Work Samples

Editing Samples

Short Story Excerpt from Online Author

A Veterinary Report along with My Notes

A Case of Canine Gastro-Oesophageal Reflux Disease (GORD) in an Eight-Year-Old Female Chihuahua

Abstract

Canine Gastro-oesophageal Reflux Disease is a challenging diagnosis, as there may be significant disparity between severity of clinical signs and pathological changes. An eight-year-old female neutered Chihuahua presented with a cough, occasional shaking episodes, and subdued behaviour. Abdominal pain was detected on clinical exam, and investigations revealed a gastric ulcer which was treated successfully with omeprazole and sucralfate. Later recurrence of clinical signs was investigated by endoscopic examination which revealed chronic changes to the oesophagus and normal gastric mucosa. Persistence of clinical signs despite the healed ulcer and, initial response to medical treatment, along with the endoscopic changes to the oesophagus were consistent with a diagnosis of Gastro-oesophageal Reflux Disease. Long term management with omeprazole, cisapride, and a hypoallergenichypoallergeic diet was required, as attempts to reduce or cease this treatment resulted in further clinical signs.

Word count: 2,313

My notes after line-editing the full report:

Dear Dr. Kate H.

All set! Not much to tweak, though I wouldn't be able to catch specifically medical typos. I made the majority of my changes in suggestion mode, so you'll be able to use that to see everything I did and decide if it's accurate to what you want. It was mostly just a few typos and formatting issues. The captions for some of the pictures were overlapping and you missed several esophagus/oesophagus-es in there. At one point you said the female chihuahua was neutered and I replaced that with "spayed(?)" because I'm not sure if vets still use that term.

But overall it was extremely well done and highly professional. Great work, and I'm glad that chihuahua was in such skilled hands. I hope my edits are helpful. Let me know if you have any questions for me!

Yours,

Alex

Excerpt from a History of Blues Music

Writing Samples

Breaking Free of ‘The Other Man’: How to Effectively Use Pronouns in Same-Sex Romance Writing

Note: Includes explicit descriptions. And jokes.

Also available as a recorded presentation I gave with Good Omens-themed examples: check it out!

Same-sex romance has got to stop!

Specifically, it’s got to stop its awkward, toe-crushing dance with grammar.

PART 1: THE TRAGIC TALE OF GAY PRONOUNS

I think every slash fan out there has come across the problem that plagues queer romances: few writers know what the hell to do when both of their romantic leads have the same pronouns!

Consider:

“Andre knew this was the moment. Kevin was taking his shirt off and watching him with hungry eyes. He was ready for him to ravish him completely.”

Obviously, we’ve got a problem here. Who’s ready for who to ravish whom?? Maybe the broader story offers some clues. Maybe the reader already knows that Andre has been nervous about his ravishing skills for the last six chapters and finally got his Suave Sexyman certificate at the versatile flower shop down the street five pages ago. But can we be sure? Maybe Kevin is certified too!

There’s a good reason sentences like this come up, and come up often. It’s because this is exactly how you’d write a straight pairing.

“Alice knew this was the moment. Kevin was taking his shirt off and watching her with hungry eyes. He was ready for her to ravish him completely. She smirked and got out her strap.”

I can write this nearly identical scene with and a woman and man because they have different pronouns that can each only refer to one character. Millions of romance authors have written their most intimate scenes on this basis.

Romance is, naturally, a very intimate genre. Its focus is always on the leads and the minutia of their feelings. There’s generally outside circumstances going on, but if it’s a romance rather than a story with a romantic sub-plot then those circumstances are set dressing. By definition, the narrative needs to be zoomed-in on the leads at almost all times.

“Gina was almost done with her shopping, thank god. She just needed that box of Apple Jacks. But there was a woman in front of her, slowly shelving store-brand granola bars. Her name tag said her name was Valencia, which Gina had a full thirty seconds to read as the granola boxes hit the shelf one at a time. Valencia’s movements were stiff and awkward. Was she in pain? Was she injured? She was blocking the whole aisle but Gina couldn’t bring herself to speak up. How could she? Not in front of this beautiful woman, just trying to do her job.”

Or, alternatively:

“Gina got almost all the groceries, but panicked when a staff member was blocking the cereal aisle. It was so stressful to be afraid of strangers!”

Obviously the first version gives a much more detailed, even intimate, description of the characters. These are people you either already know or can expect to learn more about. The second version doesn’t want you to care about Valencia at all and even Gina might be a minor character. But my larger point is that, if these women are the main characters, you might see the detailed version in another genre, but a romance must have this kind of focus. There’s rarely room to zoom out.

However, like a tight closet stuffed with two horny enemies, it gets hard to stay that close and remember whose hands are whose. That’s when many a desperate writer calls upon my most hated enemy…

PART 2: THE OTHER

“Randal was so happy to spend this time with Trevor. They’d grown up as neighbors and best friends, but still they never got enough of each other. Randal grinned and the other man smiled right back at him.”

Wait a second, who’s this other man? Do we have a third, unnamed, character in the scene now? No. No we do not. If you’re familiar with this recent convention, then you already know that in this case “the other man” is just another way of referring to Trevor.

I don’t know where this came from, but I don’t blame people for using it. I’ve even seen fanfic writers be corrected about it and feel embarrassed because they thought “the other” was good writing, what the seasoned author would do. It’s become so common, I can see why people might think so!

“The other” does function as a way to avoid just using repetitive and confusing pronouns, but it does so at the cost of adding different problems. Like I suggested above, it implies that there are unnamed strangers taking over your story!

“The other” is a turn of phrase one can use, but it’s traditionally reserved for when there are multiple characters that the protagonist and/or reader doesn’t know yet. For example:

“I made it about ten feet before I toppled off my skateboard in front of two women in yellow hardhats. One of the women, clearly the nicer one, bit her lip and helped me up. The other woman laughed so hard that she nearly fell over.”

In this example I’ve used “the other” to differentiate between two unnamed characters with the same pronouns. But let’s look at how it would change if the narrator knew one of them:

“I made it about ten feet before I toppled off my skateboard in front of Clara and another woman in yellow hardhats. The other woman, clearly a nicer person, bit her lip and helped me up. Clara laughed so hard that she nearly fell over.”

First of all, notice that I’ve restructured the sentences a little. That’s often important in order to clarify who you’re talking about, while also making the language sound natural. Don’t be afraid of it! I’ve also switched the order of the women in the first sentence to make the mean woman, Clara, come first. That’s because the protagonist and presumably the reader already know who she is. It’s almost always best to go from recognized details to vaguer ones, because that’s how people tend to perceive their surroundings. In this case, the two women who saw the narrator wipe out are the most important part of the environment, and Clara is more important than the other woman because the narrator has more reason to expect consequences from her reaction.

So that’s when you should use “the other”. Now let’s get back to Randal and Trevor. In their example I made a point of emphasizing that they know each other very well. That means there’s no reason to “the other” Trevor. You should only do that to familiar characters under a few specific circumstances.

1. If the protagonist has a reason to not recognize them: “The other figure stepped into light. It was Trevor!”

2. If the point of view changes to someone else’s perspective: “Clara stopped laughing when she saw Randal. He was with another guy.”

3. If you’re doing something clever to trick the reader. (Note: this is ONLY for important plot points.)

For example: “The killer and his accomplice chased Randal down the hall. The killer raised up his knife, but suddenly the other man tripped him! Randal stopped and grinned and the so-called accomplice smiled back.

“We did it!” Trevor cheered. “All those months undercover really worked!”

Ah, what a beautiful, happy ending….for now.

Because, while I may have shown you the treacherous face of “the other”, there’s another enemy waiting in the wings!

PART 3: THE [TRAIT]

The [trait] works pretty similarly to “the other”. It’s another means of avoiding overusing pronouns. Here’s a few examples.

“Beth really wanted to get Charlotte the best birthday present. But it wasn’t easy when the redhead didn’t understand what gifts were!”

