Look at You

Chapter 1

1

I'm in the unemployment office in Middletown, Ohio. My mom has asked me a grand total of seventeen times to get my lazy ass down here and work. Or, well, find it.

It's not that I'm untalented. I wrap a burrito pretty well, and I can wear the hell out of a crew neck. And hey, I always find the good stuff at Good Will. It's just that my mother believes my Harvard degree could really be put to good use somewhere, and apparently teaching the YouTube Youths of the globe to code isn't a job. It's a hobby, Simon. Now please, for the love of God, get a real job and move out of my house.

Apparently, the past two years have been weighing on her. I am 25, funemployed ™, and still live with my parents in my hometown of Baker, Ohio. I never make my bed, I have turned the basement into my own personal laboratory, my mom cooks me at least one meal a day, and I love every second of it. You should see the size of my stock portfolio. No rent, no groceries (okay, I chip in a bit), and six years ripping off the naive children of the world through Simon Codes It YouTube classes? I could practically retire.

If I were Alice, I would have had enough of myself too. So, I've agreed to get a job. Moving out is far too much to ask of the child (me) at this stage – but she knows that. One win. She said this morning. I just need one win. So, I am here, in Middletown, ready to deliver on my promise.

I know what you're thinking. And yes, I could be using my LinkedIn network and my stupid degree to bless the halls of Amazon or Google or some other snooty Silicon Valley start-up, but that isn't much of a challenge, is it? It's almost too easy. I let them peak at my portfolio and they're at their knees begging for me like it was scripted in a homemade porno.

I want to answer newspaper ads and take down flyers stuck to telephone poles. I want to do this the old-fashioned way. Hence, me, here, toeing my Nikes against the 70s-inspired orange and yellow checkered tile in the Middletown unemployment agency, 30 minutes away from the comfort of my Tempurpedic on a Wednesday morning.

The secretary has not stopped eyeing me above her decaying desk. It's wood, but at some point it was painted hunter green. I say at some point, because it's flaking off like dry skin. The entire room smells like must and my grandma's old wooden trunk where she keeps her nude polaroids from the 50s. I am the only person here, sitting in one of those flimsy plastic chairs you'd see in a Kindergarten classroom, fingering through the stack of magazines next to me trying to find one older than I am. I have found one that is 19, but that is as close as I can get.

The secretary makes a noise that sounds like it is supposed to be a cough, but it comes out unpracticed. I glance up at her. Her eyes shoot down to her dinosaur of a computing system so fast I swear I hear her neck crack. She's old, like this building, and dark, like this room, and quite clearly does not think much of me. Or maybe it is the Air Pods in my ears or the incessant Instagram scrolling. Either way, I clearly am not her type.

A door screams open somewhere down the hallway. My music just muffles the voices that emerge with it. I discreetly double-tap my headphones. No way there is someone else here. I had thought this cute waiting period was the secretary's idea of fun.

"Thank you, sir. I will." I can only hear the one voice. It's a man's, strong and confident. The sir on the other end of the conversation isn't audible. I hear the door creak closed. The man in question clears his throat, suddenly appearing in the unlit hallway, only fully illuminated once he steps into the waiting room where a muted ray of sunshine falls onto just him.

He looks disheveled. He has work boots on, but he's wearing nice jeans and an attempt at a button-down, but the buttons aren't buttoned correctly, and half the shirt hangs lower than the other. His sleeves are rolled haphazardly and he's wearing a Red Sox hat that looks about 30 years old. His hair curls around it like it knows to grow that way. Like he never takes it off. He's my age, maybe older. He has a five-o clock shadow, but it makes him look distinguished, not unclean, despite the fact he looks like he got dressed in his car.