Chapter Two

~McKenna~

I bit into my sandwich, lukewarm, cheap deli meat being far from tasty, but it was all that I could afford. At least the over-processed, bright orange cheese masked some of the terribleness, allowing me to choke it down with my tea.

“You okay there?” Alicia asked, nibbling at her tofu wrap. “You look like you’re stressed.”

“No, I’m fine,” I insisted, ducking my head down. The last thing I needed to do was draw attention to myself, even if it was just Davie, Alicia and I present.

“Are you sure you don’t have a fever, chica? Tis the season for flu and all of that, with it getting warmer and all.”

I smiled briefly at the head of our team and the eldest member of the janitorial crew. “True, but it’s not like I ever hang out with anybody since the building is always empty. Not to mention that half of my job is sterilizing anything in sight.”

“Ay. But too much of that is bad, you know. Kills your immune system and all that. You need germs to train your body, or something like that.”

Perhaps it was rude of me to be surprised to hear a fifty-something year old janitor with a thick accent talk about pathogen-based resistance, but I couldn’t help it. “That’s very true. But considering the kind of people who work here, I don’t think I want to submit my immune system to half of the vile stuff that comes out of their bodies.”

Alicia and Davie both laughed at that. While I was sure that plenty of nice people worked in the office building that we cleaned, most of us assumed that they were stereotypical, office jerks. It probably didn’t help that we cleaned up all of their messes. I couldn’t count how many times I found small baggies in the trash with a white, powdery substance left over in the corners, or pill casings that were definitely not prescription. Or even abandoned flasks in the corner of desks that had been forgotten for so long that they’d developed mold.

“So, Max, I’ve been meaning to ask you, when’s your birthday?”

I stopped chewing at that, and just stared at Alicia for a few moments while I figured out how to answer. “Why?” Was what I managed finally. If I was going to use a fake name at work, I was going to need to start recognizing it without an awkward delay.

“I’m the one who handles the birthday card list and I realized I don’t have anything down for you.”

My mind spun, and I quickly thought of something that might work. “Aw, I’m sorry. Don’t celebrate my birthday.”

“Aw, why’s that?” Davie asked, brushing crumbs out of his mustache.

“Religious reasons. You know how it is.”

“What kind of religion doesn’t let you celebrate your birthday?” Alicia asked, tugging at one of her brains -a nervous tick I had noticed she did when she was suspicious.

“Um…” Crap, crap, crap. What sect was it that didn’t believe in gifts? “LDS.”

“Ahh.” Alicia nodded her head. “Well that’s okay then. I’ll just put an NA down and leave it at that.”

I withheld a sigh of relief, but it was certainly difficult. I couldn’t believe I had gotten away with that. One thing was for certain, if I was going to be Max and not McKenna, I needed to have a more solid backstory.

“Dios Mio, break is already over. I feel like we just got here.” Thank goodness, the conversation had moved off of me and I could rest for a moment again. “So, who wants to do what for the second half of our shifts?”

“I’ll do the CEO floors!” I said, almost too quickly, leaving Davie blinking at me in surprise.

“Are you sure? I know you’re new, but that’s the hardest floor on our list. You’ve cleaned it every night for the past week. And you’ve only been working here two weeks.”

I shrugged. I had been made aware from day one that the floor that all of the janitorial dreaded was the uppermost in the building. Between its marble-like floors that required a specific type of cleaner to not leave streaks, to the specifics in each office, they had the longest to-do list. But I didn’t mind, for reasons that were purely my own.

“Alright then. Alicia, how about you take the floor below and I’ll take the bottom ones?”

Alicia shrugged as well. As long as she got home in time to feed her approximately billion and one animals, she was more than happy. Not that she actually had that many animals. But since she ran an informal sort of rescue, she had an ever-changing roster of children that I couldn’t quite keep up with.

“Very good. Goodnight, my friends, I will see you at wrap up.” Davie stood, his short legs bringing him to just about my height when I was sitting. He gave an adorable bow and shuffled off to find his old cart.

I liked Davie. He rarely asked questions that I had to dodge answering and generally just rolled with the flow. As long as I continued to work as best I could, he liked me plenty and that was all I really needed.

We all broke our separate ways, and I grabbed my cleaning cart. After two weeks on the team, I had managed to build up enough callouses on my hands that the mop handle no longer hurt me, and I could hold onto the floor-polisher without feeling like I was going to die. Who would have thought, with how vain I was about moisturize my skin, that I would ever allow such a phenomenon?

I certainly never would of, but that was often how my life went. Too many surprises going every which way to ever feel comfortable. But that didn’t matter, because the elevator doors were opening, and I was stepping into my one way to wind down.

I had never expected to find a way to relieve the intense anxiety within me at work, but that’s exactly how it had worked out. Pushing my cart to the middle of the room, I pulled my MP3 player from my pocket and placed my headphones on my crop of fiery-red hair. Turning my music all the way up, I got ready to jam.

As the base started, I swung my hips around, careful not to knock over anything as I grooved. If there was one thing I learned from having wide hips and thick thighs, it was that I could do a whole lot of damage if my movement went unchecked.

Grabbing the polish/cleaner from my cart, I danced all around the office, sprinkling the powder across the floor in the specific pattern I had perfected in my week of tackling the top floor. It was amazing how fun it made the job, and it also was a good work out too. Especially considering that I couldn’t afford my own gym membership.

It took two songs before I finished powdering everything, and then it was on to the mop, so it could all be wetted down and spread across the floor.

Heart pounding, breath rasping, body writhing, I poured all of the twisted emotions in me out of my limbs. I was grateful that I had remembered to wear two sports bras instead of one, as all the bouncing made my ample chest ache more often than not.

It was in these moments, where I danced wildly across the floor while cleaning, flaunting my curves without fear of repercussions, that I was finally free. For a moment, I was out of the cage that had been created when I was too young to recognize the bars being set in place, and everything was alright with the world.

If only it could stay this way forever.