Chapter Text
Cady hates Jingle Bell Rock.
Realistically, she hates all Christmas music, at this point. She's pretty sure it's going to be the middle of July, and she's going to wake up in the middle of the night humming the tune to All I Want For Christmas Is You. She's going to have a fight-or-flight response anytime she hears Santa Tell Me for at least a decade.
Such is the curse of working retail during the holiday season.
"Next in line!" Cady calls out.
She's standing at her least favorite register, doing everything she can to just make it through this shift. She's only been here for an hour, but it feels like it's been an eternity.
"Sorry, this register is closed, actually," she hears her manager, Jason, say from behind her. The customer groans and heads back to the front of the long line queuing for a register, as Cady gives Jason a confused look.
"What? I just started my shift. It's not time for my break yet."
Jason shakes his head. "No, it's not. You're being moved upstairs."
Cady blinks. "Upstairs?"
"The jewelry department's cashier just quit, and we have no one to cover," Jason tells her. "So you gotta go cover it."
"Why me?" Cady asks, confused as hell. "I don't know the first thing about jewelry!"
Jason shakes his head. "Doesn't matter. We just need someone to man the register, and you're the cashier that's worked here the longest. Ron said to put you up there. You can be trusted with big cash. Besides," Jason shrugs, "the jeweler is still up there. Just no cashier."
Cady stares at him for a few more seconds, before he waves his hand.
"Come on! There's customers waiting!"
Cady snaps out of it, and logs herself out of her register. In the two years she's worked here, she's only ever worked the front registers. She's not good enough with people to be out on the sales floor. She can put on a forced smile and work her way through a scripted interaction with a customer, but she can't pitch a sale to someone. She's not confident enough to work the customer service desk and deal with the problem customers. She can make brief small talk, check people out, and start calculating change in her head immediately. She's good at what she does.
Working the jewelry department register is not what she does.
But what choice does she have? Fucking Jason is making her go. He's the third manager she's had in the last two years because no one can seem to stay at this hellhole. No one but her, somehow.
It doesn't matter that Jason is terrible at his job. It doesn't matter that she's applied for a managerial role every time it's come up. She keeps getting passed over for outside hires who don't know a damn thing and end up leaving after six months or so. Jason's coming up on seven months soon. His days are numbered, she just knows it.
She grabs her water bottle and the tiny wooden lion she keeps on her register, and follows Jason towards the elevators.
Despite having worked here for two years, Cady's hardly ever been on the upper floors. She works in the largest department store in the city, which has seven floors and an insane amount of transactions. She spends her entire shift pretty much every shift on the first floor, working the main registers and processing hundreds of transactions per shift, if not over a thousand. She goes to the break room on the first floor, stares at her phone for fifteen minutes, and then gets back to it.
It's not like she can afford to buy anything here, even with her measly ten percent employee discount. Unless she's needed upstairs for whatever reason, she never goes up there. And even then, she's only ever been as high as the third floor, and only a couple of times in the two years she's been working here.
The jewelry department is all the way on the sixth floor, which Cady doesn't even realize until Jason smacks the six button inside the elevator.
They don't talk on the ride up, only the sound of the unending Christmas music Cady remains subjected to filling the air. Jason taps his foot against the ground and starts humming along with Frosty the Snowman. Cady momentarily entertains the idea of strangling him, but she decides prison wouldn't be worth it.
The elevator doors open, and they stride out onto the sixth floor. The entire floor is all accessories. Jewelry, scarves, hats, watches, handbags, gloves, belts… Cady's certain she couldn't afford half this stuff with a single paycheck. The jewelry counter? Forget about it. A whole month's worth of pay couldn't cover the price of some of the smallest pieces they carry.
There's a line of customers forming at the jewelry counter already. Great.
"Finally!" the jeweler groans, throwing his hands up in the air. "Took you long enough."
