It has been a year since Annalise Montgomery lost her fifteen year old sister Lilly in the middle of a sunny day when she was waiting in a parking lot.
Annalise takes the case into her control when the police are empty handed. No leads, no traces, n...
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When I first started working here, I hated the smell. It resembled the feeling of opening a fresh pack of pencils and immediately being thrown into memories of primary school.
Only the smell of water tanks and pet food reminds me of wandering through animal stores and begging my parents for an animal. I never got one, and now I work here.
I sigh and re-aline the bottles of fish food on a shelf. I hate working here, but it's far better than most retail stores or cafes where I can run into everyone I went to school with. At least here all I have to handle are children dragging their parents in to buy them fish. They're often back within a few months, getting another since the last one died.
It's not my only job, but it's the one I work casually. It pays okay, but when I needed to pay for Peter Marin I had thrown myself into an underworld. It was a nightclub I had stumbled on, one which I would either clean, serve, or fetch drinks.
It was an easy fix for cash, and much more relaxed than swiping credit cards for fish or pet food. Even though the men were slimy, and the women had barely any clothes on, I went unnoticed and I loved it. It's dark, loud, and a hidden world. I haven't worked there in a few weeks, but I know I will be a few nights these holidays.
"Annalise, they can't get any more straight than that." Tracy, my boss, comes up behind me. My hands stop correcting the jars as I hadn't even realised how hard I was concentrating on them.
"At least they look appealing now." I sigh again and step away from the fish food shelf, moving onto the shelves with the boxes of pebbles and decorations for the tanks.
I'm thankful I got stuck with someone like Tracy as a boss. She's tough, and not afraid of giving you a serve back if you give her lip. I could tell her to get stuffed and she would laugh and fire comments back at me.
She snickers and simply watches me. "They're appealing for me, but if I hadn't stopped you, I'm sure you would of kept going." My eyes stay on the the small boxes as I stack them, letting her words fly over me. "Your OCD comes in handy for the store."
My teeth bite down on my tongue, hating the 'OCD' abbreviation. I know I have it, but I chose to dismiss it. As a kid I was heavily medicated for it. I would have severe panic attacks if things didn't match or follow routine.
I remember vividly when my parents had bought a new sofa for the lounge room, and suddenly I was short of breath. The colour didn't match the room's decorations, it didn't fit correctly in the room since it was a round corner one- so there was a gap between the corner and couch. The pillows didn't match, and the material looked horrible across from the carpet.
