Permanent Record

Permanent Record Chapter 1
I don't care what any of the assholes I live with tell you. I don't work at a bodega. It's a health food store. Says right there on the sign: M&A JUICE BAR DELI ORGANIC GROCERY CORP.

Whatever. It's implied.

In any case, it's well lit, huge by New York standards, with a battalion of Vitamix blenders right up front-4K worth at least. Plus, we sell every type of rich-people fetish food. Are you in the market for organic, non-sulfur-treated goji berries at eighteen bucks a bag? We got you. Gluten-free, sugar-free, dye-free cake for your non-immunized kid's next birthday? Yep. We even have cake mix with gluten that's just as expensive because it's ironic. See, we're fancy, not at all a bodega, never mind that we're open twenty-four hours a day, are owned by no-nonsense Koreans, and have a deli cat named Gusto. I'm telling you: Not. A. Bodega.

Still, I just wish the damn health food store were a little closer to my apartment. Especially when the windchill mauls your face-meat to ribbons.

I slide my MetroCard smoothly-quickly-bracing for the clang, that hip check of an expired pass, but the turnstile clicks me through.

The reader flashes EXP 2/13.

Great, so my card's dying right at the stroke of midnight on the day I was born-Valentine's Day. Good thing I'm not extremely superstitious and prone to crippling anxiety. (I am.)

A can of Red Bull skitters on the tracks as a rat scurries past it. The fingers on my right hand are numb enough that watching them load up the shitty video on my phone is an out-of-body experience, as if I'm watching over someone else's shoulder.

How I got into Columbia with a free ride!

I should shove my dead hand into my pocket, but I can't. I have to know how she did it.

Because here's how I'm sick (everyone's sick in their own special way; the variety on the flavors of crazy is pretty endless, but me?): I'm convinced that the next video in the autoplay is the answer. That

Mary H.K. Choi is the New York Times bestselling author of Emergency Contact, Permanent Record, and Yolk. She is the host of, Hey, Cool Job!, a podcast about jobs and Hey, Cool Life!, a micro-pod about mental health and creativity. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times,and GQ. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Follow her on Twitter @ChoitotheWorld.