“Aarram knew the fight against Char would be rough. The fire mage never held back.”

“Maybe Natalie hadn’t stolen the cake, Angie considered. But then why were the hacker’s nails covered in frosting?”

The [trait] brings up some aspect of the character it’s describing. It’s often the character’s hair color, but it can also be their profession, social designation, or any other distinctive characteristic. It’s more specific than “the other” but unfortunately the [trait] also brings its own kind of confusion.

The problem is that it traditionally functions the same way as “the other”. There’s no reason to distinguish among characters by hair color unless the protagonist/reader doesn’t know who those people are yet. If the Charlotte in the example were your best friend, you’d never call her “the redhead” in your brain. That’s Charlotte! She may have red hair, but that’s not her identity.

Using traits instead of pronouns or names has the effect of making characters feel flat. Suddenly, even if the reader follows who you’re talking about, that character is being defined by one trait. Charlotte may be a complex character, trying to adapt to the human world after centuries of illusions and mind games among the fae, but the redhead doesn’t feel capable of it. The redhead is important for their hair color and would probably die if they dyed.

PART 4: SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO INSTEAD?

I think a lot of modern romance writers feel lost about how to handle pronouns because it’s only in the last few decades that it’s really been possible to publish queer romance. How can we learn where there are no role-models?

But that’s not actually true. The secret remains the same it’s always been: if you want to write well, you have to read. Read widely. Read exhaustively. Maybe Boy Meets Boy didn’t come out until 2005, but ambiguous pronouns have been an issue in English writing for centuries! This is largely because of another long-standing problem: good old-fashioned sexism.

Think about The Three Musketeers (surprisingly, a book about four musketeers), a novel focused almost entirely on men.

Or Dracula, where a large portion of the novel is focused on five dudes (and Mina) working together to catch Mr. Children-of-the-Night.

Moby Dick! A book about a ship full of men who may well have never even met a female that didn’t have a blowhole.

There's even The Lord of the Rings. The fellowship was made up of NINE men and Tolkien was able to keep each character distinct for the reader.

These books all had authors with very little to say about roughly half the human race, but they did know how to clarify their fellas. (Just not in a gay way. Or, well, maybe a bit gay. The fanfic comes from somewhere.) I really recommend reading these types of books and more to absorb different writing tricks more thoroughly. For now though, I have some basic tips.

First, use your characters names! If the reader and POV character know who someone is, do not be afraid to use their name constantly if you have to. Yes, this sounds odd if you never use a pronoun, but I promise you can play with it a lot longer than you think before you start going overboard.

Second, there is in fact a system for using your pronouns unambiguously. It takes practice on the writer’s end, but it’s seamless to the reader. The system is this: it’s a game of tag.

Linda and Stacy were making out nasty-style. Linda couldn’t believe how well it was going! She tentatively reached for Stacy’s boob and raised her eyebrows when Stacy aggressively pushed her chest forward into the touch. But then, Stacy had never been shy about what she wanted. She’d once commissioned an oil painting of herself in the nude except for a Napoleon hat. The artist had laughed. Once. Then she spent the better part of a week feverishly painting and avoiding Stacy’s fierce gaze. The memory made Linda shiver and goosebumps rose on her scalp. This was going to be the best night of her life!

If I did my job right, you were able to follow the pronoun juggling I did in the above paragraph. There were three women and only two of them had names, so how did I help you keep track of them? Like I said, it’s a game of tag. I established the scene with Linda and Stacy, then I immediately focused just on how Linda was feeling. Importantly, I used Linda’s name. That’s how I basically tagged Linda as It.

When she’s It, Linda is the character that owns all the she/her pronouns. No other woman gets to be referenced with she or her until I tag a different character as It. So, let’s take a look at a breakdown of that.

Linda and Stacy were making out nasty-style. Linda couldn’t believe how well it was going! She tentatively reached for Stacy’s boob and raised her eyebrows when Stacy aggressively pushed her chest forward into the touch. But then, Stacy had never been shy about what she wanted. She’d once commissioned an oil painting of herself in the nude except for a Napoleon hat. The artist had laughed. Once. Then she’d spent the better part of a week feverishly painting and avoiding Stacy’s fierce gaze. The memory made Linda shiver and goosebumps rose on her scalp. This was going to be the best night of her life!

Now, you may still be wondering about a few things in this paragraph, namely Stacy’s boob and Stacy’s fierce gaze. (Stacy has a lot going on. Her mom too.) Neither of those instances changes who the she/her pronouns refer to. That’s because, when talking about Stacy’s boob, I’m not talking about Stacy. I’m just referring to her body part. Yes, I’m using her name, but it’s specifically as an adjective.

What is the boob? It’s round, it’s soft, it’s Stacy’s. I could just as easily talk about Linda stealing Stacy’s favorite sweater and it wouldn’t mean that Stacy was suddenly involved in the scene, or even the sentence. The pronouns only get a new owner if you’re using a character’s name as a noun. Like all of writing, this technique takes practice to master, but I promise you can get the hang of it faster than you may realize. Then you won’t need to “other” any of your characters!

But this game of tag doesn’t apply 100% of the time. If you’re a seasoned writer, confident in your pronoun juggling, there are times when you can be a little more fast and loose. I recommend this for sentences where you can be safely confident the reader will follow your logic without you spelling out every step.

Diego was wearing a new white suit, one that looked great on him but left him paranoid about every move he made. His mother would never forgive him if he got it dirty before the wedding. Still, it was nice to watch Liam at his pottery wheel from the safety of the doorway. Diego blushed as he watched his fingers slide through the slick clay. It was filthy in more ways than one.

Here I’ve broken the tag rule, but I’ve still given the reader a way to follow my pronoun changes. It’s all about the context. If it were just on its own “Diego blushed as he watched his fingers slide through the slick clay” would be a poorly written sentence for conveying it’s about two people. But in context you already know there are two people AND that one of them has a strong reason to not get dirty. It’s easy logic for you to realize that I must be talking about Liam’s fingers, because Diego’s would make no sense.

This is an extension of a few other common tricks, like with herself, himself, oneself, etc. Or, as I often see misused, “his own”.

PART 5: OWNING YOUR OWN ‘OWN’

Anna was nervous coming in, but after she saw Nick’s awful dance she felt a lot better about her own attempts to pop and lock. Sure, her hops were still unbalanced and her hair got in her face. At least she wasn’t scared to have her own moment in the spotlight. Maybe she’d run her own dance class one day!

When using his/her/their/my/your “own”, it’s best to save it specifically for when there could be confusion over whose what is doing which. Is everyone wearing the same outfit? Working with the same props? Using the same body parts? Then you’ll probably need an “own” to specify whose stuff you’re talking about. Do not use an “own” if its owner is obvious.

I have seen a lot of online writing with sentences like “Tina caressed Odette with her own hand” or “Jerry nibbled Chandler’s ear with his own teeth.” In these cases it’s unnecessary to specify that the character is using their own body parts to perform an action. Anything else would be a weird situation that would call for a lot more description. Secondly, please note that in these examples it’s not necessary to even specify what body parts are doing the actions. The verbs already imply it. Who caresses with anything but a hand? How would one nibble with anything but teeth? Trust your readers to already understand these things!

Similarly, there’s no need to clarify that a character did something to her/himself. This one is a call-out to a specific story I read that had the sentence, “Alan carried Chad and himself upstairs.” (Character names changed to protect the innocent.) Unless Alan is telekinetically floating them both upstairs, that “himself” is both unnecessary and confusing. I think it’s a safe assumption that this author and everyone who will ever read this story has a physical body. We all know that one cannot carry someone upstairs without going upstairs oneself. But thanks to that one word I had to plot out a 4.5k grammar essay instead of enjoying the delightful, smutty things Alan and Chad got up to on the other end of that staircase.

PART 6: WHY DOES THIS EVEN MATTER?

