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I stayed working late, as usual, trying to get the week’s screw-ups sorted out for payroll.

The pile of confetti at my desk got deeper, hour by hour—I didn’t think I’d had so much fall into my mane… But it was a lot of hair, and I was always finding random stuff in it. This just would happen on the day I leave my brush at home.

It was already dark outside. I squinted at my monitor—it took a couple of seconds before my eyes focused on the numbers. “Um… definitely time to go home and sleep,” I said. I clocked out, logged out, and swept the pile of confetti from my desk into the trash bin, which gave me an all-too-clear experience of how stiff from typing my fingers were. Dang, I thought. I’m really going to have to quit doing these late nights. I gave my head one last shake over the wastebasket—at least a dozen scraps of orange and yellow paper fell out of my mane. Dammit, Stevens, I thought, as I stepped out the front door.

It was frickin’ cold outside.