Dead guys and me.

You could call it a first day initiation if you wanted.

This enthusiastic and cutely awkward girl who can't stop smiling and chatting about this book and that. And there was that old man who called me cute and then started acting funny.

"Could you sign this, please?" I asked, setting his receipt and a pen beside him. He tried to sign the slip with his fingernail.

"Your pen's out of ink," he said.

That's because you aren't using a pen.

And then he started to fall over a bit, and his arm frantically waved over the counter, hand grasping for the scanner, the pen cup, something to hold on to. Mandy and I looked at each other with wide eyes and asked if he was okay. He collapses on the counter now.

"Go get a chair," and I'm running across Barnes and Noble in dress shoes and a brand new shirt, grabbing a chair and sprinting back.

It took Mandy, a manager, and a customer standing by to get him off the counter and into the chair. Mandy and I looked at each other again, both of us sure he had died on the counter. He had passed out. Paramedics on the way. Trying to maintain composure and ring up other customers while he got sick. Not my specialty. I fought the urge to run out of the music department.

Mr. Stamps came in I tried to hold a conversation while other customers stared at the sick man surrounded by EMTs. I helped him find a DVD. The stretcher was gone and in ten minutes, it was as if nothing happened at all.

That was yesterday. Today, Mrs. Keeney happened to stop in.

"How was your first year?"

Please don't ask about Brian.

"Did you have fun?"

Please don't ask about Brian.

"And did you take any writing classes?"

Please don't ask about Brian.

Anymore, it really only hits at the end of the shift, when I go to clock out and walk past the end cap devoted to Chuck Palahniuk. The stacks of Tell All and Pygmy in paperback now. When I drive home on the freeway, and remember counting lanes on Phoenix's freeways. When we were both enthralled to be on a seven or eight lane roadway. Those little quirks we had in common. That of a cork-like nature. When the newness wears off and I only want to be with the people I feel most comfortable with. The person who says "I know" to everything I say.

19 hours logged at the new job. New outfits, new friends, new hair, new style, new Jessica, new life. But I'm tired right now.

When I'm tired. But you aren't the same person anymore. And anymore, I'm all but myself, too. "Yeah I fucked up good and well and you put me through fucking hell, but good luck finding someone who can love you better than I."

Than I.