Good question! The thing about writing, and language in general, is that it evolves. We need to deal with that. For example, “queer” has been reclaimed as a positive/neutral term. No one wants to use the word “spiffy” anymore. And “literally” can now mean “This is what actually happened”, “This is what figuratively happened”, or “Everything I’ve ever told you is a lie”.

The changes can be hard. What was once unacceptable, or even nonsensical, can become perfectly normal language. Really, the only important thing is that your readers can understand what you’re trying to say to them through these weird written symbols we’ve agreed represent sounds.

But understanding is also a term that needs to be clarified. Yu cn udrstnd whn I wrt lke ths, but it takes more effort. That effort can break a reader’s immersion in your story and remind them that they’re reading rather than experiencing. And stories are nothing if they aren’t an experience.

The problems I’ve outlined above are very common in fanfiction, but they’ve also become alarmingly common in mainstream publishing. I suspect that’s because more and more fanfic writers are getting published (congrats!) and because, unfortunately, the publishing industry as a whole has severely cut back on the number of editors they employ. Many modern editing departments for the big publishing houses are grossly understaffed and overworked, not to mention populated by a lot of young, inexperienced editors that no one has time to train. They don’t necessarily know they’re being exploited, overworked, and underpaid. They don’t have the time to be truly thorough with their read-throughs and amendments and copy-editing. But they do have their love of reading. They have the thousands of stories they’ve read both in print and online. They know what they’re used to seeing in the kinds of writing they love.

That’s a long way of acknowledging that you, like me, may well have noticed “the other man” and [trait] and my other pet peeves showing up in professionally published works. But, just like the increased numbers of typos in published books, I believe that their presence does not denote legitimacy.

In my opinion, the trouble with “the other" isn't just a literary dilemma. It's also a social issue. When an author writes "the other man" or "the other woman" as a stand-in for pronouns, it doesn't just describe one character. It also describes the protagonist of the scene. There can be no "other" without there first being a one.

Suddenly it gives the protagonist's gender an unexpected highlight. It tells the reader that it's important to know and remember the main character's gender, that it's an essential aspect of who they are:

If Madeline goes to hug the other woman, the reader can infer that the hug was inherently feminine.

If Evan kisses the other man, then it must be a masculine kiss that only men could exchange. (It also points like a glowing arrow saying THIS IS THE GAY PART!)

If a group splits up and "the men stayed while the women went on ahead" (actual quote from a published novel), then it implies it is significant that they parted along gender lines, that somehow their separate tasks are ones only appropriate for their specific gender. It implies that characters' genders are more important than any other qualities.

In short, it winds up being pretty sexist.

By contrast, consider this same sort of language in a different kind of setting.

"They had to value her work, right? After everything she'd done? Helen glanced down the conference table to Irene, the other woman in the room. She stared right back at her with clear pity and contempt. Fuck."

Here, it is important that the characters are both women because that informs their feelings and motivations in a very specific way. Irene is "the other woman" because she is in fact the only other woman in a room full of, presumably, hostile men.

But the vast majority of the time it's much more important to think of characters as people, as individuals, before thinking of them as their gender. When you use “the other" instead of a name or pronoun, you're reducing the character's personhood. You leave them as a category rather than a complex individual, nevermind someone that the reader can feel they know.

Also. Kind of transphobic.

Not in a way that I usually feel is malicious, but this intense focus on characters’ genders rarely seems to arise when trans characters are part of the scene. More than that, when “the other woman” or “the other man” is used extensively, it reinforces old ideas of gender essentialism. Both in the sense that it’s essential to know this character has this gender and in the implication that the character acts the way they do because that gender is an essential part of them.

I don’t want to delve too far into politics here, but we are very much in a time (early 2025) where trans people are being overtly attacked in every aspect of life. TERFs and other conservative bigots have been fierce and cruel in denying that transgender people are even real. A major piece of those attacks has been emphasizing old, sexist ideas about the inherent, unchanging nature of gender. I worry that little linguistic trends like “the other [gender]” rather than “the other person” feed into that insidious rhetoric.

The advice I’ve outlined here isn’t absolute. Language shifts and adapts, weaves and threads, and creates credible exceptions to any rule. So I’ve done my best to give you guidelines, hard and fast rules you can use while you grow as a writer and decide for yourself what nuances serve you.

You may find that you don’t agree with all the thoughts I’ve given in this essay, but if nothing else, I hope you remember that words have power. All of them. So choose the ones you use with care and with intention.

Now, are we done here? I think so, unless there’s any other questions...

BONUS!

PART 7: BUT WHAT ABOUT THEM? AND THEM?? ALL OF THEM!!

Welcome to the extra credit, brave writer! This is where we take everything you’ve just learned, and up it to Hardcore Mode. Because we are in a new linguistic frontier, aren’t we? For the first time there’s a mainstream push to recognize genders besides women and men and that means confronting the many places where English has evolved in gendered binary. What’s a non-binary way of saying aunt/uncle? Ma’am/sir? Girlfriend/boyfriend? (Personally, I’m in favor of sweetheart. There has been opposition.)

Of course this also extends to pronouns, the most politicized part-of-speech in English history. Grammatically, things are pretty straight-forward with neo-pronouns like ze/zir or fae/faer. They work the same ways as she/her and he/him. But a lot of us enby menaces (hi) like to use the non-binary singular pronouns that English already had: they/them.

Ex.: “Who's at the door? They had better have those pronoun pins I ordered!”

It is not grammatically incorrect to use “they” as a singular. However, it can be confusing, especially in the intimate style of romance writing.

Bret wished they could spend all their time with Fig. They were just so much nicer than their family. They grimaced, thinking of their siblings and the cruel things they said about their ant farm. They would never be like that. They wouldn’t hurt them, but they would. Even in front of them.

It’s possible you can parse that them-storm, but are you sure? Do you really know which they is them? And even if you do, was it worth the headache of trying to make it all make sense? Do you feel immersed in my beautiful story, or like you just solved a bad riddle?

While the situation around them is a bit more complicated than the problems I’ve discussed for binary same-sex pairings, the foundations are thankfully the same. You need to use characters’ names. You need to pay more attention to your wording. You need to clarify a bit more than if it were a woman and man interacting. And you need to make sure you’re applying those rules to any groups who are also in play. For this example, let’s assume the reader knows Bret is alone in the scene. Then I’d recommend something like this:

Bret wished they could spend all their time with Fig. Fig was just so much nicer than Bret’s family. Bret couldn’t help grimacing, thinking about the last few days and the cruel things Steff and Odin had said about Bret’s ant farm. Fig would never be like that. Fig wouldn’t hurt Bret, but stupid Steff and obnoxious Odin would. Even in front of those beautiful ants.

Yes, it takes thought and careful writing. The non-binary community has our finest linguists working on new, universally accepted standards. (Actually, it might just be one person. All I know is they’re working on it.) I’ll let you know when we have a breakthrough on that front. For now, we can tell our beautiful, queer stories with the tips I’ve outlined in this essay. I hope it’s left you ready and eager to bring every character you’ve imagined to life. I can’t wait to read about them!

Shift to the End: A Short Story

Anyone who's worked an awful job knows it's not hard for the clock to turn against you. If you have a deadline you just have to blink before you're out of time. But if the only thing keeping you wearing a name-tag is waiting for your shift to be over, every second will definitely take an hour. I've experienced it often enough at summer jobs and boring classes. Back then I knew it was just my perception. Obviously I was looking at the clock more often when I didn't want to be somewhere.

Obviously.

Yeah, I knew a lot of things back then.

This year I got a job at the Store. You know the one. It has a bit of everything and it's just a short enough drive from a few towns to stay in business in a world that would rather have everything delivered. I thought I was lucky to get the job. Not a lot in the way of stable retail these days. No office was interested in me without experience and a 'fulfillment center' would eat me alive. The Store wasn't exactly glamorous, but at least they paid me enough to survive.

