The 78th floor was empty, and I glanced at my phone. 04:33. Oh. I’d been in the showers for at least an hour if not more, so maybe I arrived a lot earlier than I’d first thought?
I grabbed a styrofoam cup and filled it with water from the tap as many times as I could handle, going through and ending up just making a large pot of coffee, carefully observing the calories. If a person needed 1500 base calories a day to survive… Or, wait, did they? A Google Search later and I did the math, aiming for 2000 calories a day.
Humming, I added the appropriate amount of creamer and sugar. Half creamer-a fourth coffee-the rest sugar. That would mean I’d need to consume… three cups of coffee if I used ten creamers and twenty sugar each cup. Nice.
I went to another floor, the accounting floor several floors down, and made another entire pot of coffee. I wouldn’t want to be yelled at for using all of the lawyer’s creamer and sugar, though they had more than enough for me to have my necessary calories.
Three large cups of coffee later, I felt sick. I drank more water, wandering back to the floor I belonged to before an accountant appeared and caught me red-handed.
The day went by just fine, the sugar crash was horrible to stay awake through but otherwise, nothing of note happened. While the entire week flew by, I’d been getting all of my calories from sugar and creamer, and when the weekend came I was so relieved to be able to make it to a soup kitchen.
I walked all day, just going from place to place. Acquiring a plain black backpack with a nice five-finger discount, I managed to get enough food to last several days. Google said that mold wasn’t likely to get me sick, either, so I was glad to have the food, though it would rot quickly.
You could eat potatoes raw, right?
As I walked, I came across a gathering of my people. Hesitating, I glanced around, wandering up to the people under the bridge, sitting amidst the tents.
Eyes focused on me. On my new clothes, my new backpack. My clean hair and clean, pale face that I knew would get tanned as I lived life on the streets. My shoulders were straight, though, and I looked around, meeting everyone’s gaze as I slumped against a wall. One knee dragged up, and my other leg splayed out. My eyes closed, and my backpack pressed against the wall. I’d already eaten before I got here.
“Don’t you see all the stares?” An annoyed voice said from only a few feet away.
“They look at me because they don’t recognize me from last week,” I muttered in response, opening my eyes and glancing to the side. It was a man I’d spoken with before. He was missing an eye and his hair was a stringy gray.
“Tch, they’re looking at you because you’re wearing nice clothes. You may have belonged here once, but you don’t anymore.”
“They could look like me, too. Wash up in a bathroom or the ocean, go get 100% discounts from places that are too busy to look too hard,” I replied flatly, glancing to the side, “I’m still homeless, bastard. Fuck off or die.”
Anger flashed through the man’s eyes, and he scoffed, going back to his own business, “Whatever.”
The evening grew thick, and I stood up, wandering away. I had nowhere to go but I knew sleeping there was a bad idea. Not quite young, but I was still in my twenties. I was still a female, and I was still alone.
I was always alone.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Things would work out, though. I’d survive. In spite of myself, I always did.
With a straight back and sharp eyes, I once more wandered the streets of New York, not staying in one place long.
I fell asleep many times and woke up in just as many, and my Sunday was filled with me going to more kitchens and filling my backpack, happily releasing the more perishable things and filling it with nonperishable goods instead.
My life was a haze of applying to places on my phone while I played the part of lawyer intern, and I found myself reading the papers more and more even as it made me stagger.
I’d fallen or my legs had given out more than once in the CEO’s office, me quietly dragging the papers to myself. Hunger pervaded my senses during the weeks, me unable to drag my backpack from the break-room to eat the evidently poor food I’d managed to scrounge up.
I always stood up and delivered the papers, though, not looking at the CEO as I took the papers he wanted sent back.
Eventually, I started putting the ones with spelling errors on the bottom, carefully reading through and comparing all of the ones that got refused as I kept working the unpaid internship.
I didn’t know why I worked it, really. It was something to do, I guess. I certainly wasn’t there every day, sometimes not arriving for a few days before reappearing as if I’d never been gone. No one really cared enough to notice I’d gone, just sending another intern if I wasn’t around to deliver papers.
Maybe it was as a reward for my persistence, but as I walked in, the CEO spoke to me.
“Have you been organizing the papers the lawyers send to me?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, carrying a massive stack of papers that was just three contracts, from what I’d read, “The ones I’m certain you’ll send back I put on the bottom, with the ones I’m not sure about just before it. I haven’t been certain you’d accept any, I’m not that good, yet, but I’ll probably put those first.”
My words died out the moment I set the papers down, “Well, have a good one.”
“A moment, please,” The CEO—who I’d learned was CEO and Owner Davis based on the nameplate on his desk—called out.
I stopped, turning on my heel with the stack of papers in my arms, having already been halfway to the door.
“Yeah?”
My stomach made an unpleasant noise, and I recalled that the soup kitchens had been closed during the weekend due to an extreme thunderstorm. My weeks’ worth of food was gone.
“I would like for you to put the ones I would refuse on top, disregarding urgent contracts in this matter.”
I shrugged, staring at the city through the glass, “Okay. Have a good one.” I turned, but the CEO spoke, and I once more faced the CEO, this time looking at the picture behind him.
“What is your name?”
The picture was of a dude that wasn’t him, but they looked vaguely similar, so I wondered if they were related. If they were, the current CEO gained the genetic lottery, poor other guy. The thought made me surprised.
“Oh, it’s May. May Cole.”
I found the CEO attractive? How cliche. As I observed him, though, I found it was true. He had a nice facial structure, his skin looked soft, and his professional air made him feel sophisticated. His fingers were long but not spindly, looking strong and his eyes looked fierce.
“I will be speaking to your supervisor,” The CEO said after a short pause. I looked at him for a long moment. Now that I focused on it, I could see that he was hot as hell. Damn.
If only I had a friend to share this newfound fact with. The assistant, Shawn, was gay, right? Even though he and I weren’t friends, I’m sure he’d agree with me at the very least.
“Uh, okay. They won’t know my name, though.”
“Pardon? Why not?” The CEO leaned back.
I wondered if he was looking at me. With how the light of the monitor glowed against his glasses, I had to presume he wasn’t.
Was I about to get fired? That would suck, only seven months of experience at this place.
“I’m just an intern who delivers your papers, sir,” I replied factually, shrugging again as I glanced outside impatiently, “No one calls me by name. No one knows my name.”
“… I see. Dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir,” I turned on my heel.