7

Marianna

I wake up to the sound of my own destruction.

Well. Technically, I wake up to the sound of a phone ringing—the cracked iPhone Duane left me, buzzing against the nightstand like an angry insect. But same difference, really.

The screen shows a New York number. Eastside Physical Therapy. My employer.

I already know what this call is going to be. I answer anyway.

"Hi, Marianna? This is Brenda Kowalczyk from Human Resources."

Brenda Kowalczyk. The woman who smells like Bath & Body Works vanilla and has never made eye contact with another human being in her entire life. The woman whose sole purpose seems to be delivering bad news in a tone that suggests she's reading from a script written by someone who's never experienced a human emotion. I still don't know how to pronounce her last name. Five months of employment and I've been strategically mumbling the second half every time.

"Hi, Brenda."

"I'm calling to inform you that your employment with Eastside Physical Therapy has been terminated, effective immediately."

There it is.

"As per your employee handbook," Brenda continues, her voice as flat as day-old soda, "failure to report to work without prior notification constitutes job abandonment. This is a serious violation of—"

"I know." I cut her off. "I understand."

"Your final paycheck will be mailed to your address on file. Please return your access badge and any company property at your earliest convenience. Do you have any questions?"

Do I have questions?

Yeah, Brenda. I have questions. Like: how did my life become such a spectacular dumpster fire in less than forty-eight hours? Like: what kind of karmic debt am I paying off from a past life? Like: is there a support group for people who keep accidentally destroying everything they touch?

"No," I say instead. "No questions."

"Great. Best of luck in your future endeavors."

She hangs up before I can respond. Which is probably for the best, because the only response I had was a string of profanity that would've gotten me blacklisted from the entire New York physical therapy community.

I let the phone drop onto the bed. Stare at the ceiling—grey, obviously, because Duane Richter has never met a color he didn't find personally offensive.

Terminated. Effective immediately.

Five months of 6 AM commutes on the L train. Five months of caring about Mrs. Patterson's knee replacement and Mr. Goldman's rotator cuff and all the other bodies I was learning to fix. Five months of being the newest, youngest, most expendable member of a team that never really wanted me there in the first place.

Gone. Just like that.

And the thing is—the really pathetic thing is—I can't even be mad at them. Because they're right. I did abandon my patients. Did disappear without a word, without a text, without even a half-assed email saying "sorry, personal emergency, be back soon." I just... left. Got on a plane and flew to Miami like my problems wouldn't follow me here.

My phone buzzes again. Email this time.

Subject: Termination of Employment - Marianna Reyes

Dear Ms. Reyes,

This letter serves as formal notification that your employment with Eastside Physical Therapy has been terminated effective May 3rd, 2024, due to violation of company attendance policy (Employee Handbook Section 4.2: Attendance and Punctuality).

Specifically, you failed to report to work on May 2nd, 2024, and did not contact your supervisor or any member of management to report your absence. This constitutes a "no-call, no-show" violation, which is grounds for immediate termination per company policy. Your final paycheck, including payment for hours worked through May 1st, will be mailed to your address on file within 10 business days...

I stop reading. Don't need to see the rest—it's all just legal ass-covering anyway, the HR equivalent of "it's not you, it's us" except it's definitely, entirely, 100% me.

Hours worked through May 1st. I do the math. That's what, two weeks since my last paycheck? At $22 an hour, maybe 35 hours a week after they cut my schedule because "we're overstaffed right now, nothing personal"—so $770 before taxes. Maybe $600 in my pocket, arriving in 10 business days, which means two weeks, which means I need to figure out what I'm working with right now.

I grab my phone and open my bank app. Stare at the number like maybe if I look hard enough, it'll magically grow more digits.

Checking: $847.23. Savings: $312.08.

That's it. That's my entire net worth. $1,159.31 to my name, and I owe $847 for my half of the Brooklyn apartment, plus phone ($85), plus credit card minimum ($125), plus student loans ($287/month). I do more math. I'm getting very good at math lately. Crisis math. Poverty math. The kind they don't teach you in school because it would be too depressing.

$1,159 minus $847 minus $85 minus $125 equals $102.31.

One hundred and two dollars. That's what I'll have left after paying the absolute bare minimum to keep my life from imploding. One hundred and two dollars to cover food, transportation, and the general expense of being a human person who exists in the world.

And that's before student loans hit on the 15th.

The list of people I could call for help is depressingly short.

My parents would answer, sure. And then I'd get my mother's disappointed silence—the one that sounds like sighing without actually sighing—followed by my father's "well, what did you expect?" and probably a twenty-minute lecture about how I should've gone into nursing like my cousin Maria, should've picked something "practical," should've made choices that made sense to people who've never had to make choices at all. So that's out.

Marco is in Monte Carlo doing whatever sports agents do in Monte Carlo—schmoozing rich people, probably, pretending he's not drowning in his own debt from three years of law school at Georgetown, where tuition alone was $70,000 a year. We don't talk about money, Marco and I. It's an unspoken agreement: I don't mention his student loans, he doesn't mention my credit card balance, and we both pretend we're not one emergency away from moving back home. Calling him for cash would shatter the whole illusion, and I'm not ready to be the one who breaks first.

And Jill—Jill would Venmo me $500 without even asking what it's for. That's exactly why I can't ask. She works at a nonprofit making $42,000 a year in New York City, which means she's barely surviving herself. I refuse to be another weight dragging her down.

So. Options: none. Resources: none. Safety net: nonexistent.

I could go back to New York. That's the logical thing to do—crawl back to the apartment, face Josh's empty drawers and the couch I'll never be able to sit on again, find a new job, move on like a functional adult.

But every time I think about it, I hear his voice. You're a wooden board, Mari. A freak. What kind of girl doesn't like sex?

The worst part isn't that he said it. The worst part is that he's not the first.

There was Tyler sophomore year, who told his friends I was "broken" after I couldn't relax enough to let him past second base. There was Daniel, who accused me of being secretly gay because "no straight girl is this frigid." There was Marcus, sweet Marcus, who tried so hard to be patient until one night he snapped and asked if I'd been assaulted or something, because "normal women don't just... freeze up like that."

I haven't been assaulted. I'm not gay. I'm not broken—at least, I don't think I am. I just... can't. Can't turn off my brain. Can't stop feeling like my body is a house I'm renting, not owning. Can't figure out why everyone else seems to have the instruction manual and I'm just standing there, staring at the parts, pretending I know what I'm doing.

Four boyfriends. Four identical endings.

I don't want to go back to New York and be that girl again. The broken one. The freak. The one whispered about at parties—oh yeah, she's hot, but trust me, not worth the effort.

Not yet. Not while Josh's words are still echoing in my skull like a song I can't stop humming.

I need to stay in Miami long enough to prove I'm not the broken girl everyone thinks I am. But I also need to get the hell out of Duane Richter’s impossibly grey, dangerously intoxicating apartment as soon as humanly possible, before I do something disastrous. Before I let myself look at him too long and forget all my rules. I need money. I need a lifeline.

I need a new plan.