Page 4 of Gray Area

I worked a twelve-hour night shift last night at the hospital as a housekeeper and then came home, showered, and went to my day job from nine-to-five at the factory doing piece work. Both of the jobs keep me busy, so staying up for the two has been no big deal. I was beyond tired when I got home to the apartment I share with Bailey at five thirty, having almost fallen asleep onthatbus ride.

“You look like death,” Bailey pointed out with a laugh when I came in. She had her uniform on, ready for her own housekeeping night shift at the hospital..

“I feel like death,” I whined. “I am so ready to go to bed,” I said on a yawn. I had been fantasizing about the feel of the sheets the whole way home.

“You aren’t going to class?” Bailey asked, eyeing me like I am crazy.

“Class?” I queried in total confusion. “What class?”

Bailey widened her eyes at me, giving me a look that said she was concerned for my sanity. “Uh, your business class,” she said slowly.

I shook my head. “New classes don’t start until Thursday,” I said confidently, but panic was suddenly taking hold of me.

Now Bailey shook her head. “No, girl, classes start tonight. Last semester they started on Thursday.”

My head spun as I flung my backpack around and reached in, grabbing my dollar-store planner and opening it to this week. And there it was—today’s date circled in red.

I moaned in agony, collapsing into one of the dilapidated chairs at our flimsy table.

“Babe, just skip tonight’s class,” Bailey said sympathetically. “You know the first night is all introductions and syllabus. Email the professor, tell him—”

“No,” I said, defiantly standing up. “I am not taking the easy way out. I screwed up, and I have to face the repercussions,” I told her hotly.

“You are dead on your feet, Viv,” Bailey said in concern.

“I don’t care. It’ll teach me,” I said.

She shook her head, knowing this was a losing battle. We’d worked hard to get out of where we had come from, each of us making promises to ourselves. And I had promised myself that I wouldn’t just accept defeat, or take the easy way. I’d forgotten about class, but it was still my responsibility to go despite my exhaustion. “You do you, girl,” Bailey told me. “I have to get to work; they asked me to come in early and I’m not turning the OT down.”

“Soak it up while you can,” I agreed.

Bailey grabbed her oversized backpack, then came over and hugged me. “Be safe, please,” she pleaded, squeezing me.

“I will,” I promised her, squeezing back, and then watched her leave. I checked the clock. My class started in forty-five minutes. I took a deep breath and headed out. I’d decided it was better to get to class than to stay here and risk falling asleep. I was off tonight and didn’t work until the next night, so I could do it—it was just a few hours.

But it had been torture. And now I am twenty minutes away from sweet, sweet dreamland.

The bus stop at the college is just outside the building where my class is held. I focus on the door I had exited, just looking at anything to concentrate on. A blonde that had been in class bursts through the door. She is gorgeous and looks so flawless. I am instantly jealous and wish I could nail a look like that. Maybe someday.

The bus doors close just as the building door opens again and a man walks out. He has his hood up, and his gaze is straight ahead. He has a presence. I can sense it even from the bus. He gives something off—people move out of his way as he walks down the sidewalk, cars stop as he crosses to the parking lot. He didn’t even look as he crossed the street and yet no one came near him. I wonder if he is in my class. He definitely hadn’t been there when I arrived, since the classroom was empty when I’d gotten there. He could have walked in later, but who knew. I was barely mentally present in the class.

The bus ride is only twenty minutes but it is excruciating. When I finally get home I throw my bag and coat to the floor and head straight to bed.

I wake the next morning at about six. I slept just over ten hours, and while I am still tired—a chronic problem for me—I feel worlds better than last night. I would probably have still been asleep if I hadn’t been woken by the sound of yelling in the apartment next door. This is a common occurrence, and we often have front-row seats to their arguments because of the paper-thin walls between the apartments. Most times I just ignore it and put the radio on, but I need to get up.

Bailey is coming home in about an hour from her shift, and we try to space out our days so whoever has worked the night before gets the bedroom, the only spot with a door in our small apartment. I am off from my day job today, and potentially the rest of the week. Orders have been low at the factory—we’ve lost several big contracts—so the first thing to go is the part-timehelp. While I don’t love the job, it pays better than the fast-food job I had prior to this one.

I get up and make a cup of coffee from the instant packets Bailey and I grabbed from the hospital. Maybe it isn’t the most ethical thing, but we take them from patient trays before throwing them out. We reason it is going to be thrown out anyway, so it isn’t really stealing.

I boil the water in the microwave and mix it with the granules. Once it is all mixed, I take it with me back to the bedroom and sip it as I make the bed for Bailey. It is always relaxing to get in a nice clean bed, something we both appreciate.

Bailey and I met when we were both nine and had been placed in the same foster home. We’d clung to each other in the new scary situation and grew close over the ten months we’d been there. It had been an okay situation, but mostly because we had each other. Then I went back to my mom, one of the million times she’d regained custody of me, only to lose custody two months later. The damage had been done though, and Bailey and I were separated.

But two years ago I’d walked into the orientation for my housekeeping job and heard her name called during roll call. We’d picked up again like we had been separated for minutes and not a decade. At the time I had been living in a room I was renting from my last foster family, a situation I was eager to get out of. Bailey was living with some guy, just for shelter, and paying him in, well, other ways.

Over our week-long orientation, we developed a plan and got an apartment together. We both had goals, both eager for a life better than what we’d started off with, and we decided we could support each other to reach them. Bailey wanted to go to nursing school. My goals were set on running my own business. Since our reconnection, we’d spent the last two years taking classes at the community college as we could afford them.

We are also frugal, like extremely frugal; some might call us cheap, but frugal sounds better. We scrimp and save to pay for classes out of pocket, unwilling to be reckless like those who’d brought us into the world had been. We live in the worst area of the city, in the smallest apartment, with the lowest rent that we could find. We eat whatever is on sale and take things like closed sodas and coffee packets from hospital trays to cut costs wherever we can. Our money is there for classes, and for when we get into full-time college programs for our majors.

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