(Sometimes my friends talked about thriving and loving and having dreams. I knew that one day they would shatter like the heirloom porcelain they kept meaning to sell, the set they'd never had room for anyway.)

Do you know what a liminal space is? It's supposed to be, like, gas stations or abandoned malls or an airport terminal. Places that don't feel quite real because they weren't built with the idea of people staying there. A liminal space is somewhere designed for you hang out for a little bit then move on. And for some people those places feel so wrong they have to get out as soon as possible.

It's very weird when the liminal space is the place you work.

I did a lot of different jobs around the Store, all of us did. Mostly I tried to keep the coffee dispensers full and wandered the aisles straightening things out. There was always something new in the wrong place or knocked over at the beginning of my route again by the time I got to the end. It was a good way to eat up a shift and always look busy. I had to always look busy or my manager would put me on a register, the position I hated most.

I was old enough now that people were starting to assume things about me when I was in uniform. The register was where I was the most likely to hear it.

“Do you seriously need a calculator to make change for that?”

“Remember kids, stay in school if you don't want to end up like her!”

“Wow, could you bag any slower? Unlike you, I have important places to be.”

It wasn't the best for my mental health. Or trying to maintain my lifelong no-murder streak. Plus it made my already tedious shifts seem to take even longer. So, y'know, it was for the best that I focused on making sure every flavor of granola bar was on display in alphabetical order. (I had a system.)

But...there was a problem. A problem named Paul.

Paul was the general manager. And maybe the owner. I'd never gotten a clear idea of the grand company hierarchy. Anyway, Paul really prided himself on how well the Store did. He made us quarterly reports and sales targets and membership drives. He also got just a touch intense if he thought you were slacking off at all. That was when he would give you a special task.

He said the tasks were to motivate us, give us a difficult but achievable way to show our best selves. (He seemed very convinced that our best selves would be all about shelving new product real fast or selling that one super huge Lego set.) My sort-of friend Carrie still complains about the time she had to put price tags on all of the new holiday stock by herself in the last hour-and-a-half of her shift. Normally that amount of pricing would have taken three hours, but Paul decided to offer it to her as a special challenge and somehow she managed to do it. She was crying when she left, but she did it.

I've been assigned these tasks too. Things like making a display of canned yams, cleaning spent gift cards so we could reuse them, or (most annoying) making the enormous magazine shelves have any sense of organization. The experience always sucked. I hesitated to complain though, because Paul would always get this obnoxious, smug look and point out that hey, I had been able to do it in as little time as he'd asked. And something about that made me feel sick.

One day I made a mistake.

There was a blackout. It only lasted five minutes so it wasn't a big deal, but it was early in the day when business was slow and I was the only one on shift so far. (I know, the Store was really too big to just have one person run everything, but Paul was downright allergic to adding to payroll and we all had to suffer for it.) Anyway, when the power came back on I had to run around making sure the computers rebooted and that the PoS system would actually charge credit cards and my drawer was out of quarters because no one there could be bothered to make sure there was a good amount of change at the end of the night and....Well anyway, I had a lot of things to focus on for a while. Then even more when more customers started coming in. It was hours before I could even think.

Long enough for everything in the frozen food aisle to thaw. Especially the ice cream. Because of course that was the one section of the Store that didn't get power back. Paul turned purple when he saw it.

“I'm sorry! I swear, Paul, I didn't notice. I was trying to get everything else running and I didn't have time...No, I didn't smell it up front...But how could I have put up hazard signs? I didn't know...I'm sorry, Paul. I'm sorry!...I-I just, I thought...Please. Please don't say that...”

Five minutes before Paul came in I'd actually been pretty proud of how I'd handled things. I'd managed to get (most of) the major systems running again by myself. I'd even charmed a lot of the customers who came through. Thirty minutes after Paul came in though, I knew I wasn't going to forget I was dirt again anytime soon.

It didn't matter what I said. It was my job to clean up the once-frozen food mess. By myself. Before the end of my shift. And I should have felt grateful I wasn't getting fired. It was an impossible goal. I knew that didn't matter though. It was meant to be a punishment. I stuffed all my wounded pride into a little box in my head, grabbed the big mop, and got to work.

It was a while before I noticed something was wrong. I was too focused on my first pass at the lake of melted ice cream. But something was worming its way into me, a tension that couldn't be explained by my hurt feelings or the way I shoved the mop around. Something felt heavy. Something that didn't want to forgive me. I felt a fresh wave of shame that made me pause to squeeze my eyes shut. It was in that moment that I realized.

The Store was silent.

There were no indistinct voices, no beeps from the registers or squeaks from carts. There wasn't even any catchy-but-inoffensive music coming out from overhead.

It felt weird, almost oppressive. I couldn't help rapping my knuckles against one of the freezers to make sure I could still hear. The knock sounded too loud in the stillness, but also muffled in a way, like I was hearing a recording of the noise instead of the thing itself. I stared at my hand and watched it tap the glass again. I could see it, feel it; see the way my fist connected to my wrist, my arm, my shoulder. But somehow I was still struck with the strange feeling that it was not actually my hand.

It's like it's in a video, I thought. This isn't really me, moving like this. Why would it be?

I blinked and shook my head. I still had so much mess to clean up, this was no time to disassociate. I sank my mop back into the already filthy bucket of water, rang it out, then pushed it at the melted mess again. It was harder than it should have been. I felt so tired now, but not like I wanted sleep. Instead it was such a bone-deep, weariness. Like my world was only this closed-off aisle now. I felt agonizingly numb, but could barely notice it enough to wonder if I should be concerned.

So, yeah, given all that it was pretty surprising when the box of Store brand low-calorie granola bars (honey and cranberry flavored) hit me on the head.

It was so startling that the box bounced off a shelf then settled on the floor before I collected myself enough to react. “...Ow!”

Someone snorted next to, no, above me. There was a guy there, peering over the row of freezers from the next aisle over. He was Asian, about early twenties, with dark hair that was a mess and just a little bit too long, like he'd been putting off a haircut. His eyes had such dark rings underneath that I wondered if he'd ever had a good night's sleep in his life. There was something off about his smirk.

“Hey,” he said, “weird question, but have you ever read The Martian?”

“Uuuuuuh...” I pulled myself together. “Sir! I'm sorry, but you aren't allowed to climb the shelves! Could you please come down from there?”

His smirk got a little wider. “Happy to!” And then he climbed up even more to stand on top of the freezers.

“Sir! Wait, no!” I practically squeaked. “What are you—”

And then the bastard jumped from the freezers and landed squarely in a bin of discounted Easter Bunny plushes. The bin scraped half a foot along the floor from the impact and I winced. “What the hell?! This isn't a playground, sir!”

He laughed at that one, just once. It sounded rusty and pained. “Don't worry, I don't get hurt easily. And I think the rabbits will forgive me. They've never minded before.” With a grunt, he pulled himself out of the bin and stood up. “Now, let's make this quick. The Martian. Read it? Seen it? Flipped through the last fifty pages or so at any point?”

I was opening my mouth to find more angry ways to say 'sir' when I noticed the clothes he was wearing. He wasn't dressed like a customer at all. In fact, he had on the same uniform I did. The Store's logo was sat on the left side of his chest, looking a bit different than usual. The apple tree was more detailed than I was used to. And it looked like it had been....slashed through?

“Are you...a new hire?” I asked doubtfully.

The guy made a face. A slow expression that may have once heard of a smile and was doing its best imitation. Possibly so you'd let down your guard enough for it to eat you. I could see his teeth. They didn't move as he said, very precisely, “No. I'm really not.”

“Then...Ok. Alright.” I held up my hands, suddenly feeling a cold creep of dread. “Sorry about that. Can we, um, could you tell me your name?”

For some reason that caught him off-guard. He stared at me then turned his head to look at where I'd been cleaning. His gaze traveled from the partially mopped floor, to the still-sticky unmopped portion, to the bio-hazard inside the freezers I hadn't even touched yet. It was bizarre, but he looked downright shaken by it all. “You're...going to be here a while, aren't you?”

