Page 2 of The Paradise Problem

“I’m fine,” I tell her, looking down the street as the moving truck makes a turn and disappears from view entirely.

“Okay,” she says with a frown in her voice. “I’m glad.” She sets a hand on my arm. “But if you need to talk, you know I’m here, okay?”

I realize with a gust of happiness that the cover story doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve finished my bachelor’s and have a life of unknown adventure ahead; West has finished his doctorate and is on his way to his brilliant future as something impressive and serious. We both got what we wanted.

“Oh no, I’m fine!” I assure her. “I barely know him.”

Candi stares at me. “What?”

I point at the apartment behind me. “Family housing. He was just a random dude I married so I could live here. Thank you, though.”

With one last smile, I squeeze her hand where it rests on my arm and turn to go inside. I have zombies to kill.

One

ANNA

Three years later

If you’d told me back in college that my primary source of income at twenty-five would be working as the night cashier at the corner convenience store, I… well, I might have believed you. Having done a one-eighty junior year when I acknowledged that my brain does not “science” and pivoted from premed to art, I remained realistic about what life as an artist might entail. Every fine arts major at UCLA has dreams of becoming the next big set designer, costume mastermind, or art scene It kid, but those of us whose ambitions are simply “afford rent and health insurance” are aware we will most likely be waitresses by day and hobby painters by night. So the fact that it’s 12:44 a.m. and I am womaning the register at the Pico Pick-It-Up and not at some fancy party rubbing elbows with the creative elite shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all myself.

But with my dad’s medical bills slowly climbing, my ambitions might have to climb, too.

I carefully turn the page of the US Weekly I borrowed from the magazine rack. There are lots of lucrative jobs on display here. Do I have what it takes to be the next big art influencer, someday featured in the Celebrities… They’re Just Like Us! page? I’m young and know how to wear a T-shirt without a bra. That’s at least half of what’s required, right?

I imagine it:

Instagram sensation Anna Green caught with a perfectly messy topknot outside of Sprouts!

TikTok star Anna Green and her sexy actor boyfriend caught canoodling in front of Soho House!

I wonder how much an influencer makes these days and whether it’s worth the humiliation of monologuing into a selfie stick in front of Picasso’s Woman with a Book at the Norton Simon, or the patience it would take to get a ring light positioned just right to draw tiny tigers on my eyelids using only vegan skin care products.

This thought exercise has clarified something for me: I’m too lazy for an influencer life.

But it’s fine. Between five nights a week here, three lunch shifts at Amir’s Café, the occasional dog-walking hustle, and plasma donation when things get really tight, I’m paying my rent. I’m covering most of Dad’s health insurance and medical expenses. That’s what matters. Deep breath. I flip the page, moving onto the Red Flag Exes! section.

“Anna.”

I lean across the checkout counter and look both ways. My boss, Ricky, stands in the doorway to his small, cramped office, his wispy blond hair falling over his boyish eyes, tight fists planted on his narrow hips. He’s wearing a Naruto T-shirt and sweatpants bearing the logo of his recent alma mater, Hamilton High School.

“Yeah?”

“Could I speak to you for a moment?”

“Sure.” I hook a thumb over my shoulder toward the store’s entrance. “Want me to close up for a few?”

He shakes his head. “It’s one in the morning. We average half a customer from one to two.”

“Fair.” I hop off my stool and gently place the magazine back on the rack before dancing my way down the aisle. Ricky graduated last June but had no interest in college, prompting his parents to offer him the challenge of managing their Pick-It-Up location at Pico and Manning sandwiched quite literally between a Subway and a Jimmy John’s. Barb and Paul are two of my favorite people in the world, but Ricky has been using this Stern Boss voice with me ever since he asked me to dinner on his eighteenth birthday and I said no. Be serious.

I lean against the doorway and brush my too-long, barely-pink-anymore bangs from my face. I’m in desperate need of a cut and color, but such things fall very far down on the priority list these days. “What’s up?”

He straightens a string-bean arm and tries to look authoritative as he motions to the chair across from him. It looks like one of those old elementary school chairs, with the contoured plastic seat and tubular steel frame, but the closest school is over half a mile away. It showed up in the alley one day and it’s been in the office ever since. “Could you come sit down, please?”

I take a seat but glance over my shoulder at the front of the store. Even if Ricky has called me back here, it’s still my till in the register. The last thing I need is someone bolting in and doing a quick grab of all the cash in there. The Verizon store three doors down was robbed just last week. “Are you sure we can’t chat out there? It makes me uneasy leaving the store unattended.”

“Well, that’s ironic.”

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