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[attr="id","sybariscol"]NINA COVEY

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[attr="id","sybariscol"]JUPE.

everyone has a guy. [break][break]

you know, a guy: someone to run things, someone to get things, someone to look the other way. people call 'em all kinds of things. [break][break]

stooges, henchmen: they call you jupiter. jupe, for short.[break][break]

it's kind of a stupid name. you decided to keep it because of something about how its rings were wide-reaching. turns out you were fucking wrong though, because that's actually saturn and you're a moron. but, what's done was done and it stuck. you always thought there was something impressive about the stars. always dreamed it'd be your domain, maybe when the time came. but, honestly, it was a miracle that you got a familiar in the first place. [break][break]

it's not the kind of thing that people expect from someone like you: two shit-out-of-luck basically human parents with a great-grandmother on your father's side with enough magic that you got more than a little for yourself too. [break][break]

but, that's fine—you're plenty used to people not expecting things. [break][break]

it's hard to put a lot of faith in someone that runs a small time racket like yours and there's some part of you that resents that. how many people can say that they can run an above-board business in this part of town still, huh?[break][break]

a lot of people, actually, which is why you aren't that special.[break][break]

it's fun to act like you are, though, which is why you've been in trouble before. it's why you're lying low now, dodging old creditors that won't give you a break even though you've been making your payments to them just fine. you've always had a bad habit of mouthing off. had an even worse habit of sticking your nose where it didn't belong. sometimes, that means you get away with a scrape or two at worse. ( who hasn't been stabbed before, right? ) other times, it means you wake up with a flashlight in your eyes and the emergency room nurses asking you if you remember your name. and of course you do, it's

[attr="id","sybariscol"]JUPITER.

it's the first name you think of when they hand you the form. [break][break]

it looks—right, you think. it's white, clean, uses helvetica and everything. it's a real contract. you just don't know how real, even as you're reading through its contents. it says all the right things. asks you to print your first and last name clearly and sign on the dotted line, but there's something about this that feels wrong. but, it's the first job that's called you back since you started applying. so, you should sign too, right? when you look up, you realize that you're the only one that hasn't. you give the contract another look, remind yourself of what the job itself entails: by signing this, you are acknowledging— [break][break]

all you have to do is sell these to people. [break][break]

no, it doesn't matter that they won't actually do anything. [break][break]

no, it doesn't matter that they're overpriced. [break][break]

is this wrong? [break][break]

you're a distributor. it'll change your life. aren't you tired of eating instant food? aren't you tired of wearing patchy clothes? aren't you tired of being broke? aren't you tired? aren't you tired aren't you tired aren't you tired aren't you— [break][break]

pen scratches, ink gliding across the page as you sign your name: jupiter. [break][break]

it's better than

[attr="id","sybariscol"]NINA.

what is in a name? [break][break]

you're nina. just nina, but it suits you more than any of the florid names that your parents gave your sisters: adele victoire and elodie marie. like, please, get over yourselves. ma always says you're "upper-lower class," and you don't know what the fuck that's supposed to mean except that your family can't afford to fix the heater. and that's why adele gets sicker than sick every winter and then gets you sick and that gets everyone sick because you're the one who has to cook while your parents are at work because you had the great misfortune of being the oldest. you'd be lying if you said it wasn't hard making ends meet. [break][break]

but, it wasn't impossible. [break][break]

it just becomes impossible when you find out your dad doesn't have a penny to his name and your mom ran away with the moths. you can't blame her. [break][break]

you just wish she took you with her.