For Celina

I'm wiping down a table, it's hour seven of an eight hour shift and I feel like shit. Talking to me, is my bosses's daughter, Celina. My little sister goes to school with her, and they mutually dislike each other. I half don't blame Celina, my sisters a suck up. The reason  that I'm here, working at this shitty ass job.

    "ˇThis book is really sad." Celina tells me, holding up a book that I only half glance at. I start dropping dirty plates and cups into a bus bin. I raise an eyebrow at her.

    "Why's that?" I ask, pausing from my bussing of the table. Celina  shrugs.

    "Divorce, Addiction, sex,drugs, and stuff about like rape." She tells me. I resist the urge to tell her that that book sounds like my life. It'ss not her fault, or her dad's fault that I'm where I am. Maybe that's all my fault.

    "Yeah, but all that stuff is real though, it happens in the world." I tell her, and she nods.

    "I never knew anyone who went through anything like that, if I did I'd try to help them." I know I'm supposed to be doing my job, and that this isn't my child, and I'm not supposed to educate her on how life works, but some part of me believes I need too.

    "You do know people like that, you know me, and you see the people begging on the street corner. Those are those people." I told her. Celina looked a little surprised. I wasn't surprised, her dad was a wealthy chef, who owned several restaurants, and they lived on the nice side of town. You could tell just by looking at Celina, with her perfectly combed blonde haired and impeccable makeup, She's thirteen, and looks like she walked straight out of teen vouge ad.

    I took the bus bin to the dish pit and swung the door to open the alleway. Outside was Mena,  and Jonah, both smoking cigarettes. Mena had worked here longer than I ever would, and she had three kids with different coworkers, on the outside the restaurant was an upscale fancy place, on the inside everyone fucked everyone, and smoked everything.

    "Hey Cassie." Mena said taking a drag from her cigarette. I slid the pack of cigs from my back pocket and pulled off the cellophane wrapping.

    "New ones?" Jonah said observantly.

    "Gas station off Ashland, took my tip money there." I said lighting one. I'd known Mena back in high school, before she got pregnant and before I got kicked out.

    "How's your boyfriend Cass?" Jonah asked me, sliding his pen from his picket. I watched him mess with the button for a minute.

    "We're good, he's good." I said, averting my eyes.

This was routine, we'd come out to the alley and bitch about shitty lives, and not do jackshit about it. The same old bullshit.

    When I got home, and tried for five minutes unsuccessfully to open my door I almost starting sobbing. Finally it opened. Inside, was the shitty apartment I'd been blessed to call my home.