I’ve been at Crushin’ It for six months. It’s the only rage room in town, where people pay eighty bucks to smash a few empty bottles and an old Xerox machine. I work the register, hand out weapons, and squirt sanitizer into customers’ palms.

The first pie tin I bought was my least favorite. Stainless steel and so shiny that it sometimes hurt to look at. I wanted a tin that was less reflective, more like the ones Bea had.

The workers ate their lunches as the Catholic high school let out across the street. They whistled at the girls in pleated skirts and polos who walked by. The girls grouped tighter together, their plaid disguising them like zebra stripes.

There the worm lay, nestled neatly in a crack in the sidewalk. A crack only just as big as the worm, unnatural in both shape and depth, as though its sole purpose was to hold the useless creature as it said goodnight to the too-hot world.