I took a vacation day. I tested my withdrawal.

I wasn't sure I was going to go back to work, and it would be better to find out what I was in for if their stepdown wasn't gentle enough while I still had seven days in the drawer.

I was fixing an omelette for dinner when I noticed that nothing had happened.

I took another vacation day and didn't take my stepdown pill.

Nothing happened.

I went back to work, skipped the trip down the hall to the pharmacy. My lavender sphere arrived at my desk in a paper cup anyway, and I took it, and waited two hours – nothing took longer than that to kick in. Nothing happened.

I didn't say anything for a couple weeks. Swallowed my spheres. Remembered, eventually, to "replace" the stepdown doses I would have taken. Typed "lozenge shield oblong teardrop round round round round round double–circle rectangle round".

I mentioned Juarez when my boss and I were in the breakroom simultaneously around lunchtime. My food was in the microwave, he was rinsing out his coffee mug.

"I recognised Juarez," I said. "The dead kid."

"He was one of our patients, yes," my boss said.

"News said he had a place to go but was scared of withdrawing."

"Was he a secret shopper?"

"What? We don't hire children to secret shop, if someone underage tries to get data from you they're adults playing younger."

"He wanted to know what he was on, so he could

get away."

"You didn't tell him, did you? If that was why his father…"

"I didn't. I didn't even know.

I looked it up later, but..."

The boss nodded and hung up his coffee mug to

drip dry.

"He told me he was taking something every hour he was awake and I looked it up and it said chipper," I said. "You can't take chipper like that."
Boss paused.

Boss turned to leave the room, but stopped to pat me on the shoulder. "If he'd tried skipping out," he said, "Mission chipper wouldn't have kept him going home

or more."

The microwave beeped and my boss left in my moment of distraction.

The kid's drugs were fake, like my lavender spheres were fake, but he'd never checked. He would have seized to death years earlier if they'd been real. If he'd tried running to his brother's place he wouldn't have needed to score street chipper, he'd have just been fine.

Maybe every drug Mission sold was imaginary.

Pink blue cyan blue cyan blue white white gray orange red red orange red red white pink

gold yellow RAZZAMATAZZ.

I didn't have any illusions that flipping burgers was an intellectually stimulating job but it had to be better than

(White white orange red red pink red gray purple purple lavender teal yellow white white green blue)

(Brown brown brown brown brown)

Andy's Burgers were Drug Free but lots of food was sold that way, you could eat a completely non–addictive diet if you wanted; if you couldn't help but get a Dinah's Coffee+ Shake every morning that was your own fault. Mission Pharmaceuticals was slipping placebos left and right and how long it could do that depended on how long it kept the secret. What if the next college dropout they hired to?

(Cyan green green white blue orange)

Type colours and shapes into spreadsheets ran their mouth off? Told the next not–a–secret–shopper that he was on chipper or bounce or sunshine or winner, got them running away from their dad or their school or their cult and scoring some on the street and noticing?

(Pink green pink teal)

Or found out like I had, or some other way and just alerted the media?

This could be important. I could matter to it. It was just so stunningly boring. Eventually – I knew myself well enough – I'd give up, stop coming in.

I went to the pharmacy around the corner from my apartment.

"I need something for my sister I'm taking care of," I said. "She's fifteen, about my weight..." It was probably possible to get a supply that was officially for me but I would have had to go farther than a block and talk to someone for longer than fifteen minutes. I went home with a package of orange teardrops and brought them to work the next morning to tuck away in a drawer.

Work gave me lavender spheres, probably to keep their inventory neat or make sure everyone had paper cups in their wastebaskets if someone wandered in off the street. Every time I brought one to my desk I also opened my bottom drawer.

With the placebo spheres,

I took orange teardrops. –Anonymous