Carla never liked me.  She resented that she had to work, and the fact that she answered to a seventeen year old girl as her manager at a mall retail job exacerbated her bitterness.   She compared me to her own kids, while making tiny jabs that picked apart the relics of my teen angst, the black nail polish, the buzz cut, the quasi-goth clothing.  "I would never let my Gabby go out of the house in that."    Nightly, at closing time I would remind Carla to straighten her area.  "You don't have to remind me," she'd snap  But … Continue reading →