At my first store of three I've worked at, I did some things to cope with the new environment and what was expected of me. 

I remember taking orders and the customer told me they needed a minute. I turned my headset off and noticed Regina and Lou making clicking sounds with their tongues, and that was when I realized they were mocking me. 

I tried to stop doing that, but Regina looked at me and gave me a goofy smile. I deeply felt as though they weren't making fun of me to be mean, they were trying to say they loved me anyway.

Now, in Little Rock, I find it increasingly difficult to maintain any kind of my old normalcy with the new crew members.

I've become so withdrawn since my demotion it scares some of the girls. I'm so quiet I don't defend myself and Alicia has taken to murmuring, "Dexter's girlfriend" under her breath whenever we make eye contact. And then the other girls giggle.

I don't know when she stopped thinking I was human. Probably around the time I stopped feeling like one.

I pack at the assisted living home where other victims of domestic abuse go. It's like a little hotel room but there are two bunk beds for victims with children. I'm only one person, with the room all to myself, but they all have bunk beds like that. The bathroom is clean, the whole space is clean. And I cry when I first see the care package that some kind heart has donated: shampoo, conditioner, the nice kind. Bathroom essentials. You wouldn't know they were so important until you flea your home in a panic and realize you can never go back to the place where he ever resided.

But I'm going to go back. Because I've managed to find myself another apartment. And I have more stuff to pack than just the small essentials I've brought here.

I think about how daunting that is as I walk into work. One of the girls coughs, "Dexterrr," as I do. I'm not sure if I have the capacity to give a crap anymore. At least about them.

It's become this sad little "them" and "me" scenario in my head lately. And also "Blaze" who is his own category altogether. I'm told I'm going to train one of the new girls on sandwiches. Great.

After my shift Blaze waits for me, but I'm still thinking about the girl I trained.

"Hey," Blaze says.

I smile. "Hey."

"You ready to go?"

I nod. It's the first real date we've gone on. One that doesn't involve other people. I've chosen a comfortable spot to drive: a heavily trafficked trail, but a long one, which leaves plenty of opportunity for getting to know each other (or at least, some banter).

I inform him that I've packed plenty of flavored water and oreos for the trip as I explain to him where we're going. Not that he really gets to complain: I'm the one driving, after all. He seems happy with the decision.

Sky is happy once we arrive and she can shake out her red fur and sniff the dirt and peer around with her sky eyes.

I'm the only one of the three of us who's been on the trail before, so I lead the way to the part that curves off the paved area and gets steep real fast. Water trickles across the footpath where it will eventually fall into the river below which gushes past. The mountain hovers above and I know we'll be near the top before we're done.

We stop at a bench that stands before the bridge that will cross the mouth of the river we passed on our way up. An especially gregarious young boy strikes up a conversation with us as his "adoptive" parents, he informs us, read the plaque before the river: the one that has the military poem written by a medic. The kid likes our dog, and we keep going.

I can't exactly come upon the words to describe what we see at the top, instead I think about the trainee with the nickname.

Great, I think in the crew break room as I put away my things. I'm training a nickname. Like, I'm not even given her full name, because everyone already knows her: she's that popular.

She's beautiful, and blonde, with a cheerleader's physique and a smile that's incredibly infectious and exhausting to my sour mood.

She's the kind of girl I tried to be multiple times throughout elementary school, but just never quite stuck to. And as it turns out, she's kind.

I'm harsh toward her, and impatient. And I expect a few Dexter remarks in return. But that's not what she does.

The top of the mountain is like her eyes when I'm finally compelled to look into them because of her unwavering silence in the face of my criticism. It's covered in bare rock that has every color imaginable imbedded into the face of it: red, orange, pink and blue. But it stands much higher than the rock in the salt flats.

Snow spots the sides of the small lake even though it's the middle of summer and the sky meets with the crest of the peak just above the lake. We come to a ford where the rock face falls into the water. 

The fall is deep like her eyes which bead into me with a fierce independence and stubborn compassion that would surely haunt any man that ever did her wrong for the rest of his undeserving days. And I realize that maybe it's not everyone else that's alienated me, maybe it's myself.

We pick a spot to sit and look out at the lake and eat oreos. "We're here," I tell blaze as the breeze hits us and tangles into sky's coarse fur.

"We're here," he agrees.