"I had to get approval from Ron to move someone up here," Jason tells him as he unlocks the door to let Cady behind the counter. "Same setup as downstairs. Just larger sums. You've got this."
And without another word, Jason heads off, leaving Cady alone with a line of impatient customers and a pissed off jeweler.
Okay, one step at a time.
"Hi, I'm Cady," she says to the jeweler. She might as well start with that.
"Kevin," the jeweler replies as Cady starts logging in her credentials to the register.
"Nice to meet you," she says without looking at him, before facing the line of customers. "I'm very sorry for the wait, and I thank you all for your patience!" she says loudly, so all of them can hear. "I'm going to try to get through all of you as quickly as I can, so I ask you to please have everything ready to go by the time you get up here!" She waves forward the first person, who walks up to the register.
To her surprise, the customer doesn't place down the jewelry. He points to a necklace in the display case next to them. "That one."
"Uh…" Cady says, looking at Kevin. "How do I…?"
"Did Jason not give you a key?" Kevin asks.
Cady shakes her head. "No. He just told me it was the same as downstairs."
Kevin rolls his eyes. "God, this place is a mess." He unlocks the case, and grabs the necklace, handing it to Cady. "I'll call Sharon."
"Sharon?"
"Jewelry manager. She can get you a key. Actually, she's off today. Whatever. I'll figure out who to call and to get you a damn key."
"Thanks," Cady replies, and begins checking out the customer.
The jewelry counter is a lot less fast paced than the main registers on the first floor, but it's way scarier to Cady. She's handling jewelry worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, and in some cases, dealing with cash, too.
Despite the long line when she arrived, she manages to push through it, and gets everyone out in a fairly reasonable amount of time. The manager for one of the other departments on this floor, who's covering part of Sharon's duties today, ends up bringing her a key for the cabinets, and tells her to not let it off her wrist. Cady's never felt like she's been in danger at her job before, but holding the key to thousands of dollars worth of jewelry, with nothing but glass display cases between her and the public? She's a little on edge.
After the line dies out, there's a steady flow of a couple people at a time throughout the rest of the shift. Some have extended conversations with Kevin, while others know exactly what they want to buy right off the bat.
Cady's not exactly sure why there has to be a dedicated cashier here, or why Kevin can't be the one to ring up the customers, but she doesn't ask any questions. It's a lot less stressful than being downstairs, so she'll take it. Well, it's less stressful until someone wants to buy a piece of jewelry worth thousands of dollars. Then it's incredibly stressful until the transaction is complete and the item is with the customer, out of her hands.
When it's time for her fifteen-minute break, she heads down to the break room on the first floor, and sits in the same corner she always does. She gobbles down a Kalteen bar, her preferred meal replacement bar, which she's kept buying despite its steep price. She never has enough time to eat a real meal on her breaks at work, so the bars keep her going. She chugs some water, and leans her head back against the wall she's sitting next to.
"You good?" one of her coworkers asks her. His name tag isn't on, and he's one of the seasonal hires, so Cady has no idea what his name is.
"Yeah," she replies. "Long shift."
"Ah," he nods. "Good luck."
"Thanks."
Her alarm on her phone goes off. That went by in the blink of an eye.
She heads back up in the elevator, heading back to the jewelry register.
"Got a few customers waiting," Kevin tells her. "One went to another department and said he'd be back."
"Got it." She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. She opens her eyes again, and looks at the short line forming. "Next in line!"
When her shift is over, Cady clocks out, and begins her commute home. She hurries to the subway station and just barely makes it in time to hop on a packed car. She stands, smushed between dozens of other people, grabbing onto the pole and staring into space. She's got nearly an hour ride ahead of her, which while not the worst thing in the world, still sucks. She's already exhausted from working on her feet all day, and can't wait to get home.
When she gets off the car and out of the station, she begins the march up the big hill her apartment building rests on. It's a hike, but she's almost there.
