Part 1
At 4:31 a.m., you stand in the middle of aisle fourteen with your backpack at your feet and your dignity in pieces, waiting for a rich man to decide whether you still deserve a paycheck.
Alejandro Ibarra does not look away.
Most men do when they realize poverty has a face standing directly in front of them. They turn clinical. Polite. Efficient. They make their discomfort sound like policy. But he keeps looking at you, not in the invasive way some men do, not like he is measuring your body or your weakness, but like he is trying to solve an equation that should not exist inside his own building.
You hate that.
You hate the silence, the fluorescent lights, the fact that your blanket is a discarded company uniform, the fact that your whole life fits inside a faded black backpack. Mostly you hate that he now knows something about you that you have worked for years to keep from people with power: desperation makes even the strongest person look cornered.
“Give me one day,” he says again.
