Slice of Adulthood

Sleepless Beauty

When Jillian woke up, it was 3pm. The sun was barging through the curtains over her window, burning a hot-spot on her legs.

Giving up the notion of more sleep, she checked her phone. She had two missed calls from Shay, six text messages from Nina, and one text from Casey.

"You working next Saturday?" It asked.

"No," she typed back, "and I am not swapping, not a fucking chance!"

He replied almost immediately: "Hot date?"

Jillian sat up in her bed, smiling with the anticipation of what she was going to type next.

"I think Tania and I are finally going to consummate our love."

"Breaking my heart," he responded. Then, after a moment sent another message: "I though Tania had a lady-bonner for a certain tall, dark, and handsome pizza chef."

"Handsome? Did they hire a new pizza boy?" Jillian typed as quickly as she could. "I would love to have something nice to look at during work!"

Jillian wandered out of bed to the kitchen. Sitting on the bar in a perfectly arraigned fan, were three pamphlets from the Abbey Station Community College, accompanied by a note:

Just take a look, we can talk more next week. Have a blessed day!

xx Christie and Keith

The first pamphlet featured grinning, ethnically diverse students clutching stacks of books. They didn't look like the real-life college students she served pizza to. Inside was a list of student clubs and societies. Little hearts and smiley faces were drawn around the Christian Leaders and Abstinence Club listings; Christie.

Christie was much younger than Jillian's mom. Lisa Nagy was 52 when she died, and Christie was late-but-still-claiming-mid-thirties. She had a similar face, but with Christie's bleached-blonde bob evoking the "I'd like to speak to a manager" aura, it didn't make Jillian feel like seeing a ghost.

The religious thing didn't make sense to Jillian and her mom. One day Lisa and Aunt Christie were cracking raunchy jokes Jillian wouldn't admit she didn't understand, and the next Christie had found Jesus and a personality-free husband.

The next two pamphlets were for an Associate's Degree program in Communications and Liberal Arts, respectively. They reminded Jillian of the other reason she had decided to wait a year or two before thinking about college again. She just had no clue what she wanted to study, if anything.

For the time being, she was happy enough with the routine of serving pizza all night and avoiding human contact unless absolutely necessary. But not, of course, if the human contacting Jillian was her best friend Shannon 'Shay' Nass.