The elevator in her building is old and tiny and slow, but she's too exhausted to take the stairs. She crams herself inside of it with two of her neighbors, people she's never spoken a word to in her life. She heads up to the fourth floor, where her crappy little studio apartment resides.
She unlocks the door, and pushes it open. It can't open all the way, because she's got some stuff behind the door, but she squeezes herself in.
Frankly, calling it a studio is generous. She basically rents a glorified walk-in-closet. It's still way too damn expensive, but it's all she can realistically afford right now, especially at her current job.
She's got a kitchenette with a small fridge, stove, and a sink that takes up the entirety of the counter space. There's a single overhead cabinet, but that's all she has room for. She's got a table just barely big enough for one, and a stool that slides right underneath it. Her twin-sized bed takes up the majority of the space in the apartment, shoved into the corner. She's got some bins under her bed, and a tiny little dresser with a pitifully small TV on it. Not that she even has cable, but at least she can hook up her dinosaur of a laptop up to it and watch whatever media she pirated this week. She's got maybe ten total square feet of floor space left after all of the furniture crammed into her tiny apartment, which she's certainly gotten used to by this point.
She strips out of her work uniform, and heads right into her tiny bathroom. It's barely got enough room for the shower, toilet, and sink crammed into it. She hops right into the shower, washing off all the sweat from the day and the commute home. As soon as she's dried off, she's bundling up in cozy clothes, knowing damn well she can't turn the heat up too much, or she'll get hit with a bill she can't afford next month.
It is the time of year where she makes more money. The holidays are the store's busiest season, but she still gets paid shitty wages. She just gets more shifts in November and December, as she slowly loses her mind listening to crappy Christmas music.
Still, even with her increased hours, she can't go squandering that money on frivolous things like excess heating bills. No, that would be detrimental to her Big Plan. She cannot, under any circumstances, mess up her Big Plan.
So, instead, she wears sweaters indoors, and fuzzy, comfy socks.
She makes herself a quick dinner: ramen noodles with a hard boiled egg. She splashes a little soy sauce on there, which makes it taste a bit better, even though she already knows it's salty as hell.
Cady plops down on her stool, scrolling on her phone as she shovels down her noodles. The eggs make it a little expensive, but given this is all she has the energy to make when she gets back from work, it's worth the slight up-charge. At least eggs aren't the same price they were when she started this job, and have become slightly more affordable.
When she's done, she does her limited dishes in the tiny sink, and puts everything away right away. She's about ready to crawl into bed and pass out as soon as possible when her phone buzzes in her sweatpants pocket with a text.
Janis
You home?
Cady
Yeah, why?
Janis
First snow of the year. Come watch it from the rooftop with us.
Cady
Isn't it cold as hell?
Janis
I mean it's literally snowing lol but it's really pretty!
Cady
Alright, alright, but only for a little bit.
Cady sighs. She'd love to go to bed right now, but she also loves when her only two friends in the building invite her up to the rooftop. She met Janis and Damian a little over six months after moving into this building, when she ran into them on the roof, after she'd gone up after a particularly terrible day to just get some fresh air.
She grabs her keys and a heavy coat, and slips on a pair of shoes. She heads out of her apartment and to the elevator again, this time heading up to the top floor. It's a short walk down a hall and then out a door onto the roof, the place she's hung out the most with Janis and Damian.
They're leaning against the outer ledge of the building, looking out over the city. Damian looks over his shoulder and laughs as Cady approaches.
"You look like a penguin!"
"It's cold!" Cady complains, pulling her coat tighter around herself. She walks up next to them, leaning against the ledge and looking out as snow softly falls over the city.
"How was work?" Janis asks, offering Cady a beer.
Cady takes it with a smile. "Thanks. And weird, honestly. The jewelry cashier quit on the job today so I had to go cover that register."
Damian's eyes nearly bug out of his head. "Wait, what? What happened?"
