A Girl Has To Eat Part 1

A Girl Has To Eat

Part 1

The letters started the same day that her cubicle neighbor didn’t come in to work. At first, Vanna didn’t notice it in the pile she brought in from her mailbox. It wasn’t until the sun was slowly rising while she tapped her spoon against her mostly empty yogurt that she started to look through the mail.

A phone bill, for the same company she worked for. She found a useless letter telling her that water prices would rise but not by how much. And then she found a plain white envelope without a return address.

Vanna frowned, unsettled. She flipped it over to confirm that there really was nothing.

“I probably shouldn’t open this,” she mused. “It’s a scam or something weird…”

She had a vague memory about envelopes filled with poison. Her stomach lurched.

Vanna rolled her eyes at herself, but she dropped the envelope unopened on the side table and put her bowl in the sink. She paused to give a hateful little glare at the rising sun. She needed to get to sleep, because her next shift was from 3pm instead of from 8, like the one she’d just come off of.

She went through the apartment and pulled closed all the curtains, even though they weren’t thick enough to truly block out the light. And then she tried to get some sleep before she had to go back into the call center.

The next weird thing happened as she was crossing the parking lot. Vanna put a hand to the earbud on her left ear and stopped, suddenly feeling confident that someone had called out her name. She pulled out the earbud and spun around.

There were other people around, though none were close, and no one was looking at her. She frowned. There were a few cars scattered in the rows nearby, but they all seemed empty. The hedge beyond blocked the rest of the parking lot behind her.

Vanna had a strange, uncomfortable feeling that she couldn’t explain. She put the earbud in her pocket and turned off her music, feeling her stomach twist. Her heart shuddered in her chest. She couldn’t help but pick up the pace to the building. She was nearly jogging by the time she reached the lobby and walked into a cloud of stale air.

Her heart rate calmed down. She swallowed. She looked out the glass door, and she saw nothing unusual.

‘At least no one saw me, I think. I’m way too dramatic… too many scary movies or something.’

The shift was okay, if a bit mind numbing. She worked on a hand sewing project to keep busy while she dealt with an unending deluge of unhappy customers. They came in on waves, with ten more calling in the minute she was close to finishing up everyone on hold. They were almost all angry by the time she got to then, as if it was her who had chosen to pay their bill late or forget to change their credit card or made the call wait 40 minutes long.

She took her mandated 15 minute break in the fluorescent kitchen just to have a reason to move. She poked around in the fridge and discovered she’d left a half drunk and mostly flat soda. There was also most of a burrito wrapped in foil that had A. W. on it. Vanna frowned.

When she went back in, she glanced at Andrea’s empty desk. The manager had gone around aski everyone yesterday if they knew her personally, if there was another way to contact her. Her phone was turned off and she’d done a no call no show.

It was a bit weird, but not an unreasonable reaction to their job, if Vanna had to think about it.

She much preferred not to think about it. She kept her head as empty as possible and her tone just the right amount of friendly for the rest of her shift.

She crashed hard after that shift and slept until she was nearly late to go meet friends at a bar. She showed up hastily in jeans and a sweater, feeling significantly less put together than she wanted to be. She’d put on a little weight every year since graduating high school. She didn’t think about it much at work in her sweatshirts and loose pants, but she felt self conscious going around town like that. Every additional kg seemed to need to be balanced by another accessory or 5 minutes of applying makeup.

It didn’t matter, though. Bea and Eddie had known her since junior high school and neither one of them commented that she was underdressed by her usual standards.

She found them standing at a high table by one of the few windows in the bar.

“We already got our first ones, sorry,” Eddie explained. He lifted his beer apologetically. “We didn’t think you’d be here for a while yet.”

“It’s no problem,” she said reflexively. It was fair, she was usually late. Vanna patted her back pocket to check for her ID and cash. “I’ll catch up to you, I’m fast.”