I let out a nervous laugh. “Yeah. I guess so. Gotta clean all this before the end of my shift or die trying, y'know?”

He stared at me even longer then with expression that was equal parts hunger and despair. Obviously there was something weird going on, but I'd dealt with plenty of weirdos while at the Store. Normally I would have been able to write off this intense, reckless guy and Customer Service at him until he left me alone. But there was something else off, something that was leading me right to the edge of panic. And somehow I already knew it wasn't just because of him.

“So,” he asked, gently, “have you noticed the windows are gone yet?”

“I....what?”

I turned to the front of the Store, to the big bay windows full of displays and a view of the parking lot with the busy road beyond. I looked for a glance at the muted midday sunlight that would be lighting up a handful of small trees rooted in mulch and the faded but still distinct sign for the thrift store next to us.

There was nothing.

The front of the Store was a solid wall painted the same sickly yellow color as the rest of the building. There was no sunlight, no door, no way out.

The quiet that had been bothering me before seemed so much stronger suddenly. It wasn't just an absence of sound, it was an invisible oppressive smog actively trying to crush me. A long, low whimper came out of my mouth. I should have been shocked. I should have had a million questions and doubts.

I did not.

I knew without effort that the basic essence of the world had shifted to trap me. The Store had always been a liminal space, somewhere that time and reality worked differently. And now I was a victim of that liminality.

The man watched me as the dreadful truth worked its way through my brain. He waited with all his despairing hunger. I turned back to him. It took a small eternity for me to figure out how to speak again.

“What the fuck?”

The world got fuzzy. Tears. I was crying. I could feel it on my face, but I couldn't feel the emotions. It was like I was watching someone else's tragedy on TV. When I moved my limbs felt jerky and distant. I didn't know what to do with my hands. They scratched at my arms and pulled at my hair and there was a bizarre comfort in the pain. I tried to breathe. Was I breathing? How did breathing even work?! I made gasping, squeaking noises, but couldn't pull air in and out. What could I—

There was a loud, pointed crunching noise. It made my mind fumble in its panic and I turned my head. The man was still there, but he'd grabbed a bag of chips (secondary brand, barbecue flavor). As I watched, he held eye contact with me and took another loud bite. He licked the powdered flavoring off his thumb then held out the bag to me.

“Here,” he said. “Food helps sometimes.”

“I...You need to pay for that.”

He rolled his eyes. “Believe me, I already have.” He waved the bag at me again.

My hand still felt distant and mechanical, but I managed to reach out a hand and grab a chip. It felt strange, like if the sound of ringing in my head could be made into touch. When I took a bite the flavor was wrong. I frowned.

“Like eating a ghost, isn't it?” the guy said. “I think it might be more like, kinda, just what we remember the chips are supposed to taste like. I tried it with some of the stuff I've never eaten before and I do not recommend that. Like chugging down distilled anguish.” He ate another chip. “So, sorry to rush you through the sudden wave of existential dread or whatever, but have you ever read The Martian? I never got to finish it. I was going to read it on my break, but I left it in my car. Back then. Forever.”

A strange, full-body twitch rolled over him and he gave that awful smile again. This time though, it didn't look quite so dreadful. Instead I could see it as something else: out of practice.

“Um. Sorry, no. I don't really read much,” I said, regretting it as his attempt at a smile faded. “So...we're trapped in a hellish limbo pocket dimension thingie? Is that it? You seem like you, well, kind of have the lay of the land. What happened? Did we, I don't know, fall through a quantum something? Is there some sort of ancient evil the Store is built on that must feast on our souls?”

In some part of my mind I hoped I was joking at least a bit. The guy didn't bite though.

“No,” he said with a hard tone. “Paul's a demon. You're trapped here until you finish whatever he asked you to do. If you get out, if you get to go back, make sure you finish your shift, clock out, and quit over the phone when you get home. Don't give him any chance to get mad at you face-to-face again.”

Alright. That was a lot to take in. “You think Paul is an actual, literal demon?”

“Or something like it.”

“And you think he uses his evil, Satanic powers to run a glorified convenience store?”

“Everyone needs a hobby.”

“A hobby that includes trapping us in retail limbo?!”

“Really don't think you're getting the whole demon thing.”

“I helped that man set the background of his phone to cartoon dolphins! What kind of demon likes dolphins?!”

The guy held up his hands. His lips were twitching in a way that almost looked like they recalled real smiles. “I haven't exactly seen Paul recently. But I do remember him regularly losing his glasses when they were on top of his head. Maybe he doesn't even know he's a demon. Maybe he read a mantra from a business advice guide and didn't realize it was a Satanic chant giving him Dark Magick. I dunno. I've just been working with theories. And theories start to drag you down if you can't even tell people about them, let alone test them.”

We were walking toward the magazine section. He gestured for me to take a seat in one of the filthy chairs the Store disguised with throw blankets to look homey. I sat and felt the ghost of what those chairs were like in the regular world. Slight squish to the cushions, but not comfortable enough for anyone to stay in very long. Might give homeless people ideas, after all.

I braced myself, swallowed, and asked the important question. “You said I can get out when my task is done, right? But how long have you been here? Does Paul just trap us forever sometimes?”

He collapsed into the other chair, letting his head fall back to stare distantly at the ceiling. “I don't know. I really, really, don't know. Sometimes other people come here, but it's never for long. And I think sometimes I kinda sleep through it. No one sticks around though. I've been here forever. Just trying to keep breathing. My head...it gets muddy when I'm alone. Makes it hard to remember how to move, or even think.”

“How long have you been here?” I asked. Something twisted in my stomach at the idea of being caught in this static Store without anyone to talk to. I didn't think I'd be able to handle it very well either.

“Good question.” He rolled his head over to look at me. “What was the date when you left?”

I told him the day. Then, more hesitantly, I added the year. The answer hit him like a blow, but apparently not an unexpected one.

“It's been about five years then. Kind of. I'm not super convinced time is the same here as out there.”

He sounded weirdly matter-of-fact about it, like for all the horror of this place it still managed to be boring too. I supposed that made sense. That didn't mean I didn't want to comfort him though. For whatever comfort words were worth.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry you've had to be alone for so long. Your family must be so scared for you.”

There was a brief moment of the Store's unnatural silence piercing into us, just long enough for me to panic about how breathing worked again. Then he slowly said, “My...family.” He blinked a few times.

“Yes? You know, parents and grandparents? Siblings and cousins? A cute dog that won't stay off the furniture?”

He blinked again. His hands went to his head and he let out a long scream, warbling like a siren. “Aaaaaah! Aaah! Family! Family! I had a family!”

His breathing was shallow. He started to shake. Was this a panic attack? I hurried over to him, lifted and lowered my arms uselessly, then finally just committed to giving him a hug. I held him tight. Hopefully tight enough to keep him with me. In a moment his screaming stopped. In another his breathing evened out. Then, so much later, he reached around to hug me back.

It was only then when things were calm that I realized how much I'd needed a hug too. Oh God, when was the last time someone had even touched me, let alone showed me affection? I spread my fingers to feel as much of his back as I could. I was crying again, but this time it felt like the most beautiful thing in the universe.

“I...My name is Imani,” I choked out. “I have three sisters, but I don't like one because she always makes fun of my tattoos and says I'll regret them. My favorite thing is telling ghost stories in a thunderstorm! I'm working on a really ugly painting of a hamburger to give my friend because of an inside joke we've had since we were four! I can't afford the equipment I'd need, but I want to get a pet iguana more than anything!”

It was incredible. Every word felt like lightning. Like I was breaking down walls I'd never seen go up. How could I have forgotten so much? My friends, my family, my name? Was it just this place? Or had it happened long before then?

I leaned back just enough to look my friend in the face. “What about you? Who are you? Come on, you've been here five years. You need to remember even more than I do!”

