Finding another Job...

Eli woke up in the morning with serious questions that needed to be answered. Where would she ever go to find another job?

By this point, Eli was getting desperate. She was a hard worker, smart, and easy to work with. But she wasn’t strong or built enough for most of the jobs offered in this tiny town.

But she couldn’t continue living off last month’s pay. She needed to quickly find a job. Any job.

First, she called the post office, remembering that sweet asian mailman who had saved her life. She needed to thank him, and it didn’t hurt to ask to see if there were any jobs available there.
“Hello?”
“Yes, this is uh, the post office, how may I help you?”
“Well uh... I don’t know how to really say this, but do you perhaps have an asian mailman working for you? I’m sorry, I’m not being racist or anything, I just don’t know how else to describe him, and uh... well... you see... I... uh... reallyneedtotalktohimabouthowhesavedmylifeandthatIjustwantobeabletothankhim. You know?”

Wow she sounded like a freak. Hopefully this guy knew who she was talking about and would pass the phone to him.
“Do you happen to be the forever 21 girl that I found in the woods that time?”
Score!
“Yes, actually, then you must be that mailman! Thank you so much for everything and I can’t tell you how much I appre-”
“Yes, yes, you’re welcome. I’m a little busy right now because, oh, I now own the post office. If that is all you had to say...”
“ Oh no! I actually also wanted to ask you if I could possibly get a job there, you know, since my work place burned down.” God she sounded so desperate.
“Hmmn, let me think about it. Are you good at typing?”
“Yes.”
“What about filing?”
“I’m pretty efficient.”
“What about taking calls?”
“Did it all the time at forever 21.”
“Alright, let me get back to you later tonight.”

Eli got off the phone feeling helpless. Hopefully, Mr. Zheng,(she had forgotten his name), would be willing to take her on. Hopefully, he didn’t think she was too ditzy from their past experiences.

Eli went into a couple other shops but they all said they didn’t need any workers. The only place she didn’t venture into until now, was Isabella’s cafe. Of course, she wasn’t there to be a pole dancer, but the prospect of working there at all was a little humiliating.

“So you think you could be a good stylist for our girls?” asked the front man. He was a little intimidating to say the least with his towering frame over her. Eli tried to keep her composure.
“Yeah, I worked at Forever 21, so I know what’s in style or not. It would help with sales you know, people would find them more attractive with better clothes on...”
“How ‘bout we see you work tonight, and if the crowd's reaction is good, I’ll hire ya.”

Eli walked into the back dressing room where all the girls were getting ready. Most of the girls were very nice and willing to let her coordinate their outfits. They were there for the money and were ready to do anything to get more of it. Later that night, they walked out onto the stage wearing skimpy gold bandeaus and sequined skirts with nude pumps. The outfits didn’t make them sophisticated, they were still strippers, but they looked like classy strippers. Oh well, at least Eli had tried.

Eli watched with her potential employer for the reactions from the crowd by intermingling with them. She went up to the bartender to get a drink when she met a young man gulping down his beer. He did not look too happy. She tried to pass by him unnoticed, but he grabbed her wrist.
“Excuse me...” Eli said, trying to make him let go of her.
“That was my father... my father’s ghost. I talked to a fucking ghost the whole time. Fucking ghost Floyd. I’m fucking insane. I must be insane. Do I look insane to you?”
“You look fine, I suggest you stop drinking though.”
He finally let go of her wrist after an hour of ranting and she took his drink with her as the man fell out of his seat, still mumbling about a ghost.

No way there were ghosts. That was one thing Eli didn’t believe in. This guy must have really been insane. Or just really really drunk.

Eli left her card with the manager and left Isabella’s cafe dazed and worn out. Outside at last, she realized that it was near morning. How long has she been in there for?

She checked her phone. 6:30 AM. Crap. She also had three missed calls from the post office. She would have to call back later at a more reasonable time.

Eli decided that she needed a little more time to process her day and so she walked towards the church cemetery instead of back to her apartment. Cemeteries were not depressing places for Eli. They were in fact a reminder for her that all these people who were deceased had people who loved them and cared for them enough to visit them once or twice a year and put flowers on their graves. She wanted her sister to feel loved to. Eli hoped her mother was taking good care of her sister’s grave.

But maybe, coming to the cemetery on this night was the wrong thing to do. Eli felt a little chilled as she remembered what the drunk man had said to her. If ghosts were real, this place would be the perfect place for them to appear. And the air was all wrong. It was still and calm. Too calm. She felt like something was about to happen, something that would destroy the still atmosphere.

And just like Eli predicted, the something did happen. That something was her sister. There she was, right in front of her. She was a little translucent, very pale, and had a little glow about her.

Eli panicked. The instinct to run welled up inside of her, but she crushed it as best as possible. She needed to hear some answers.
“How are you here right now.”
“I flew.”
She flew!?! Things were getting too weird.
“Don’t doubt me, and yes, I flew on that day at the beach too."
“So are you an angel or something?”
“Not quite, I guess you could say I drowned, well at least that’s what happened to my natural body.”
“Why are you here right now, to torture me?”
“No... I’m just here because you need my help. You know that I can help you.”

