Excerpt

Wait—rewind. I was still a girl back then, before the universes converged. Not a very good one, but I had the she stamp in blue ink right across my cheek, smudged to hell, not even convincing enough to pass for a birthmark. Maybe that should have been the first sign.

I was working a dead-end she-shaped job with a bunch of other shes with perfectly matte stamps and hair like Sunday brunch. We all smiled a lot. It made my jaw hurt. For six to eight hours a day, I touched strangers, rubbing lotion into their tired arms and spouting off ingredients like my voice box had come pre-recorded. They listened to me, and looked right at my eyes, and spent money because they were afraid their children didn't know anybody loved them.

On that last day, the manager pulled me outside of the shop for a private meeting. We sat together on one of the pieces of modern art masquerading as a bench. "Let's have a conversation!" she said, smiling.

"Sure!" I said, smiling.

"Great!" she said, smiling. "I couldn't help but notice that the last friend—" (We weren't allowed to call them customers.) "—whose arm you were massaging left in tears! Tell me about that!"

I have this habit of reading people's futures on their skin. Physical contact is like a wormhole, and back then, when I was still a girl, I thought this dead-end job would be a safe place to be an oracle. Maybe get some good discounts on foot lotion for my mom.

"Yeah," I said, smiling. "Her son's been missing for weeks. Presumed dead. But he's safe. He's coming home."

"How exciting!" she said, smiling. "That's so great that you learned something personal about your new friend to boost your sales drivers! High-five!"

She went in for the high-five like a particularly ambitious jack-in-the-box. I had told her a dozen times about the visions, but she never seemed to remember—which was probably why she looked so offended when I ducked away from her hand. Maybe that should have been the first sign.

Her nails tapped on the clipboard she carried around, right over the sticker that said I'm Managing! "Can I give you some feedback?"

"Sure!" I said, smiling. (We weren't allowed to say no to feedback.)

"When you create overly meaningful connections with friends, sometimes it can scare off potential friends who are just hoping to try out some skin care! Try to connect a little bit less in the future, that way you don't intimidate anyone!" she said, smiling.

This shouldn't have bothered me. We'd had this conversation too many times over the past year, and I'd learned to put in about a week of effort before I gave back in to the oracular tendencies. The premonitions weren't really something I could control, and the manager really seemed to like having this conversation with me. I figured being a denizen of retail hell was tough, and I didn't want to take it away from her by improving myself. I was a good employee. I was a good person. I wasn't smiling anymore.

Maybe that should have been the first sign.

"I just feel," I began, intruding on the pause that had gone a beat too long, "I just feel like the customers—"

"Friends," she corrected, smiling enough for the both of us. "The friends we make along the way."

"Okay," I tried again. Some kid was losing it on the other side of the mall fountain. I'd rubbed his mother's arm earlier; he was about to fall in. "I just feel like some of the friends we make along the way are sort of starved for contact, you know? I mean we're the only place in the mall that offers complimentary massages, and there are plenty of stores with better lotion, so—"

My manager's face changed then, a twitch up by the corner of her right eyelid, tugging at the she stamp on her cheek. It matched her lipstick: silken amaranth, undisturbed by forgetful fingers. The slope of her eyeliner curved in a cruel arch as her expression shifted from manufactured warmth to unfiltered disdain. I could have loved her for the honesty in that look.

Splash!

A scream from the other side of the fountain; adults clucking as they scooped the sopping child out of the water like the world's worst prize at a carnival fishing game. My manager only looked at me, taking a deep breath as she swallowed back down whatever bitter, tired thing it was she wanted to say. She crossed one long leg over the other, adjusting the clipboard in her lap.

"We're so lucky to work in such a welcoming environment, don't you think?" she asked, smiling.

"Yeah," I said. My ears rang with the sound of sobbing on the other side of the fountain, amplified by parental cooing and shushing.

"Not every place is like this, you know!" she insisted, smiling.

"Nope," I agreed.

"And corporate pays us such a good wage!" she said, smiling.

It's the minimum wage, I thought. It's the minimum amount of money they can legally pay us.

But I just stared at her, looking for the right thing to say. Looking for a reason not to make like the five-year-old across the way and pitch myself into the fountain. Looking for an in, an out, an escape plan for the past two years of my life.

Then she gave me one.

She reached out to touch my arm, to do her best imitation of a reassuring waitress at a local diner, but the millisecond after her acrylic nails made contact, it came rushing in like it always does:

The clock on the laptop screen reads 3:07pm. It's April nineteenth. She's crossing off my name on the schedule and talking to the regional manager on the phone. She's crouched on the minifridge because the floor's covered in half-unloaded palettes of salt scrub and cuticle cream. "I don't know what happened," she's saying. "It was all so sudden, like some kind of a nervous breakdown! I mean, at least she turned in her t-shirt, but I don't really want to pass it onto anyone else. Such bad vibes!"

"Hello? Earth to She?" she laughed, her sing-song voice gone tinny.

I reached into my pocket, pulling out my phone: April 19th. 2:56pm. I smiled wide enough to taste my fillings, mercurial and wild. I pulled off my branded t-shirt and dropped it onto her clipboard, so I was just sitting on the bench in my shitty gray bra. People stared as they walked by. My manager didn't know where to look.

"I fucking hate this place," I said, smiling.

So I left.