He stared back, looking over my face like he was only just now really seeing it. “I-I don't know. I can't think! Give me something small? To help me focus?”

“Right. Of course. Okay.” I thought. “Do you like music?”

It was painful, but I could almost see how he pushed his thoughts. Was he trying to remember what music even was? I hummed just a little. Something classical, I think? And something in his eyes became more solid.

“Yes?” he said. “Yes! I'm really into weird metal bands! And I played the trumpet for three years in high school!” The idea of high school seemed to inspire more thoughts and his eyes got wider and wider as he spoke. “I used to collect charms for my phone, but I had to stop when they got too heavy and anyway everyone was switching to smartphones. I love to cook even though my grandma says I over-season everything. And I....I...I AM TOO GOOD FOR THIS GODDAMN STORE!”

He collapsed back into the chair and I half stumbled, half fell back with him, my upper body laying awkwardly across his lap. I could see he was crying too now, probably a good thing. But what made me far happier was the his huge, genuine smile.

We stayed like that for a long time, but even when we got up we made sure at least our hands were touching. We didn't know exactly what magic there was in human touch, but it seemed to keep the Store from winding into our minds too much.

“Right. Lets figure out a plan.” I sounded strong and confident. More surprising, I felt strong and confident. “What were you sent here for? Did Paul give you an impossible job or something? Also, uh,” I pushed my mind to think of something, “did you ever have braces as a kid?”

His brow wrinkled in confusion then smoothed out. “A raccoon got in the Store while I had the door open for the trash. It panicked and climbed up the shelves. Knocked over an ocean's worth of wine bottles.” He switched tones. “And I had braces for six years but I never wore my retainers when they were off, so my teeth got a little crooked again after.” He paused. “What's the best tongue-twister you know?”

I recited the whole bit about Tweedle Beetles from Fox in Socks, then grinned when I got through without stumbling. “So you had to clean up all the wine?”

“Yeah. And believe me, I've scrubbed every inch of that aisle a hundred times by now.” His expression darkened. “I've tried so many things, Imani. A lot of them I don't even like to think about. None of them have made a difference.” He closed his eyes and took a slow breath. “Thank you for helping me remember a bit of who I am, but maybe we should just focus on your task. Get you out of here before you lose yourself.”

And there were those tendrils of despair again. I was floating. I was thinking, but also thinking about my thinking, like I was my own puppeteer. After five years trapped in a bleak, unchanging limbo, I could only imagine the range of desperate things my friend might have done to find any kind of escape. I knew if I thought about it too much I would also start to believe he couldn't get out. Probably get overcome with fear for myself again too.

So I didn't think about it.

I took his wrist and pulled him back toward the frozen foods. We could at least work on the big, obvious mess for a bit while we planned. “I'll get back to mopping. You start emptying out the food in the freezers. It's all melted or thawed now and needs to go.” I paused. “Where can we put the trash if we can't go outside?”

He smirked, still sad but with a touch of humor. “That's one of the only cool things about this place. Hold on.” He walked up front to grab a cart. My whole body tensed at seeing him walk away. It took barely anything for the fog to roll back in. If he stepped out of my sight, I wondered if I would even remember there was someone else here.

My friend got to the cart and started to push it. He was slowing down though. Did he remember what he was doing? Or why? Oh God, what if he never turned around?

“Hey!” I called. It was like pushing through mud. “High school trumpet player! Hurry up with that cart!”

He turned with wide eyes and I saw the moment he remembered me. He ran back to me with the cart and didn't slow down. We crashed together in a clinging, frightened hug.

“So, no more separating, I guess?”

“Y-yeah. Yeah.”

The cool thing he'd wanted to show me was the way every bit of trash just disappeared once we put it in the cart and looked away. He told me the Store always reset to the way it was supposed to look.

“It's kind of like a bad video game,” he explained. “If I knock over a whole set of shelves here, cause as much destruction as I can, then it changes back the second I look away. The only things that I've seen stay changed are the tasks people have to do when they get here. One time it was an old woman with a knocked-over rack of Mother's Day cards. She was halfway done cleaning it up when she tripped and the rack fell down again. She started crying, but when we looked again the rack was back in place with all the cards she'd sorted in their spots again. I think when something is 'right' the Store sort of, I dunno, reclaims it?”

As far as I could tell he was right. Cleaning my mess was pretty easy with his help. We didn't have to touch the whole time, but we made sure we kept talking. At the very least we very least we needed to keep trading the silly personal trivia questions. There wasn't really a way to track how long we were at it (and we definitely took breaks to rest or goof off), but we had enough time to talk about just about everything.

At first it was the fun things: good times with friends, hilarious misadventures, arguing over the right way to moonwalk. Then there were harder topics. He talked about his parents' divorce and the way he was afraid because he never finished what he started. I admitted that I was scared I'd never accomplish anything in my life, that things had become so gray I didn't even know how to aspire for something better anymore.

A few times we just sat and held each other. Somehow that kind of quiet felt good.

Finally we just had a few last things to throw out. My friend was moving a little stiffly, trying not to look at me. I put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“You don't remember your name, do you?” I asked. “How did you manage to remember the plot to The Martian for five years, but you don't know what your name is?

“Listen, it's a really good book, okay?” he said with fake irritation. When he didn't say anything else I gave his shoulder a little squeeze to let him know he wasn't going to dodge the question. He sighed.

“Fine. It's a book about a man who's desperate to go home. He's trapped alone on Mars and he has to spend years doing everything he can to stay alive. And I never got to the end. I don't know if he ever makes it back. I guess somewhere along the way I decided that, if he was able get home, that would mean I was going to make it too.”

He took my hand off his shoulder and twined our fingers together. “This place takes a lot away from us. Before you showed up, I don't know the last time I thought about music, tongue twisters, or even my family. I can feel in my brain that there's still so much I don't remember, and without those memories, name or no name, I don't know who I am. But the one thing the Store never takes away is just how much I wish I could leave.”

He looked in my eyes with a heartbreaking sadness. “Thank you for everything you've done. I don't know what's going to happen to me when you're gone, but thank you so much for reminding me what it means to feel happy.” Then he pulled me into a tight hug. “I love you, Imani. Good-bye.”

Before I could do anything, he stepped back, scooped up the last piece of trash, and threw it into the cart.

I saw him sob. I saw him collapse. I saw his shuddering stillness as the Store's quiet began to take hold of him again.

“You absolute asshole!” I growled. “You were really going to send me back without giving me a chance to help you!”

My beautiful, idiotic, self-sacrificing friend fell back in shock at my voice. “What? Why are you still here?!” He looked around frantically. “Did we miss something? We must have missed something! You can't be stuck here forever too!”

“Hey, it's okay. Breathe, dude.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a once-frozen bag of peas. “I was thinking ahead. I can get out whenever I want to now. But I'm not going anywhere until you're free too.”

“Imani!”

“Yes, best-friend-who-can't-remember-his-name?” I raised my eyebrows unsympathetically while he glared. “I'm not leaving you behind. You've been here five years too long already. Now lets go to the liquor aisle and figure out what could avoid being cleaned for half a decade.”

I grabbed his hand and marched us over. I was shaking enough that he could probably tell, but I hoped he at least wouldn't mention it. That had been far too close. I might have just barely dodged losing him forever. He didn't apologize, but it was at least a relief when he interlaced our fingers again.

Once we arrived we did some basic brainstorming. My friend listed all the things he'd tried before and I listened intently. Five years was enough time to be very thorough. I had no doubt that he really had gone over every nook and cranny of the aisle in that time.

“Alright,” I finally said, trying to still sound assured even though he'd eliminated most of my ideas. “It sounds like you've taken every logical step that you could. So I guess it's time to move on to the illogical ones.”

“Believe me, I've tried plenty of those too.”

I didn't reply. I was leaning back against a row of alarm clocks covered in fake seashells and taking in the scene, trying to imagine what it must have looked like when my friend first got here. A loose animal would have caused a lot of chaos. All that spilled wine and broken glass. Not to mention whatever it took to chase out the raccoon itself.

