Spoiler Warning: This series takes place at the beginning of the fourth season, in sort of an alternate universe. Xander didn't go on his road trip, but he did move out of his parents' basement and get a job... albeit a crappy one. As the series progresses there may be some more fourth-season references, but since Xander's been on the fringe of almost everything they probably won't be too spoilery.

Heebie Jeebies 1: Trouble Child
by Livia
04/09/00

So why does it come as such a shock
To know you really have no one
Only a river of changing faces
Looking for an ocean
-- Joni Mitchell, "Trouble Child"

A month or two after graduation, I stopped back at Mom's to pick up some stuff I'd left behind. She'd left me a note by the phone: 'X: Anna called.'

Anna? I thought. I don't know any...

Oh. Anya.

I badgered Mom, but apparently Anya hadn't left any more of a message than that, hadn't said where she was, if she was coming back to Sunnydale, or even 'so long and thanks for all the fish.'

It kind of makes me wish I had a phone at my new place. Forget Anya-- it's been a while since I've talked to the hard-core Scoobs. Angel seems to be gone for good, Cordy took off for Hollywood right after graduation, and these days Buffy and Willow are busier than a Prozac factory in December. Now that they've settled into dorm life, I hardly see them, and without any big time slayage, I don't think I've seen the G-man in weeks.

I see Oz pretty regularly, though. Once a month. After the library kerploded, we had to find him a different kennel. Now he just locks himself in his basement, and I sit up with the tranq gun. Not real conducive to conversation, unless you're into heartfelt growling and ominous scratches. A couple of times I'd found myself thinking that Anya's scorned women stories weren't really that bad. In comparison.

Still. I had no number, so no way to get in touch with her. So I went back to my apartment and laid on my bed, waiting for night to fall so I could go to work.

I guess it's kind of sad when you can't even get a ring from a demon down on her luck.

I was hungry, so I rummaged around in the kitchen, but I'd finished off the last of the Pringles they were giving away at work. Well, not really giving away. More like not.

I'm on the night shift at the Stop-N-Shop, a gas station minimart on the outskirts of town, and one of the perks, I'm learning, is free stuff. Cases of pop and candy bars past their expiration date? Toss 'em in the dumpster, that's the rule. I alter the deal a little. Instead of the dumpster, the slightly aged products end up in the back of Uncle Rory's Bel Air. Technically it is stealing, but also technically, the alternative is starving. Plus I'm saving our landfills. Or something.

Really, I'm doing okay. Really. As long as I keep working at the Stop-N-Shop, I'm set up with Pepsi products and pocket-sized snack foods and just enough money for rent. I pay for everything else out of my laughably pathetic savings. I walk to work when the weather's good 'cause gas is expensive and I'd rather spend those last dollars and pennies renting movies and watching them on my mom's crappy old VCR when there's nothing else to do. Which there isn't, ever.

Shit, I'm hungry. I should've snagged some food at home, but didn't think of it. Mom would probably make me pay, anyway. Sigh. The worst part is, there are a couple of packages of ramen noodles downstairs in the kitchen taunting me. "Cook us, Xander, we're yummy and good. What? Stove's broken? Well, I guess we live another day!"

Soylent Green is mean people.

God, I am sad. I can't get a call from a demon, so I'm talking to the food products.

I'm sure Anya's doing okay. I'm pretty sure anyway. She probably drove all the way to New York... I bet she got a job as a dominatrix. I can see her now. Hair pulled back, wearing one of those jaunty biker caps with silver studs above the visor, paddling some pudgy stockbroker. Mistress Anya, the petite demon of pleasure and pain...

Yeah. That little mental movie entertains me for a while. Till I remember I'm hungry. I could order a pizza, except I don't have a phone. Also no money. Which reminds me, it's almost time to go to work. Stock those shelves, pump that gas. Pocket a couple of sticks of beef jerky. Be all that I can be.

I have to get off this bed soon. Fifteen more minutes... okay, ten. And I will get up. In five more minutes... I have to get up and go to work, because believe me, there *is* a part of me that does realize just how super-pathetic it is to lie here in a dark room 'cause electricity costs money and list all the things I don't have.

Because I do realize. It just doesn't stop me. (A million dollars. My own rock band. A nice warm girl. A life. A future.) There's also a part of me that enjoys it. And that's a little bad, and it finally, finally makes me roll off the bed, put my shoes on and head out. Because once you start enjoying the pain, it hurts even more when you stop. Yeah, I got a big old package of that called Buffy Anne Summers.

I used to obsess over her and it used to make me sad, and angry, to think I'd never have her. And now I don't think about her that much any more, and that's what makes me sad. I loved her, and now I still do, sort of. But not the same way. The sun is setting over Sunnydale... I walk a little faster. Gotta get to work before the nasties come out to feed.

What I felt for Buffy was such a huge part of me, and now it's dead, and she actually... well, she actually kind of irritates me. Every time we talk, she's so cheerful. Now, I know I should be glad the Buffster's happy, compared to how down she was about her tangle with whats-her-name, Miss Big Vamp On Campus.

But I don't mean just cheerful, I mean ultra cheerful, new and improved cheerful, Captain Cheerful of the S.S. Angel's Gone (But My Heart Will Go On.) It wears on me. So does standing in back of the counter at the Stop-N-Shop, and listening to a bunch of people bitch about how expensive gasoline is, and how they really can't afford to drive anywhere any more, and then ringing up their ticket, plus a wrestling magazine, a TV Guide, a two-dollar bottle of orange juice and four packs of little mini-donuts.

So, seriously. Is this what growing up is all about? Letting go of stupid hopes, dumb dreams, till all you've got left is the scrabble for extra hours at your crappy job? I tried not to be defined by high school. I mean, I thought I was my own person. But sometimes it seems like I gathered the explosives and hooked up the detonator to everything that made me Xander Harris and then blew it straight to hell.

Or maybe it's me that's in hell. Except I don't see Principal Snyder anywhere around here, and I'm pretty sure he'd have a management position by now...

Nothing much happened for the rest of the night. My shift was almost over, and the sun was gleaming in through the reinforced-plastic windows on the east side of the store, when Larry pushed open the door.

[end]