Paige Walcott’s Priority List:

1. Finish PhD

2. Become highly respected professor

3. Save humanity from unwise farming practices that leach nitrogen from the soil and thus DOOM us forever and all time to food shortages and DISASTER

4. Get good recommendation letters

5. Do amazing fieldwork they write about in science journals

6. Don’t somehow unknowingly bring a gun through TSA even though you don’t even own a gun and have never held one, you think about this often.

7. Run a marathon.

8. Make mom do that thing where she does a slight smile-nod of approval

9. Forget about Rob. Feel better. Don’t feel so much. Don’t be so easily brought low. Don’t have those parts of yourself that feel like open nerves waiting to sting.

10. Get to 1,000 followers on twitter

Found nowhere: become someone’s weird artistic inspiration. Whatever that meant.

Paige was staring at the flyer. It was poorly photocopied and handwritten. Like a child with too much time on her hands and loved the color pink. The word "WANTED" was in all caps. Paige kept staring.

There was a steady pattering of rain on the roof and against her bedroom window. She had been trying to avoid staring at her phone to check the time, but she knew it was at least 4 in the morning.

She had spent most of the night grading her students midterms. She should honestly be ordained as a saint because the second she told them she decided to grade this one on a steeper curve a whole slew of grandparents stopped dying. Paige Walcott, Saint of the Elderly and Protector of Grandma’s Everywhere.

She hadn’t meant to grade late into the night, but every time she lay down this happened: she thought about the future. She thought about the greenhouse gases in the air and agricultural runoff in the water and plastic in the oceans and the acidity of rain.

And when she wasn’t thinking about the whole entire world and assigning herself it’s personal savior, she was thinking about everyone she knew and what they thought of her. It was a lot to keep track of in her general checklists.

Make sure everyone loves you and never thinks separate thoughts about you that you haven’t planted in their heads already: uncheck.

And then, inevitably, when she was going over people’s opinions, she’d think about the old sore in her chest. She’d hear his voice.

Don’t worry about it Paige. You got this.

Paige-inator! You better be coming hiking with us later.

What’s with the gloom and doom? You’re gonna start blowing smoke out of your ears with all those gears turning.

It’s not like they were even best friends. They were just that, friends. They got lunch, they texted, they went out together sometimes. Paige didn’t understand it, his girlfriend Kiera was off going on a tour of Belize.

And here Paige was. Still dwelling.

She sighed, turned over in bed and looked at the flyer on her bedside table again. Handwritten. Ugly. Weird.

Some sort of righteous fury came over Paige when she looked at it. And who did this girl think she was? What did she mean “you seem like the right fit”? Who said that to strangers? It was nonsense!

It was such nonsense that Paige considered showing up, just to give her a piece of her mind. She had a lot of questions like: what? And how?

And most importantly, “Why?!” Of all people, why did she choose Paige?

That question stuck with her the longest like a hangnail through her thoughts. Why me? What did you see in me?

---------------------

Paige was working with four hours of sleep that morning and sucking on a black coffee that tasted like plant fertilizer. She should never make her own coffee. However, the sun was finally out with a few stray rays gleaming overhead and barely any chilly breezes.

She was walking to her regular spot she liked to grade at, and then she was walking past her favorite spot. She was going toward a nearby apartment building. It was a big brown one with soggy outdoor steps and a steep dark roof. She told herself she simply meant to pass by it.

But then she was checking her phone and walking inside the apartment building.

Her eyes ached from lack of her sleep and her teeth were one edge. The world was slow-moving syrup as she made her way up the spongy stairs and to the room number the girl wrote on the back of the flyer.

Paige walked in her syrup-world all the way over to the apartment number. And then stood in front of it numbly.

What am I doing here? She considered soberly and studied the plain, brown-red wood. She didn’t need to talk to this girl. She needed to work on finding another job and getting ready for her amazing fieldwork opportunity.

She needed to---

The door opened wide and a short girl with her choppy hair looked back at her. “You.” The word sounded like an accusation.

Paige stood up straight, “I didn’t even knock.” She blurted out because it was true. The girl didn't seem to acknowledge that and her face slowly split into a sunrise smile.

“Come on in,” she stood aside and waved her inside. “Thanks for coming.”

The “thanks for coming” must have triggered some sort of sleeper program in Paige that reacted to displays of politeness. She walked into the small room that smelled of crushed herbs and Windex.

She looked around the very spotless kitchen and strangely spacious living room. There were a half-dozen throw pillows alone on the couch. They were all beige and bright blue and one had a stitched llama on it. Paige cocked her head to the side and remembered why she was there.

She opened her mouth to tell her she actually needed to leave.

“Sit, sit,” The girl was still waving her over to the couch itself. “We have so many things to go over! I’m glad you decided to come.”

Paige wanted to shake her head. She wanted to say any one of the “correct” things such as: what do you think you’re doing? Where do you get the nerve? This could be called stalking.

And “what the fuck?”

But Paige, instead, simply stood in the middle of the room for all the throw pillows to see and whispered. “Why?” The words felt like they were falling out on their own accord. “Why did you hand this to me?” Why me?

The girl smiled and it was lopsided and overconfident. “I can tell.” She said and raised her chin high. “I had a good feeling about it. You’re something special.”

Paige’s eyes went wide and she shouldn’t have wanted to hear those words. She should have maybe slapped her or stomped out the door. She dumbly took a seat instead.

“This is all kind of strange you know.” She said because the word “special” had loosened her jaw like a gold star to a kid already prone to sucking up to teachers.

She shrugged, “I know.” She looked her up and down, “now, name and age.”

Paige took a deep breath and wrestled deep inside herself between the part that was reasonable and the other part that was reasonable but weak. The girl with her big brown eyes were focused on her with the intensity of laser pointers and cats watching song birds. Her fingers were poised about the computer keys.

The girl was staring again, as she had been before, and none of this was on Paige’s priority list.