A raccoon that could have easily caught some glass in its tail and had it fall out in some random other part of the Store.

My friend did his best to remember for me where his coworkers had chased the raccoon around the Store. It was the most draining thing I'd ever done in my life to examine every crack and crevice with him. I didn't need sleep or food in this little pocket hell, but boy could my emotions take their toll. With every vaguely suspicious piece of dirt we picked up, we had to push through hope and fear. Would this be the one that would send my friend home? Should we cry and hug and say goodbye over this little crumb of maybe-glass? We tried to do it every time at first. Then we started throwing things away in groups, a dozen specks at a time.

Finally, even that was too much to twist our hearts over again and again. I had to just start throwing things in the trashcan mercilessly. My friend stopped saying goodbyes too, but I saw he made a point of looking at me every time we tried a new bit of litter.

“You know,” he said at one point, “I don't actually know for sure if we'll go back to the regular world even if we do this right. No one's come back to tell me. We might just...stop existing.”

“We won't,” I said firmly. “We'll go home and we'll remember who we are and we'll spend the rest of our lives crying about how beautiful sunsets and puppies and cheesy fries are.”

“But...”

“We are going to be HOPEFUL even if we have to SMILE until we BLEED!”

He gave me a look that was equal parts fondness and exasperation. “Fine! I guess I'll just have faith we can make it then!”

“Damn right,” I muttered.

“There's something else though.” He paused until I looked at him. “We were supposed to do these stupid tasks before the end of our shifts, right? What if that means, if I get out, I'm gonna time travel back to five years ago? So that I, sort of, finished in time?”

I considered. “Maybe. Would probably be the best outcome even. You'll probably be all traumatized no matter what, but at least that way your friends and family won't have spent years looking for you.”

“But then it would still be five years, for me, before you got out.”

I blushed and tried to laugh it off. We hadn't talked about he'd meant when he said he loved me. Partly because it was embarrassing and partly because I didn't want to wrestle with the ethics of what was at least partly a lot of trauma-bonding. It didn't stop me from saying stupid things though. “What, you mean you won't wait five years for your chance get into these work-approved black slacks?”

At least it was satisfying to see him blush too. “I'm serious, Imani! Think about the timelines! Yeah, it would be five years for me before you got out of Store purgatory, but I would be around when you first got the job, for every shift you worked before this one. I could look you up online and warn you to never work at the Store in the first place! I...I would be a monster if I didn't.”

My mouth fell open as I thought about it. He might actually be able to stop me from coming here. I could already feel that the cold silence of this place would never fully leave me. Some part of me would always be broken from it. Maybe I would never be able to have a normal life again.

But if I told him to save me with a big old paradox, what would happen to him? I couldn't save him if he didn't let me get trapped here.

Well. I supposed that settled it.

I looked my friend dead in the eye and said, “Don't you dare do anything that would make me lose you.”

I found another piece of something to throw out while he spluttered.

“But what if we ca—”

He didn't finish. He was gone. Of course.

It would have been nice to feel relieved. I hadn't counted on just how awful it would be once I was alone. The numbing quiet and piercing fog crashed down on me like they had been waiting. Like the Store was angry I'd resisted it for so long. I collapsed under its weight.

I was near the registers. From where I lay all I could see was a filthy floormat on one side of me and a row of dusty candies and hair accessories on the other. There was a bundle of scrunchies in neon colors. The models on the packaging were smiling so rigidly.

Was this me? Was I a bundle of scrunchies, trying so hard to feel like I could mean something to someone? No. I was definitely worth less than scrunchies. No one had ever loved me. No one had even known my name. I didn't know my name. My only value was in keeping the Store alive. I was here now because I hadn't even been able to do that right.

I wanted to go home so much. But my shift wouldn't end until I learned my lesson. I had to finish cleaning the mess I made.

The bag of peas was still in my pocket, vaguely cold and wet. It took a few tries to get my arm to flop over and to reach my hand in. It genuinely might have been months before I pulled out the bag. The trash can was just a few feet away. My legs moved without me asking and I was pulled to my feet. I could almost feel strings tied to me, connecting me to the unblinking florescent lights in the ceiling.

Maybe eventually, somehow, I would have gotten some reminder of my life outside the Store if I'd had to stay and work in this dead pocket world for years. Luckily, I didn't need to wait that long. The Store wanted to be clean and I wanted to go home. We had no reason to fight each other anymore. I dropped the peas in the trash.

0-0-0-0-0

I think the change was instant, but it took a moment for me to notice. There was something different. About the air? The light? And was that the sound of inoffensive 80s pop hits I heard from overhead? I blinked and slowly tried to things in.

“Miss? Miss!”

Ah, there was a woman in front of me. I smiled politely. “So sorry, got lost in my head for a minute. How can I help you, ma'am?”

She rolled her eyes. “There's no one at the balloon counter. Could you fill some up for me? My son has his birthday party in an hour.”

“Of course, ma'am,” I said, nice and chipper. “I'm happy to fill those up. In the future I recommend that you book the balloons in advance though. They're very popular and I'd hate for you to risk not having the birthday goods you need! Have you heard about our party package options? It's a discounted rate on bundles of party favors, decorations, and cake!”

“Yeah sure, not today thanks,” she said vaguely as I walked to the balloon station. “Just give me fifteen in green and yellow.” Then she pulled out her phone and and proceeded to ignore me.

I was halfway through filling the fourth green balloon when I glanced at my wrist. Peeking out from under my sleeve I could just see the edge of my tattoo.

Wait, that was right. I had a tattoo. A few of them. What were they again?

I pushed back my sleeve and twisted my forearm to look at the colorful lizard wrapped around it, looking beautiful against my dark skin. I let out a small laugh. It was an iguana. A picture of an iguana that I had chosen because I'd wanted it. Because that piece of art meant something to me.

There was a loud pop next to me and I jumped. The balloon had overfilled. I winced in automatic apology to the customer.

She didn't look amused. “Are you high or something? Pay attention to your job!”

“Is there a problem here?”

I jumped even higher this time, at the sound of Paul's voice. He and the customer ignored me to discuss how many balloons she needed. He tried to sell her on the party packages. She gave an annoyed smile and shook her head. It was just enough time for me to pull myself together a little and frantically find a clock.

3:01PM. Oh thank God, the devil, or whoever else might be invested in letting time move forward.

“Imani,” Paul said with bored authority. “When you fill the balloons, you know you have to—”

“Of course!” I tried very hard to sound normal, but there was definitely a manic edge to my voice. “I'll make sure to review the balloon procedures the next time I’m in, sir. I'm afraid I just noticed that my shift is over though. And I know you don't want us doing any overtime!”

I hurried to take off my apron. Paul frowned, but the customer looked amused. “Wow, you're sure in a hurry! Have you got a big date tonight?”

The question made me pause as I gathered my things from behind the counter. Memories came back, both terrible and wonderful. I looked back at the customer. “You know what? I sure hope so!”

I'd never clocked out and run through the Store's front door so fast before. The parking lot had never looked so beautiful. I started to laugh and cry at the same time. I was so flooded with emotions I could barely walk. Man, catching the bus home was going to be an event.

“Heh. Yeah, I know the feeling.” The voice was deeper. Maybe a little more...rounded? But I knew it.

My friend had filled out. There was a new assurance to the way he stood. And his clothes, they were nice.

“Did you dress up for me?” I asked, because that was obviously the most important question right now.

He blushed. “Maybe a bit. I figured it's a special occasion. Well, I guess I've been looking forward to it a lot longer than you.” He bit his lip and held out a hand. There was that uncertain smile I knew. “Can I give you a ride home? I don't think either of us want to stay here any longer.”

“I don't know,” I said with a watery smile. “I mean, I don't even know your name.”

A bright grin slowly spread across his face like sunshine. “Oh right, so rude of me.” He turned his hand so it was ready for a handshake. “It's wonderful to meet you, Imani. I'm Liam.”

