Sprites 1.6.1
E hadn't heard from her mom in four days. There hadn't been a single call, text, feed post, or yo. E had run an experiment. It had worked, and she was disappointed in the results. She had a hunch a few weeks back that her mom didn't obsessively follow her on every new feed thread in order to actually keep tabs on E. Whenever they were on the phone, she noticed her mom would routinely steer the conversation in the direction of her own contributions. She would chastise E for party photos, then ask her what she thought of her cocktail party close-ups. Her mom would judge and demean and belittle nearly every move E made, but then instead of actually bringing the judgement to any sort of teachable parenting, before it might be a lesson or morale from on high from a generation who might know some things, from back before everyone knew where everyone was all the time, and where all the information was, and where all the parenting knowledge was, where she might actually look around for it and hand it off to E, instead of doing that just saying, "But do I look all right? I rented this new car and we're going to the cottage with our friends."
So E ran an experiment. She wrote a simple "if this then that" script that would notice her mom's posting activity. It would automatically send a heart to her mom for every post. She thought that might look suspect, however, so she added in a random comment depending on post length, with a wildcard search for certain key phrases. If a post contained the word "I'm loving," the comment would read "So proud of you!" If a post contained the word "thinking" it would post either "go with your heart," or "you're so brave." The majority of the time spent on the script was adding extra banal phrases one might find all over the #blessed comment streams. Finally, she wrote in a variable that would take the most popular comment from the hash and add it to the random selection of comment contributions. She wanted to see if her mom would notice. She wanted to see what would happen if she replaced her real, sarcastic, breathing, frustrating, broke self with a robot that spewed milquetoast embers of automated support.
Her mom had never gone four days without calling her before she'd moved out. E's theory was that all her mom wanted was this type of attention anyway. Giving it to her might get her to chill a little about her own decisions. An imaginary yet supportive daughter might be a little less of a target.
E then took a well-lit shot of herself in her purple plush panties and wrote "All of our dads came from Instagram childhoods" in the text field. She waited for her mom to call and give her shit.
She showed up to work and the manager asked her to come to the back office. He handed her a cheque with her last three shifts and told her why she couldn't work there anymore.
"The fact is you aren't suited to this job. You tell me you've worked in hospitality before, but I just don't see the evidence. You have trouble remembering details. You're not detail-oriented. This is a very detail-oriented line of work. Do you understand?"
E stood with both feet planted, and refused to be demure. E unconsciously chipped away at her middle nail with her thumbnail, and in the course of her dressing-down, had managed to chip away at it until there was a coarse slice, and if she continued to pick away at the nail the trajectory of the split would land directly in the middle of the flesh underneath. It would open up the underside of her nail to the open air, and it would be a pain so unbelievably distressing that she'd temporarily go colour blind, and the imaginary white flash noise of a lens flare in a movie would pierce her skull and hang there for hours, and while the scorching red pang would eventually dull down it would never completely go away, and for years she'd find herself pushing down on the spot where it had opened, and she'd receive an echo of the original sear, and she would feel 22 again. She would not remember getting fired twice in a month, or the names of the men who thought so little of her. She would remember J. And S. Boy would she remember S.
She told the manager that she understood completely.
"I don't think you do," he continued. "I want you to do a favour to the industry. Okay? Can you do that? Go home. Go back to your parents. You have parents, right?"
E nodded, and wished violently for a drink to throw in his face.
"Okay, go back an live with your parents. Lots of people do it. They go back and live with them and just, like, take care of them. They don't have real jobs or responsibilities and it's kind of nice. I think you'd really like it. It's stress-free, so long as you like your parents a lot. But even if you don't, well, they're not going to kick you out. Unless they kicked you out already. Oh, god, did they kick you out already? I'm so sorry if that is the case."
E found a place in her sternum where the hate lived. She rediscovered it on occasion, but it has been a while since she'd been so ruthlessly patronized that it blinked on her map. "Here I am", the hate spot announced. Her parents had given E the exact same speech. E had her mother's Oprah advice on the tip of her burned tongue.
"Kids these days don't get jobs like your father and I did. That's just not how the world is anymore. Everyone just stays together and makes it work. If you really work at it you'll get a good job by the time you're thirty five. Then you can get a place of your own, get married and have kids when you're fifty. Oh I know I was young when I had you, but it was different then. Having a child at 38 was considered normal when I was young. But you can't expect to have it as well as the previous generation. God knows my generation learned that. So, I don't know what you're doing going off on your own. You're just going to waste time and end up right back here."
Everyone who yelled at her sounded like the same person. She could picture the group chat that led to their agreed upon terminology. "for your own good. "it's just the way things are." "I'm not sure who told you that you were special." "things just don't work like that anymore."
E shook her head, and stopped picking away at her nail. The tear would remain until she got home, which would be in the dark after a lot of drinking. But first she slapped him, first in the face and then in the shoulder, and when it looked like he wasn't going to cower from the light abuse she balled up her hands and felt the cold of her rings and socked him on the side of his nose, not quite center but good enough to make him recoil and regret.
He said "Hey what the fuck" in between the first punch and the second, and before there could be a third he ran away, hobbling and bleeding on the restaurant floor. E thought of Izzy and how they'd never have the chance to make great work friends. They were just two people who didn't like one another very much, and it never got to grow and evolve. It wasn't going to get to be a story. She never even got her feed.
She texted Carly on her way home. The conversation would end up with her in bed under cold blankets, wishing she'd made tea.
E--i got shitcanned!
C--what? That's fucked. You weren't that bad!
E--you thought I was kinda bad?
C--Well, everything thought you were kinda bad. But certainly not the worst. Okay, maybe not great.
E--Shit.
C--Sorry! I wouldn't have fired you though. You were cute. Cute is always good for something.
E--thanks. Maybe i'll just go be a stripper.
C--No way. You'd hurt yourself. You're clumsy. Cute but not dancer material. Be a nurse!
E--What? How would that? Nvmd.
C--Come out tonight! Did he give you some cash?
E--I kinda punched him. Like twice but it was awesome.
C--!!! Cat-Rocky Emoji
E--Aaaah, I love Cat-Rocky!
C--Are you coming out tonight?
E--Yeah, of course.
E had no idea what tonight's plans were. But after a few texts, her evening became clear. She was headed to a rooftop patio with a pool.