Cady shrugs, popping open the can and taking a swig. She hates the taste of beer, but whatever. She'll take a free drink when she's offered one. "Dunno. I didn't ask. It didn't seem all that bad, though, so I don't know what could have happened."
"Better or worse than your usual gig?" Janis asks.
Cady gives another shrug. "A little better, I guess? Like, it was less hectic, and there were less people to deal with overall, but people were spending big bucks on a lot of stuff. It was a little scary handling stuff that expensive, or that much money."
Janis hums. "Amen to that. My least favorite part about retail was always handling so much more money than I'd ever make in a week."
"Try more like multiple months in a row," Cady grumbles. "One person bought a seven thousand dollar bracelet. I didn't even know we carried stuff like that!"
"Yeah, because it's gotta be purchased at the jewelry counter so it doesn't get stolen," Damian points out.
Cady shrugs. "Probably. Doesn't matter much now. They'll have someone else on there tomorrow." She takes another swig of her beer, looking out at their view over the city. "You know, as much of a shithole as this place is, I always admire how beautiful the city looks from here."
Janis laughs. "You and me both."
"How was your guys' days?" Cady asks.
"Today was my day off, which was nice," Damian tells her. "Did some laundry, watched a movie, chilled out. Pretty decent."
"I went to go visit my mom and went food shopping," Janis says. "A nice day off for me too."
Cady raises her beer. "Cheers to that."
"When's your next day off?" Damian asks. "If it lines up, maybe we could do something together."
Cady bursts out laughing. "A day off? In December? Oh, you're funny. You're funny."
Damian flips invisible hair over his shoulder. "I try."
"Wait, Cads, you seriously don't have a day off this month?" Janis asks, lowering her drink.
"Not until Christmas Day," she replies. "And then I'm working every day till New Year's Day."
Janis grimaces. "Yikes."
"Yeah, agreed," Cady sighs, taking another sip of her beer. "It's all short shifts after this week, though. They still won't let me go full time. Never want to pay goddamn benefits."
"I'm telling you, you gotta come over to the barista life," Janis tells her. "It's a lot easier to get benefits at Starbucks. You don't even have to be full time."
Cady shrugs. "Maybe. I don't know. Being on Medicaid isn't that bad. All my shit's covered and I have no copays, so…"
Damian shakes his head. "Girl, you have got to have more ambition than that."
"I do," Cady insists. "I have my Big Plan, remember?"
Janis rolls her eyes. "Oh, we remember."
"It'll work out!"
"You always say that."
Cady sighs, shaking her head. "You'll see. It'll work out."
"Whatever you say," Janis grumbles, taking another sip of her beer.
They stand up there in silence for a little bit, drinking their beers and looking out over the city. The sun went down hours ago, while Cady was still at work, leaving them with a twinkling city slowly being blanketed by a layer of snow.
Cady looks up into the sky, at the very few stars she can see up there. It's hard to see, with all the light pollution and the clouds, but she can make a few out.
She used to watch the stars all the time as a kid. She'd grown up so far away from any city, the stars were crystal clear, every single night.
She misses the stars.
She sees one, the biggest one she can make out among all the pollution and clouds, and closes her eyes. It's not a shooting star, but she decides seeing that big a star in the city is rare enough to count for a wish, something she did whenever she saw one as a kid.
I wish things would work out for me, even just once. Just a little bit of luck. That's all I need.
She opens her eyes, and stares at the star for a few moments longer. For a second, she almost expects something to happen, but nothing does.
Oh well. She'll get lucky one of these days.
Cady feels her phone buzz in her pocket, and pulls it out.
Jason Weems
Hey, Cady. Ron asked me to reach out and see if you could come in thirty minutes early tomorrow. He wants to meet with you.
"Oh, fuck me," Cady groans. "I'm totally getting fired."
"What?" Janis asks.
"Why?" Damian demands at the same time.
"My manager just texted me. The big boss wants me to come in thirty minutes early tomorrow for a meeting." She looks at her friend. "The Location Manager."