Maybe he seriously thought I would shake his hand, but instead I made a garbled sob and hugged him so tight he practically had to carry me to his car.

In the future we would have so much to talk about. Liam had experienced a lot in the last five years and had a lot of stories to tell (including possible plans for some Store-based arson). I'd need to adjust and recover. I had to get used to sunshine and flavor and life being real things again.

That could wait though. We drove along with our hands clasped and we couldn't stop smiling.

“Did you ever finish reading The Martian?” I asked.

Liam nodded. “I did. There's a movie now too. Do you think you might like to watch it?”

“Absolutely. Let's go to my apartment, order in a huge feast, and watch movies until dawn tomorrow.”

“Sounds perfect,” he said with a laugh. “You think you'll be able to stay up that late?”

“Why not?” I said. I felt so free. “I mean, I definitely won't have work tomorrow.”

Here and There, Then and Now: A Look at the History and Present of Immigration in America

The United States is a country with a powerful mythos. We are the land of the free. The nation born of revolution. An imperfect, but still inspiring experiment in democracy, founded on the idea that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Next to those ideals, we also hold an image of America as an entire country made up of those who came here for that freedom. We are a cultural melting pot. A nation of immigrants and their descendants.

September 17th is recognized as both Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. It celebrates the signing of the United States Constitution and the naturalization of new US citizens. In fact, it’s become tradition for around thirty immigrants to be present in Washington D.C. on that day, to complete their naturalization and swear their allegiance to the United States in front of the original US constitution. In 2022 Roger Bennett, himself an immigrant from England, gave the ceremony’s keynote address. As he pointed out, “[t]hat document behind me, the Constitution—our Constitution—it begins with the iconic phrase, ‘We, the People.’ You are now part of that ‘we’.”

Finally becoming an American citizen can be a very emotional experience. It’s a process that often takes years. That’s years of forms and fees; of offering proofs that you are a safe, moral person; and that you’ll come to America and add more than you’ll take. It requires careful records, the support of family or employers, and often even learning a new language. But what it takes more than anything else is patience. Months to years for a visa, then 3 to 5 years of residence to become a citizen. Put simply, immigration is not something anyone does lightly. Making it, finally being part of the us of the US, is a moment of pride, joy, and achievement.

Of course, there are some major factors that need to be addressed around the history of American immigration. There were large populations living on this land long before Europeans arrived. Native American tribes suffered through plagues and genocides committed by colonists, to the point where Native Americans make up less than 2% of the modern US population. On the other extreme, it would be misleading and cruel to call the millions of Africans that white Americans enslaved “immigrants”.

These realities are part of the truth of American history, just as complicated as the histories of the rest of the world. There have often been peoples facing hate, poverty, violence, and starvation around the globe. People who needed to find a new home. This means that, through choice, force, or dire need; millions of people have come to the United States for new lives. And they were deeply brave doing so. Immigration is hard under the best circumstances. It means leaving behind entire lives. Family, friends, culture, and language. It means letting go of your home in the uncertain hope that you’ll be able to build a better one somewhere you may barely know.

While it did offer better safety and success, America has not always been as welcoming to immigrants as we like to imagine. Starting in the 1850s there was a significant rise in immigration from Ireland and China that led to wide-spread racism and xenophobia. Many Americans felt their culture and economy were being destroyed by foreign influences. They responded with hate and new restrictions on immigration, including the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned all Chinese immigrant laborers. This was in spite of the long, hard efforts Chinese workers had made, building American railroads and connecting west coast to east.

However, general restrictions on American immigration weren’t put in place until the 1924 Immigration Act, which instituted quotas on how many people could emigrate in from various countries annually. It was passed out of increased xenophobia from many Americans. From fear that too many southern Europeans, eastern Europeans, and Jews would come here and ruin the integrity and prosperity of the country. These restrictions grew less popular after World War II and the rise of Nazism, but they weren’t liberalized until 1965.

In spite of these obstacles and varying levels of animosity, immigrants have been key to every great American accomplishment. There are countless examples from both history and today.

We got through the height of the COVID pandemic thanks to immigrant-founded companies like Pfizer, Moderna, Google, and Zoom. We even owe the telephone to an immigrant; Alexander Graham Bell came from Scotland. We’ve had rich entertainment from immigrants in film and TV, like Guillermo del Toro, Alfred Hitchcock, Lupita Nyong’o, Trevor Noah, Haing S. Ngor, and Max Steiner.

Some of our most famous singers were born around the world. Consider Shakira, Miriam Makeba, Celia Cruz, Gloria Estefan, and Justin Bieber. Or athletes like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Dikembe Mutombo, and David Ortiz!

Immigrants are the minds behind iconic American products such as Oscar de la Renta’s fashions, Iman’s cosmetics, and Louis-Joseph Chevrolet’s cars. There have been brilliant scientists like Albert Einstein, Ahmed Zewail, Kalpana Chawla, and Franklin Chang-Diaz (the last two of whom were astronauts)!

Immigrants also often have a great passion for justice, which has given us world-changing activists from every part of the globe. Kwame Ture coined the term “Black Power”. Mabel Ping-Hua fought for women’s suffrage. Philip Vera Cruz was a key labor activist. Raffi Freedman-Gurspan fights for LGBTQ rights. And we even have politicians like Mazie Hirono is in the US senate, advocating for healthcare, housing, and human rights.

That doesn’t even scratch the surface of the fields where immigrants have contributed to American culture and innovation. There’s still authors like Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Reporters like Jorge Ramos. Architects like I. M. Pei. And countless others in every branch of society!

Even more significantly though, are the millions of immigrants that may never make headlines. The common workers who serve this country’s most essential needs. That’s where the middle and working classes are. They are an enormous part of blue-collar labor, of healthcare, construction, agriculture, and sanitation. They are small business owners and clerks and teachers and parents and children and neighbors. Quite simply, they are US.

Immigrants and nationalized citizens have a proud legacy and inspiring lives. Whether that refers to you, your parents, your grandparents, or an ancestor you never got to know. If you’re in America and reading this, it’s nearly impossible that your existence hasn’t hinged on someone crossing an ocean. You’re the product of someone, or many someones, who had to be extraordinarily brave.

There’s a lot that history can teach us about America, and what it takes to be an American. However, immigration is also a very charged topic of the present. It’s become a partisan issue in the last several decades and has come to an awful head. We now have a president who wants to not only severely restrict immigration, but seeks to arrest, deport, and imprison thousands of American residents and citizens. As of June 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a quota of 3,000 arrests per day. In theory, ICE is only trying to arrest immigrants who have come to America illegally, though that is not always the case. Regardless, day after day there are new reports of the cruel treatment these arrest victims face. Documented, undocumented, or even full American citizen, their rights are being stripped away. They are even frequently deported and imprisoned without due process, one of the most sacred aspects of American law and ideals.

And it’s going even farther than that. President Trump has openly made moves to try and overturn the 14th amendment of the US constitution. This amendment was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, with the intention of granting citizenship to those who had been enslaved. It reads, “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that the amendment also applied to children born in America to non-citizen parents. Today this is usually called Birthright Citizenship.

To put that in perspective, President Trump wishes to destroy a means that we have used to recognize and embrace citizens for over one hundred years. It is a ruling that went into effect when our grandparents’ grandparents were alive and in that time it has been one of our greatest tools for growing this American melting pot we so treasure.

The Statue of Liberty is one of the most iconic symbols we have. She represents freedom, strength, enlightenment, and hope. Since its dedication in 1886, it has also come to be a symbol of welcome for our immigrants. A promise for a bright future. That’s a promise that has inspired all Americans, by birth or by choice, but it is also a promise that has proved empty far too many times. Liberty’s flame needs our protection. We owe it to the world and we owe it to ourselves. We don’t want America to be a beacon of hate. We need to live up to our ideals, and strive to light the way for those who need us.

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