Rue groaned as she rolled over, her arm flopping against the edge of her tiny bed in her equally tiny apartment on 4th Street.Another day at Toe Ticklin' Good Chicken — TTC, as the locals lovingly called it, like some cursed acronym for a support group.
Not that she hated it. The job paid the rent, and the chicken was… well, toe-ticklin' good, unfortunately.
She blinked at the clock.An hour before she had to go to work.
So, she gets on her uniform — or rather, starts to get it on.
Looking back up at the time, she notices it's actually thirty minutes before she has to be there. Present. Working.
"Oh my god oh my god! I am SO screwed!"
She yells at herself as she struggles to get the damned pants over her hips, and not looking like a bundle of crumpled brown napkins pretending to be pants.
She throws her hair into an extremely messy bun, then begins running out the door—
—but skids to a stop.
She does a full 180 like a Lego piece, goes back inside to grab her purse, and then turns back around.
There's a little note on her door.
You are Rue. You work at TTC. You like chicken, obviously.Right next to it, another one — a twin note with the full alphabet on the door.
"Pfft, I don't need these."
She grabs and crumples them, calmly walks out, locks the door.Then remembers the time.
"Shit, shit!"
Rue thinks to herself as she sprints down the street, her auburn hair abandoning the horrible attempt at a bun and flying into her face.
No makeup, either. Who needs it anyway?
Her uniform?Oh god — it looks like it's given up on life.Horribly creased, open at the collar. She couldn't look any less professional.
She's clumsily bouncing the red and gold purse from one hip to the other, trying to push through the sea of people crowding the sidewalk.
"Out of my way, people!"
She grits her teeth, checking her watch every few seconds — as if that might magically slow time down.
Eventually, she arrives.
Huffing. Puffing. Legs screaming in agony.They threaten to buckle under her as she stumbles into her workplace.
The kitchen — usually sizzling with morning chaos — goes dead still.
"Ahem."
Josh, the head cook, arms thick like hams, stands with them crossed tight and tomato-faced.He stares at Rue like someone just walked in and said nukes had dropped — while wearing a goofy clown outfit.
"Who are you? And… why are you in this kitchen?"
Rue blinked.
Oh...Right.
People in this world don't remember yesterday — or anything from the past, really.
Rue conveniently just now remembered that,and forgot to write a sticky note for the other staff to remind them she was hired yesterday.
Which meant, to them, she didn't exist.
But someone, long ago, had figured out a workaround:
Write a note before midnight, and you could at least read the key notes of that previous day — like SparkNotes, but for your life.
Now everyone's life is glued together by sticky paper —walls, mirrors, even tattooed bodies — all littered with instructions on how to exist.
Even down to their own name and the alphabet.
Except for Rue.
Rue, for some reason, remembers everything.Literally, she is the only one on this planet that can remember anything past the minute they woke up that day.