Janis winces. "Yikes. I'll put in a good word for you with my boss."
"Are you sure it's for that?" Damian asks. "Maybe it could be a good thing!"
Cady gives him a look. "I've worked there for two years now, and not even once have I met one-on-one with the big boss. I've only ever seen him in passing or in big staff meetings. I cannot imagine it being for anything else. I probably fucked up big-time on the jewelry register today and am getting fired for it."
Damian raises an eyebrow. "Can you think of anything specific that went wrong?"
"No, but knowing my luck, someone walked out with a ten-grand necklace without me knowing," Cady sighs. She downs the rest of her beer. "I'm gonna head to bed. Thanks for the beer."
Janis raises her own. "Any time. Good luck tomorrow. Keep us in the loop."
"Don't panic yet," Damian tells her. "But we're here if you need us."
"Thanks, guys. Talk to you tomorrow."
Cady heads back inside, trudging back towards her apartment. She remembers to actually reply to Jason, letting him know she'll be there a half hour early tomorrow.
She tosses the beer can, changes into her pajamas, and climbs into bed. The subway rattles past on the tracks, shaking her whole apartment. She waits for it to stop, sighing and finally closing her eyes.
She's simply too tired to let herself think, and falls right asleep.
Cady really doesn't dream that often, so when she actually has one, it comes as a pleasant surprise.
Tonight she finds herself back in Kenya, near the tent she's called home for so many years. She looks up at the stars, watching them twinkle in the night sky. It's so beautiful, so clear and crisp out. She feels warm, despite the cool breeze, and at peace.
"Hey, munchkin," she hears from behind her, and she already knows it's her dad.
"Hi, Dad," she replies without turning back to look at him, eyes still glued on the stars.
"What're you looking for?"
"A shooting star."
"Any luck?"
"Not yet."
There's a few beats of silence. Cady looks over her shoulder, but he's not there anymore. "Dad?" she calls out, slightly alarmed. There's no way he made it back to the tent that quickly, and there's nothing but field around them. "Dad?"
Silence. Nothing.
Cady walks back over to the tent, but when she steps inside, it's not the tent she knows and loves. It's her shitty, crappy, shoebox of an apartment. Her shoulders deflate. That's right. She hasn't had any luck. Years of trucking away at her Big Plan, and nothing. No real progress.
She shakes her head. No, she can't think like that. She has to keep trying, keep moving forward. If she doesn't, if she abandons the Big Plan, then she really has nothing.
Cady backs out of the apartment. She wants to go back to Kenya, back to the open sky. She wants to be there, to get away, just for a little bit. But when she walks back out that door, she's not in Kenya anymore.
She's at the goddamn department store.
Christmas music begins to play, and Cady wants to scream. She's so, so tired of listening to Christmas music. She's just tired in general.
Well, she's here. She should clock in. She heads over to the break room, but the Christmas music is getting louder, and louder, and louder. She covers her ears as she opens the door, wanting to get in and out as quickly as possible.
But when she steps inside, it's not the break room.
She's in an apartment. Not her current apartment, but one that is all too familiar to her.
Her throat constricts when she realizes where she is. She's not supposed to be here. She swore she'd never come back here, ever again. It looks frozen, frozen in time. Exactly as it did when she stormed out of here, several years ago.
The door rattles behind her, as if someone's trying to get inside. She closes her eyes. She has to be dreaming. She has to. She can't be here. She'd never actually be here ever again. She has to wake up. She has to be dreaming.
Wake up!
Cady shoots upright in bed, panting heavily. She's drenched in sweat, and her several layers of clothes are sticking to her. Her heart is pounding so loud, she can hear it in her ears.
She takes a few more deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. Once she's a bit more calm, she grabs her phone and checks the time.
Only twenty minutes till her alarm is supposed to go off.
She groans. She can't even get any more sleep. And after all of that? She feels like she hardly slept at all.
