Page 12 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

Needed him to?—

“Ma’am?” A woman’s voice cuts through thoughts I should not be having in the queue of a women’s clothing store.

I hurry forward with my armload of clothes.

“How’d you find today?” She smiles brightly at me.

Hell. Every single minute of being in your store was hell.

“Great, thanks.” I smile back. “You had everything I need.”

“New job?”

I nod. “Start in two weeks.”

“What do you do?”

“Uh, I’m going to be an accountant. Just graduated.”

Her hands never stop moving as she scans and packs each item of corporate clothing that will make me fade into the background. Identical, in other words, to the clothing worn by my co-workers when I did my summer internship at the accountancy firm last year.

She folds up a pair of smart dress pants. “The corporate grind, huh? I could never be a corporate girlie. Hours stuck behind a desk, living for the weekend, staring at a screen, counting down the seconds until it’s time to clock out. Then the Sunday scaries hit, so you don’t even get to enjoy your only two days off.” She shudders delicately and flashes me a smile. “Cash or card?”

But I’m staring at her, the sound of my heart like a terrified deer being run down by a lion for its dinner.

Is this what it feels like to have a heart attack? Because I think it might be.

“Ma’am?”

“Uh, sorry.” I yank my wallet out of my pocket and hand her my credit card.

Once I’ve paid and I’m out of the store with my bag of work clothes, her words continue to ring in my ear.

Hours stuck behind a desk.

Tired eyes from staring at a screen.

Counting down the seconds until the weekend.

The Sunday scaries…

My fingers tighten around the handles of my shopping bags.

That sounds…

I gulp.

All of that sounds like even more of a hell than the mall on a Saturday afternoon.

What am I doing?

The summer internship was fine. Not super exciting, but I knew it would be since the senior staff supervising me gave me the jobs they didn’t want to do. I was there to learn, and I was there for the higher ups to select the interns they wanted to hire when they graduated.

And it was only eight weeks.

It had an end date.

My new life will not have an end date.

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