Bills, both because that’s what he is—a fucking freeloader who can’t even catch the odd fly that gets in through an open window—and because it’s a great excuse to leave a social event.
The looks I get when I tell people I have to go home to take care of some bills? Priceless.
“I’ll be back later. No loud parties this time,” I instruct him as that eye drifts back shut.
I shove my feet into some boots, effortlessly balancing the process of pulling on my sweater and arming the security system. At the last second, I remember the cranberry orange muffin I bought for Abuela, and dart over to grab the bag off the counter.
On my way out, I check my mailbox, and I’m not quick enough ducking out the door to miss my neighbor on his way in. I almost can’t contain my groan.
Ugh. This guy.
Todd is such a dude-bro. He’s cute in a twentysomething/former jock/peaked in high school kind of way, but he acted like I was a joke that the universe made up specifically for him the first time we ran into each other.
Maybe it was the black lipstick. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t trip over myself to appeal to his conventionally attractive ass.
I’ve found that his particular flavor of hot guy gets really butthurt at being denied the opportunity to deny someone first.
Men are the fucking worst.
Dressed in sweats and clearly on his way back from the gym on this fine Sunday, he smiles to himself with a mean kind of glee as he turns to unlock the door adjacent to mine.
His eyes flick down to the grease-stained paper bag in my hand, like he’s got some kind of butter homing device.
“I thought I smelled fast food. Should have known it was you.”
Now, I love a good roast, but only when it’s well done.
I was the brown, chubby girl in Catholic school, and pre-teen girls are much more creative and way meaner than Todd could ever hope to be.
It’s frankly kind of sad for him, because I do think he’s genuinely trying to get a rise out of me with these lame-ass insults.
“Todd, so good to see you—and by that I mean it’s nice to see less of your face,” I gesture to my own chin with the pointer finger of the hand still clutching the rolled-up top of the paper bag. “Are you trying to grow a beard, or did you lose a bet? Because that is not coming in well, my guy.”
His lip curls, but he ignores the jab otherwise. “Where are you headed? I know it’s not the gym—even though it really should be. You know, you’d actually be pretty hot if you started working out, and cut eating all that crap.”
Unfortunately for his ego (because having a six-pack is his entire personality), being thin has just never been a priority, even if—or, perhaps, because?
—society wants me to think that my value depends on how flat my stomach is.
It’s pure vanity anyway, since my semi-regular doctor’s visits confirm that I’m healthy as a damn horse. Plus, I like how I look, just as I am.
“Are you really trying to convince me that not everyone loves a big-booty Latina?” I ask rhetorically with a sweet smile.
As intended, his eyes widen at the phrase. I may have hacked his search history, but in my defense… it was easy. He was mooching off the free Wi-Fi I set up for my elderly upstairs neighbor Mrs. Louis, so he was basically asking for it.
He snorts, trying to save face, but I take inordinate pleasure in the sudden red stain creeping up his cheeks from his thick neck.
Yeah, that’s right, pendejo—I know your dirty little secrets.
“I’d have gone with ‘fat ass’,” he hisses.
“How unoriginal.” I roll my eyes. “Those last two brain cells you’ve got are really fighting for third place, huh?”
His smile freezes into something ugly. “The fuck did you just say to me?” he asks, tone rising.
“The irony of being too stupid to understand when someone calls you stupid,” I mutter loud enough for him to hear, laughing and shaking my head. Not sure why Todd starts this shit—at this point he must know that he can’t finish it.
“Say it to my face,” he growls.
Cautiously, my eyes flick over to him at the aggression in his tone, but though he’s standing rigidly, he’s not poised to make a move. So, I just shake my head and breeze past him towards the front doors.
“Eat a dick, Todd,” I reply, bored with his posturing.
“I got one for you right here, bitch.”
I don’t have to see the gesture to know that he’s gripping himself through his pants. Just before stepping outside, I get the last word. “No thanks, I’m allergic to shrimp.”
He curses me out as the door swings shut, and I chuckle to myself, pleased and exhilarated. I’ve been sitting on that one for a while, and I’m so pumped he gave me the opportunity to use it.
I’d never let someone like Todd get to me—he’s the kind of guy who’d call you fat in front of his friends and jerk off to your profile picture in secret. Hypocrisy chafes me worse than forgetting to wear bike shorts under a dress.
But, hey, he can hate-fuck his hand thinking about me all he wants… Still, thank God for thick walls, because I don’t want to hear that shit. It’s bad enough I’ve been seeing him more often since I took that job at SmarTech, where he works as a desk jockey in IT.
Just another reason to look forward to the big dramatic exit tomorrow.
My apartment is in a reasonably nice area of town—no one has a backyard, but you hardly ever hear gunshots. It’s an old building, one like many others on the street that was turned into six units back in the 90s, and I somehow always manage to snag an up-front parking spot.
Since it’s the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday, my drive across town is a breeze.
Construction is minimal on weekends, potholes are easy to avoid with fewer cars on the road, and I only have to give one asshole in an SUV the finger—all in all, a fairly tame ride.
Fuck around and find out is a creed by which I live my life, and I don’t mind playing chicken with my inherited 20-year-old Corolla.
Pretty sure it’s running on pure Toyota magic at this point, anyway.
Sunset Hills, the facility where Abuela lives, is nestled in a stretch of recently developed farmland.
There’s plenty of convenient parking, lots of helpful staff, and it smells more like antiseptic than aging bodies.
Afternoon on a weekend day is peak visiting hours, and there’s a spectrum of noise—high-pitched childish glee and calls of “Grandpa!” at one end, and polite, strained, “So, how have you been?” at the other.
Both make me feel icky, like I need to visit more.