And if she really is going to get fired today? She needs all the damn sleep she can get.
When Cady gets to work that morning, a half hour early, the first thing she does is clock in. If she's getting fired, she might as well get paid for it.
She heads from the break room down the hall in the Employees Only area, towards Ron's office. There's a little plaque outside the door that reads Ronald Duvall - Location Manager. From what Cady knows, most of the locations of the department store chain she works for don't actually have a "Location Manager" as their top boss beneath the owner or corporate. They have "Area Managers". But because this location is the single largest store in the company, it has its own special role so Ron can focus all his attention on this one store, not multiple in the city.
She knocks on the door, to which she hears a "Come in!" from inside. She turns the handle and steps in.
To her surprise, Jason isn't there, nor is HR. Instead, it's Ron and a woman Cady vaguely recognizes as one of the managers of one of the other departments. She's not sure exactly which one, as she doesn't typically pay attention to anything other than the Cashier Manager.
"Come, sit!" Ron says, gesturing to an open chair next to the woman. Cady sits down awkwardly, dusting off her work pants slightly. "Cady, I'm not sure if you've formally met Sharon before."
"Uh, I don't think so," Cady admits, but the name does sound familiar.
The woman extends a hand. "Sharon Norbury. Jewelry Department Manager."
"Oh," Cady replies, taking the hand and shaking it. That's right. Kevin mentioned her yesterday. "Cady Heron. Cashier. Nice to meet you."
Sharon smiles. "Oh, I know who you are. You're the person who saved my ass yesterday."
Cady blinks. "Oh, uh, it was no big deal."
"No, seriously," Sharon insists. "My one day off, and my main cashier quits, and the backup couldn't come in."
"There's a backup?" Cady asks.
Ron nods. "All of the departments with specific cashiers have two or three full timers. Unfortunately, the Jewelry Department hasn't been able to hire a second full time cashier, so we've been supplementing with part-time seasonal staff."
"Ah, I see." Cady shifts in her chair. She's still not entirely sure why she's here, unless she's getting fired. Despite the lack of HR in the room, she's not entirely convinced she's not getting fired.
"Last night, I was reviewing the numbers from your shift with us," Sharon begins, and Cady's stomach sinks. This is it. This is where she reveals some massive fuckup Cady made, and she's out of a job. She knows it in her heart. "I've gotta say, I was very impressed."
Cady blinks. "Wait, what?"
Sharon smiles. "You processed more customers more efficiently in one shift than the cashier who quit did in the entire time he worked here."
"Uh… I mean, I was just doing my job," she replies with a shrug.
"Which you do very well," Ron chimes in. "Two years here, still part-time, yet, you have fewer errors and a higher efficiency than any other cashier in the store. Why haven't you gone full-time?"
Cady stares at him, gobsmacked. "I've tried. I've been told time and time again there's no available full-time spots in my department."
Ron frowns. "That's… Hm. Who told you that?"
"Every single direct manager I've ever had here. I've tried. Trust me."
Ron makes a note on a piece of paper. "Hm. Good to know. Well, I'm sorry that it hasn't worked out thus far. But I think Sharon has some news you'd like to hear."
"An offer," Sharon corrects, and Cady's heart skips a beat. "A full-time position as a cashier in the Jewelry Department. Forty hours a week, stable schedule—."
"And benefits?" Cady asks, cutting her off.
Sharon laughs and nods. "Yes, and benefits."
Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit.
"Yes," Cady says immediately, on the edge of her seat. "Yes, absolutely. A thousand percent yes."
Sharon laughs again, smiling and patting Cady on the shoulder. "Glad to have you on board, Cady."
"We'll just have to have you sign some paperwork and meet with HR before you leave today," Ron says. "You'll have to do your scheduled shift down front today, but starting tomorrow, you'll be up at the Jewelry Department full-time."
Cady grins, feeling like the luckiest person in the world. "Fantastic! I can't wait."