Free Blackbird by Abigail Graham

at me.
    “Oh my God. I’m She-Scrooge.” My laughter quickly melts into sobs again. “How did this happen to me? I don’t want to be this way.”
    “What way to you want to be?”
    “What are you, my therapist now?”
    “No, but I have three girls. The oldest is in college. I’ve seen worse than this.”
    I   blink at her a few times. “Really?”
    “A sixteen year old’s boyfriend freakout is a force of nature.”
    “I never had a boyfriend until I was… older than that.”
    “Your stepbrother.”
    “Yes.”
    She shifts in her seat and shrugs. “You want to tell me about it.”
    “Stop saying questions like they’re statements.”
    “That was a statement,” she sighs. “You do want to talk, you’re just trying to find the words.”
    “I haven’t had a real conversation with another human being about anything but my work in five years.”
    “I can tell,” Alicia says, dryly.
    I give her a look.
    “My daughter looks at me like that when I say something she knows is right.”
    I look at the computer again. I have more emails.
    An urge strikes me. I open the browser, navigate to Twitter and type my name in the search box.
    I suck in a deep breath when I read what I see. There must be thousands of tweets. I glance at Alicia and bite my lip, and scroll through the screen.
    There’s a hashtag.
    “I have a hashtag,” I blurt out.
    #EveDestroyedMyLife
    Trembling, I click the link.
    For the next twenty minutes, I sit in silence and read, my face a still mask. The tweets go on forever. This only started yesterday.
    I had 19 years of seniority and a pension. #EveRuinedMyLife
    I snap the computer’s screen down and stare at the door, trembling. Then I get up.
    “I need to get out of here.”
    “You’re in your pajamas.”
    I look down at myself.
    “Go take a shower and change.”
    I am not used to be ordered around, at least by anyone but my father, but I do as she says. My shower turns out to be half an hour standing under the hot water followed by brushing my hair and dressing in the only casual clothes I have, an ancient sweatsuit at the bottom of my bottom drawer, which I don’t remember even putting there. I don’t have sneakers, either. I don’t care; I put on a pair of slippers and make a mental note to buy some sneakers. When I step outside, Alicia is waiting for me.
    “Should I have the car brought around?”
    “Do you have a car?”
    She nods.
    “Let’s take yours.”
    I feel strange walking out of the house, down the path that winds around the back to where Alicia and the other staff park. Her car is a boxy minivan. The inside smells strongly of fabric softener for some reason. I sit in the front seat next to her, and she starts the engine and looks over at me.
    “Where would we be going, then?”
    I sigh. “I want a cheeseburger.”
    “What kind?”
    “I don’t know. Pick one.”
    Some twenty minutes later, I find myself sitting in her minivan while she wheels it around the curving drive-through lane of a McDonalds. She stops before pulling up to the speaker.
    “What did you want, hon?”
    “A quarter pounder.”
    She orders, pulls up, and I realize I have no cash on me. My God, I’m making her pay.
    “I’ll pay you back,” I say, as she pulls into a parking space facing the road.
    She passes me my food and I spread the paper open on my lap.
    “You don’t have to pay me back. It was nine dollars.”
    I peel the top of the bun off and use a napkin to wipe it clean, leaving a thin layer of mayonnaise-ketchup-mustard mixture soaked into the bread, then settle it on top of the patty and take a bite.
    “If you’d said something I’d have ordered it plain for you.”
      “I like it this way.”
    She eyes me while she chews. “You mean you like to order it and then peel everything off.”
    “Yes. They just put too much on.”
    “Okay.”
    Every bite is like torture. The food is fine, the memories are not. It’s like every bite tries to stick in my