Page 5 of Pretend To Be Mine

Thank you for your interest in the Junior Designer position at Atelier Morgaine. We received an overwhelming number of applications for this role, and after careful consideration…

I didn’t need to read the rest. The words blurred together into a familiar pattern of corporate rejection. Overwhelming number of applications. After careful consideration. We wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Translation: You’re not good enough.

I slumped against the cold metal of my locker, the phone nearly slipping from my fingers. I’d lost count of the number of rejections I’d gotten. I was so sick of getting my hopes up only to have them crushed, over and over.

Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for the fashion world.

The thought slithered through my mind like a venomous snake. I’d spent four years at the Fashion Institute, working my ass off, pulling all-nighters to perfect every seam and hem. I’d graduated near the top of my class. My professors had praised my eye for color, my attention to detail, my innovative approach to classic silhouettes.

But apparently none of that mattered in the real world, where “entry-level” positions required three years of experience and a portfolio full of professional work I’d never had the opportunity to create.

I needed a job to build my portfolio, but I needed a portfolio to get a job. Trapped in that death spiral, all I could do was spin my wheels and go nowhere.

And in the meantime, I was waiting tables at a greasy diner and watching my dreams slip further away with each passing day.

“Lizzie!” Rosie’s voice carried from the front. “Break’s over, babe!”

I shoved my phone back in my apron pocket and took a shaky breath. I needed this job, as soul-crushing as it was, because soul-crushing employment was better than no employment at all. I liked to eat. And I liked sleeping in my shoebox apartment, both of which required me to deal with these assholes every day.

I forced myself back out into the dining room, smile back in place.

The rest of my shift dragged like I was wading through concrete. I smiled at customers, took orders, delivered food, cleared plates, and thought about absolutely nothing. It was easier that way. If I let myself think, I’d start spiraling, and if I started spiraling, I’d end up crying into someone’s meatloaf special.

Table Seven left me a two-dollar tip on a thirty-dollar check.

Of course he did.

By the time five o’clock rolled around and my replacement arrived for the dinner shift, I was exhausted. I had been on my feet for eight hours. My back hurt. My feet hurt. I felt like I was a hundred years old instead of twenty-five. I didn’t understand how Stella, one of the other waitresses, did it. She was over sixty and told me she’d been waiting tables since she was thirteen.

How? How was that physically possible? Waitresses should compete in some Olympic-style shit. I was pretty sure they had more endurance than any famous athlete. Add in the psychological factor of putting up with people’s bullshit and they were as tough as an NFL linebacker. But waitresses weren’t making twenty-two-million dollars a year.

I sighed and shook my head. It was the same rant I went on every day. It didn’t make it any less real. The subway ride back to my apartment in Queens was packed with evening commuters. I stood wedged between a man in a suit who kept elbowing me and a teenage girl who was having an extremely loud FaceTime conversation with someone named Brittany. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

My phone buzzed with a text. I pulled it out, expecting another notification about a bill I couldn’t quite afford to pay. Instead, it was a photo from my brother, Chris.

It was a cat wearing a tiny pirate hat and eye patch, one paw raised in what might have been a wave or a threat. The caption read: How arrrr you?

Despite everything, I smiled. Leave it to my brother to send me the dumbest possible meme at exactly the right moment.

Me: Been better. Been worse. Been a cat pirate? No.

Chris: You should try it. I hear the catnip is primo.

The train lurched to a stop at my station. I shoved my phone back in my pocket as I fought my way through the crowd. My apartment building loomed ahead, a dingy five-story walk-up that had probably been “charming” sometime around the fifties. Now it was just old, with flickering hallway lights and stairs that creaked ominously under your weight. Stairs that were often covered in some unknown substance I didn’t want to think about.

I climbed to the third floor, my legs protesting after a full shift on my feet, and let myself into apartment 3C.

“Home sweet home,” I muttered to the empty studio.

And it was empty, with just a Murphy bed that I’d pulled down this morning and forgotten to put away and a thrift-store couch with springs that poked through the cushions. The kitchen area was so small I could touch the stove and the refrigerator simultaneously if I stood in the right spot. My sewing machine sat on a folding table by the window, surrounded by scraps of fabric and half-finished sketches.

All the raw materials for a dream that refused to come true.

I dropped my bag by the door and collapsed onto the couch, pulling out my phone. Chris had sent another text.