Daniella was supposed to get to the store right at eight, even seven, on a morning that she opened so that she could set up the bookstore right. But nobody ever came into the store directly at opening at nine—which, now that Daniella thought about it, really wasn’t a good sign, as far as business went. And, anyway, Daniella was usually the one closing at night, so she often got everything organized then—that way it would take her the least amount of time to open the next morning. She was lucky that she never really had to take opening shift while there was school, but, then again, that also meant most of her day was taken up by school.

Summers were different, though. They always had been. So much more time to fill. So much more creativity required to get out of the house and stay out.

Daniella’s jet-black aviator sunglasses slipped down her nose, and she squinted for a moment due to the pain of the sun against her eyes. The air was that heavy kind of humidity that permeated the entire area as soon as April rolled into May. They were into June now, so when she inhaled, Daniella got a taste of her own car’s vintage exhaust and the kind of fumes that only came out of buses or trucks. Industrial-grade smog. A real Chicagoland smell. Daniella pushed her sunglasses back up, unused to having a hangover, much less a workday one. She swatted at a mosquito she felt prickling at her leg.

Normally, Daniella led a carefully segmented life. Weekdays were filled with school. Evenings filled with work. Saturdays were workdays, too. But Saturday evenings were for going out. Sundays were for recovery, while her mom went to church and Daniella claimed she had too much schoolwork to catch up on.

But Daniella typically did her homework in class. Sundays were mostly for Daniella to devote to her own church of sorts—her poetry. Daniella wrote while her mind was still fuzzy and impressionable from the night before. When she didn’t have the energy to censor herself or overthink her words. When she could just write and believe in her words enough to not stop every other word, wondering if she’d gotten it right, wondering if she had done enough. She’d post it throughout the week. Photos of what she’d written on paper. Sometimes she’d doodle. But mostly it was her words scrawled across a page.