Bea snorted. “Yes, that’s definitely what everyone said about you,” she teased. Her long dark hair pooled on the table when she leaned over. “The one who's there ten minutes early to everything, the one who never “caught bronchitis” three times in PE class on mile day, the one who-“

Vanna rolled her eyes and went off to get a drink while Eddie cackled at her expense. So what if  she was perpetually late and bad at exercise, it wasn’t that funny.

They stayed out pretty late, trying to find someone for Bea to go home with. Bea got lucky at the last minute, latching onto a redhead with less than 20 minutes until closing time. Eddie golf clapped and smiled, but Vanna secretly thought she was right that he was into Bea.

She took a taxi home in a great mood, because Wednesday was going to be a whole, wonderful day off.

Vanna absolutely did not squander it. She slept soundly and woke up to put on an audaciously cute blue dress with dangling gold earrings and a bold white eyeliner look. Dressed like that, she took a novel to a cafe and brunched, feeling like a romantic movie heroine. She eyed anyone good looking in the cafe over her mimosa, hoping to make eye contact.

It didn’t seem today would be the day she slipped into a whirlwind romance, so she gave up brunch to use her yearly pass at the zoo. She must have walked 5 miles around the paths before she stopped for a coffee in the rainforest themed cafe. Her feet were hurting but her blood was pumping in a way that made her feel ambitious about getting back into fitness.

This was gonna be the month, Vanna decided. She stirred more cream into her coffee. She was going to start a 30 day exercise routine tomorrow, and she was going to stick to it. She tossed her hair in the fading sunlight, feeling invigorated and powerful.

The coffee was very cheap in quality for how expensive it had been, but she barely grimaced. Sugar and cream could go a long ways to hide that sin.

She got groceries on the way home, and immediately dumped the bags on the counter while she flipped on the hot water and brought in the mail. She was thinking about the movie she was going to watch and the moderately hot ex she might send a message to when she realized there were two more envelopes without return addresses on them.

Vanna frowned at them, perplexed. She hated opening mail, so she resented getting things that probably weren’t relevant.

On the other hand, what if it was important and she got in trouble for it opening them?

She put them on the counter but she had a resigned pit in her stomach the whole time she put away groceries, instead of a happy focus on how she might make popcorn for her movie.

She opened the oldest envelope first, and was immediately confused. There was no writing, no letter. The only thing inside is as a convenience store receipt.

“Who would waste postage on this?” Vanna asked her kitchen. She felt her eyebrows furrow. “That just doesn’t-“

She cut herself off, because she remembered something. She picked up the envelope one more time to confirm. Yes. Her name and address were written in neat black writing. But there was no stamp.

It took a few moments for the implication of that to set in. Her lungs clenched . Levity gone, Vanna opened the next envelope. It had been at the bottom of the mail pile, so it was probably the second one chronologically.

There was, again, no letter. There was a piece of notebook paper with a series of times written on it. She scanned them in confusion until “1:35 pm” stuck out to her- that was the time her alarm clock woke her up yesterday before her 3 pm shift.

Uneasy, she leaned back against the wall. It had to be a coincidence. But… two lines above that was 5:04, which was about when she’d gone to bed. The time in between didn’t make any sense until she remembered that she had woken up to walk to the bathroom in the night. Her heart was racing now. She recognized other times- when she left the house, arrived at work, her lunch break— and she felt sick to her stomach.

“Someone is watching me,” Vanna said blankly. Her mind was white with fear. “Someone is putting envelopes into my mailbox. Someone right outside my house.”

Even saying that, she was wholly unprepared to open the last envelope. This one was stiffer, because it didn’t have notes on her or the receipt for the soda she’d forgotten in the work fridge. It had a photo of her reading a book, with a half finished plate of Eggs Benedict on the table.

She looked down at herself dumbly, as if to confirm that yes, she was wearing the exact same outfit as she was in the photo. Of course she was. The photo was from this morning.