This was all too strange for her. She felt like something was choking her. And the still air, the unnatural quiet surrounding her was just too much.

She did what she did best at that point. She ran.
“ You can’t run away from me,” her sister said, flying right next to her.

That was the last straw. Eli fainted right in front of the big doors to the Castle Apartments. This was all too much to handle in one day. Especially the flying part.

Why I Ran...

Eli breathed a sigh of relief. She had just walked out of the police station alive.

So many people had been screaming at her it seemed like she was back home with her mom. When everyone finally calmed down, Eli explained what had happened. It took a few minutes of convincing and their lack of evidence of the stolen money to let them let her go.

It seemed as if Eli couldn’t help but get blamed for every bad situation in her life. And maybe it was rightly so. She was the misfit in the family after all. And now she was, yet again, stuck jobless in this city.

Her troubles seemed to emerge whenever she started running. Obviously, it made people think she was guilty of something. Why did she always run?

Eli remembered that she used to love running. But her mom never let her. Whether for her safety or just to make it easier to keep an eye on her, Eli would never know. She used to run anyway, especially when her sister and she were on the beach. Those were the blissful days. Everything was happy and sunny and her mom seemed to actually enjoy life for awhile.

And then Eli remembered that one day they went to the beach and it was very foggy. The fog was unnaturally heavy and moist. There was an eerie feel to the whole day, like the set up in a scary movie before it gets to the scary point. Why they went to the beach on that day instead of a diner or the movies, she doesn’t know.

But it cost them her sister’s life.





One second she was right in front of Eli, running. Eli was chasing after her and then, she disappeared, right into the fog. You’d think Eli would be able to hear her footsteps, or her breathing. Eli heard nothing as her sister was covered up by the surrounding mist.

She kept running after her. Running until her mom and a police officer had to pull her back and sit her down into the car. All she wanted to do was run. Run until she was away from all the yelling, (her mom started bawling and the searchers came with dogs). Eli couldn’t handle this situation.

So maybe that’s why she decided to take up this job; to get away from the horrible day and to stay as far from another beach as possible.

So far, it had been a success. She never thought about her sister until this running incident had happened. Eli decided not to run for ANYTHING anymore, since it always seemed to get her into trouble.

She walked back into Castle Apartments and plopped down on her bed. Thank god at least her apartment hadn’t burned down.... Eli knocked on the wood of her bedpost before she fell asleep.

What I DID NOT do...

Eli finally found a temporary job at the Roller Skating rink doing odd jobs like mopping the floor and cashiering for the scarce skaters who seldom came in.

By late afternoon, Eli was left cleaning the rink from head to toe all by herself. Scrubbing the roller blades to make them shine (at least somewhat), left her hands raw and aching.

Getting fired from Forever 21 left her devastated, especially since the fire was not her fault in any shape or form. But Eli decided that she would get over it and at the moment, focus on taking out the trash.

The few skaters who did come, always brought a variety of junk food that smelled like feet when left over night. Sometimes, she got people who would come in and make Forever 21 jokes at her. How they knew her, Eli had no idea. Eli picked up the pieces of food with the tip of her fingers and threw them delicately into the trash bag. She then dragged the heavy bag, out to the side door of the Rink.

Once outside, she was about to heave the bag up into the dumpster when she saw two slumped figures against the wall. Remembering the time when she herself had been left helpless in the woods, she rushed to help them.

Eli cleaned her hands as best as possible on her black working pants. Thank god she decided to wear all black today or else the coke she had spilled on herself earlier would have been completely visible.

Close up, it was obvious that someone had knocked them unconscious. She leaned a little closer to see if the two men, as she could now identify, had any identification on them and found that the heavier guy had a wallet layed out on his stomach.

Though the splayed wallet was unnatural, Eli picked it up to find a name or a number to help out these people. She looked through the contents and found that there was only a blank card in the wallet with a scribbled number on the back. Eli wondered why a grown man would carry only a phone number with him in such a large wallet.

She was just about to go back inside to phone this number for help and information about the mysterious figures, when she heard a girl scream.

"Help, Help! This lady is robbing these poor men!"

Eli was so startled and so scared that she starting running- with the wallet in hand. She kept on running out of the alleyway between the rink and Walter Lanes.

She kept running until she was stopped by a thud and fell flat on her back on the ground. As she brushed herself off and stood up, she began to realize the situation she had just put herself in.

Why oh why had she ran? She hadn't done anything wrong. She was only trying to help them! Eli decided to go back and tell everyone the truth when the person she had bumped into alarmed her.

" Did you really steal that wallet? "

Eli looked down to see that she had held onto the wallet when she made a run for it. Things were not looking good at all. AT ALL.

It really did look like she had stolen their stuff. If Eli was doubting herself, who was going to believe her?