the long walk

Millicent's POV

The alarm goes off at 4:47 AM. Thirteen minutes before I set it. My body knows what's coming even when my brain is still half asleep. Josh is already moving in the crib next to my bed. Making those soft whimpering sounds that mean he'll be fully awake in about ten minutes whether I'm ready or not. I get up anyway.

The floor is cold. I shuffle to the kitchen and heat his bottle with one hand. The other hand rubs my face. My eyes burn. The house is quiet except for my mother snoring in the living room. She didn’t make it to her bedroom again. The Smirnoff bottle is on the coffee table, the cheap kind with the red label, tipped on its side. I already know how today is gonna go.

"Okay baby boy," I whisper as Josh starts to fuss. "Mama's got you."

I feed him in the gray light before dawn. His tiny fingers curl around mine while he drinks. He's been better this week. No coughing fits. No midnight emergencies. I'm grateful for small things. When he's done, I burp him, change him, and put him back in the crib with Mr. Hop tucked under his arm.

Then I stare at my closet and face the real problem.

I own exactly three items of clothing that could be called professional. One blouse with a coffee stain that never comes out. A skirt that’s too big now since meals stopped being regular. And a black dress I bought for my grandma’s funeral four years ago.

I take the dress, it barely fits, and it's plain, which means It doesn’t draw attention. It says serious, responsible, but doesn’t say desperate. Which is funny, because I am desperate, I just don’t want Damon Hale to see that part.

I shower fast, twisting my hair into something that might pass for intentional. I apply the little makeup I have left, and the woman in the mirror looks tired. She looks like she's been crying for weeks and she has. But she also looks like she's not going to lie down and die, and that's the only thing that matters today.

"Mom." I shake her shoulders gently. "Mom, I need you to watch Josh."

She groans, swatting at my hand. "What time is it?"

"Early. I have to go into the city, but I'll be back before dinner."

She opens one eye and takes in my dress, and my not so horrible makeup. "You got a date or something?"

"Something like that."

I leave before she can ask more questions. The first bus comes at 5:52 and I'm standing at the stop seven minutes early, shivering in the morning cold because I don't own a coat nice enough to match this dress.

The trip takes almost two hours, three buses, two transfers, and traffic inching along while the city wakes up. I watch it change outside the window, with old houses, apartment blocks, then towers that shine like they don’t belong to the same world as me.

Hale Industries is the tallest one. Hugely mounted like monument worth billions. It’s more than fifty-two floors of glass and steel. It looks like it’s daring the sky to do something about it. I stand across the street and stare up at it. My neck craned all the way back. My stomach is twisting with something between fear and anger.

Somewhere up there, Damon Hale is sitting at a desk that costs more than my yearly income, drinking coffee that costs more than my groceries, and signing papers that will erase my studio, my job, which is my last real shot at giving Josh a good life.

And he doesn't even know my name.

I cross the street. As I enter, I see how the lobby is all marble and chrome, so polished I can see my reflection in the floor. People stream past me in expensive suits, with perfumes that send me into space, they’re talking into phones, carrying briefcases and moving with the kind of purpose that comes from knowing exactly where you belong. I don't belong here, every part of me knows it.

But I walk to the front desk anyway. The receptionist is a blonde woman with perfect makeup and a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. She looks at me the way you might look at a stain on your favorite shirt.

"Can I help you?"

“I need to see Damon Hale.”

Her smile twitches. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but..”

“Mr. Hale doesn’t see anyone without an appointment.”

She’s already done with me, her fingers go back to typing on the keyboard of such an expensive monitor.

“This is important. He’s trying to demolish my business. I just need five minutes.”

“Ma’am.” Now there’s no smile at all. “Mr. Hale is extremely busy. You can submit a complaint on our website. If not, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

"I'm not leaving until someone listens to me."

She stares at me for a long moment, then picks up her phone. "Security to the main lobby, please."

They come fast, two men in suits that probably cost more than my car, with earpieces and blank faces. They stand on either side of me like I'm a criminal.

"Ma'am, we're going to escort you out."

"I haven't done anything wrong. I just want to talk to someone"

"Ma'am." One of them puts a hand on my elbow. Firm but not rough. "Please don't make this difficult."

I could fight, I could scream, make a scene, make them drag me out kicking and yelling. But I think about Josh, about what happens if I get arrested, about my mother passed out on the couch with a bottle in her hand. So I go quietly.

They put me on the sidewalk like trash and the door spins shut behind them. I stand there for a long moment, shame burning in my chest and tears stinging my eyes.

But, I will not cry. I will not fucking cry.

There's a bench across the street, right where I can see the main entrance, and I sit down, and smooth my grandmother's funeral dress over my knees. And stare up at the top floor of Hale Industries tower.

Tomorrow, I'll come back, and the day after that, I'll come back again. I’ll come every day until Damon Hale has to see me. I don’t have anything left to lose, and men like him never expect women like me.

I settle in to wait.