November 1999
After Halloween, Dana was pleasantly surprised when one of her applications struck gold. Well, no, not exactly—she got a call from a possible employer, yes, but it wasn’t for any sort of real career position, nothing she’d been hoping for, nothing that would pay rent or bills or let her move out on her own any time soon. It was a seasonal retail position at the downtown mall after hours, unloading trucks and restocking shelves, maintaining inventory, that sort of thing. But it was a paycheck, at least, and though she avoided the mall like the plague—particularly during the holidays—she didn’t have to be into work until ten o’clock at night, after the customers were already gone.
By her second week of work, though, she was bored. The overnight shift seemed longer than it pro
