June 27th, Monday morning, 8 am. Things went routinely. My alarm went off four times before I got up and dressed. I snatched my wallet and keys before heading out, locking the door behind me. I walked to the corner store off Windlace, waved to the cashier, and headed for the back.

I’ve come here once a week for a long time now, so Kasey is like a neighbor at this point. She’s been the cashier here since she graduated high school. I grabbed a pack of Mountain Dew along with a box of frozen burgers and she rang it up. Just as she handed me the receipt I heard the bell. A boy walked in, around my age I figure, he smiled at us and headed straight for the bathroom.

He was an unusual customer, the only people I’d ever seen come here this early, other than myself, were truckers making their way through. I didn’t think too much of it before waving to Kasey and leaving. I decided to stop by the post office on the way back, no mail. I don’t know what I'd expected.

When I glanced out the half-boarded up windows of the post office, I noticed someone standing behind them. That same boy from the gas station was using the phone booth just outside. He caught me staring and just smiled. Caught off guard as I was, I waved and walked out quickly.

As thankful as I was not to be doing schoolwork, I wished school would come back faster. I was losing my mind being pent up all alone in that apartment for so long. I turned on the news, another boring crime report. Two shot, one dead. It sounds sick, but I was sick of it. Nothing’s normal in the city. Things can’t just run smoothly. It’s always the same, shootings, robberies, riot fires. Always the same.

I fell asleep flipping channels and woke up with mountain dew spilled on the table and my burger bun stuck to my head. When I finally walked into the bathroom to wash my face, I noticed how much my hair had grown. I looked half-dead, scruffy beard fuzz, knotted hair, and huge eye bags. I grabbed the razor to cut it all like I had a million times before. Buzzed up to my ears, weirdly straight yet wavy dark brown. Clean, shaven face, and a slightly less dead look overall.

Every week went like that over summer. Go to the gas station, buy goods, go home, fall asleep, shave, repeat.

I didn’t see the boy come back over the next two months. That was, until the last week before school. I walked to the back of the gas station, just as he walked out from behind the candy shelf. “Morning.” I tried to act friendly despite how tired I was, but he didn’t seem all that awake either. He just smiled and walked to the cashier before setting a bottle of strawberry milk on the counter, along with microwave noodles and a wafer bar. An odd selection of items if you ask me.

She rang him up and he left. No real words spoken. As he walked out though, for some weird reason, I felt this slight drop. Like I had forgotten something. Or rather, someone.