rage • l.h

4. the assistant

I had a pet squirrel when I was younger.

Okay, he wasn't actually a pet. Just a squirrel that would come to my window at night and stare at me, like he knew me and how lonely I was. He was never scared of me, but I always allowed the glass pane to separate us. A safe distant so that neither of us would get frightened.

It sounds so stupid, but he was a constant. I never named him, out of fear that he would leave, but I talked to him. He would sit in my window, sometimes with an acorn or whatever food scrap he could find, and just listen to me.

It sounds crazy and stupid, but when you're eleven years old and starting at a new middle school where everyone already knows each other and you're the outsider, you get attached to things easily.

I was waiting for the bus when my neighbor ran over him.

I watched it happen, I watched him die while my neighbor didn't even spare a second thought. He was just a rodent to my neighbor. One less animal digging in the trash.

We don't understand what some things mean to other people. We don't understand the significance of a being to another. To everyone else, he was a carcass in the road that birds would eventually pick at.

I keyed my neighbors truck that night. It was the first time I truly gave into the rage, no holding back, no attempting to pretend to be normal. I engraved 'killer' into his truck, because at eleven I had a thing for crime novels and being theatrical. It seemed fitting, because to me, he was a murderer.

My mom had to pay for new paint, and I was grounded from the TV for a month. She worked overtime that August to afford it. My dad left six months later.

•

"Mom, I'm literally on the way to an interview. You don't need to send me anything." I insisted as the chatter of the hospital clouded my phone speaker.

"It's just $40, go stock up on groceries. Or buy a fake ID. I don't care. Your account is almost in the negative." My mother spoke with an exhausted tone.

"Rachelle Abdel, room three-zero-two please."

"I have to go, sweetie. Good luck with your interview. I love you always. I'll call you tomorrow to check in."

"I love you always." I replied, ending with our signature sign off. A reminder that we had each other always, no matter what happened in either of our busy lives.

My mom never bothered to change her last name after the divorce. Apparently, her maiden name was worse. A reminder of her father, who I had slowly began to realize made my own look like a saint.

My first interview of my syllabus and gen-ed filled week. At the welcome meeting where we were all stuffed into the hallway and forced to sit criss-cross-applesauce like seven year olds, our room advisor said to look for jobs relevant to our degree.

This morning, I was undeclared and had only heard back from the concession stand at the stadium and Starbucks, neither of which pertained to anything I wanted to do with my life.

But what did I want to do with my life?

I got an email for an assistant position. An on-campus office assistant at Holmes Hall.

How exciting.

Granted, it was the only job offering more than $15 an hour, a generous upgrade from my high school hostess job where I barely made minimum wage. But I knew nothing about assisting, or whatever it is that an assistant does. Make phone calls? File papers? I could do that, easy. A slow paced job with little room for annoyance was what I needed. One where I worked with a minimal amount of people.