My name is Amir Beckett. I’m thirty-one years old, and right now I’m sitting in an eight-square-meter motel room in Phoenix, Arizona, surrounded by the sharp smell of burnt electronics and the strained whine of a computer fan that sounds like it’s on its last breath. I’ve lost count of how many nights in a row I haven’t slept.
On the desk in front of me is a customer’s ancient Dell laptop frozen on a blinding blue-screen boot loop, while my own eyes burn like someone rubbed chili powder into them.
My hands shake as I grip the screwdriver, but my mind keeps drifting away.
If I let my eyes close for even a second, I know I’ll collapse right here, between tangled motherboards and cables.
I keep telling myself I’m not allowed to break.
If I break, even for a moment, how will I pay the interest tomorrow?
How will I buy Dad’s medicine?
How will I keep the lights on one more month? For years now my schedule has been a deadly loop.
At six in the morning, I’m already at the Scottsdale Hills mansion of Mr.
Ellis Davenport, the eighty-year-old billionaire I work for as a caregiver.
I change his diapers, bathe him, cook soup, push his wheelchair, listen to his stories from the old days. I do everything gently, patiently, with a smile, even when my body is screaming to collapse.
At two in the afternoon, I get back to the motel, take a cold shower, scarf down a stale piece of bread, then head to the office building where I work as a janitor from five p.m.
to nine p.m.—mopping floors, vacuuming carpets, emptying trash, the bleach fumes burning straight into my brain.
From nine to eleven at night, I drive for a food delivery app.
My old car rattles through the suffocating Phoenix heat, even after dark, sweat soaking my back because the A/C died a long time ago.
After that, I drag myself back to the motel and fix customers’ computers until the sky starts to lighten. Most days I get about two hours of sleep.
My body lives in constant dull pain.
My head spins like I’ve got heatstroke twenty-four seven. But I don’t dare stop.
I don’t dare complain.
Every dollar I earn flies straight into debts, utilities, and medicine for Easton and Ivy Beckett—my parents.
My father, Easton Beckett, fifty-eight, is a hot-tempered, foul-mouthed man who spends his days glued to the TV, yelling at every game and news segment.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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