The Weight of Empty Pockets
The smell hit her first—stale grease clinging to her uniform, soaked so deep into the fabric that she'd stopped noticing it somewhere around hour nine. Gessica Moreira climbed the last flight of stairs to her apartment with the particular heaviness of someone who had given the day everything and received almost nothing back. Her sneakers, soles worn thin as paper, scraped against the concrete steps. Somewhere below, a baby cried through a thin wall, and a television muttered in a language she didn't recognize.
Sixteen hours. Two shifts back to back at Dolly's Diner, from the gray hush of early morning to the gray hush of late night, and all she had to show for it was forty-three dollars in tips and a burn on her forearm from the griddle that would probably scar. She pressed her thumb against the sting without thinking, a habit now, the way some people touched a cross around their neck.
She turned the corner into the narrow hallway of the third floor and stopped.
A square of paper flashed white against the chipped green paint of her door, taped at four corners like someone had wanted to make absolutely certain she couldn't miss it, couldn't claim ignorance, couldn't pretend.…
