Chapter 1

Too Many Requests

Samira woke to the sound of her phone vibrating itself toward the edge of the nightstand.

Not ringing. Vibrating. A long insect hum against cheap wood that had already worked its way into her nerves before she even opened her eyes. She grabbed it on instinct, thumb already moving before her brain caught up.

Nadia: Morning. Sorry. Can’t do pantry shift anymore. My professor moved the exam review.

Dylan: flat tire. i’m trying to figure it out but i definitely can’t do 8:30 pickup

Maya: I know this is terrible timing but I threw up twice and I should not be around food

Samira stared at the screen for three full seconds, face still pressed into her pillow.

Three cancellations. It was 7:12 a.m.

Her room was blue with early light and looked exactly like the inside of her head felt. Half folded laundry on the chair. A textbook open facedown beside a legal pad covered in names, times, and grocery item abbreviations only she understood. Two empty iced coffee cups on the dresser. Her laptop still open from the night before, a spreadsheet glowing sleepily with columns of aid requests she had meant to reorganize before bed and instead fallen asleep staring at.

Her phone buzzed again.

Unknown Number: hi I got this number from the form? my mom needs a ride to dialysis today if anyone can help

Samira sat up so fast her neck protested. She shoved hair out of her face, pulled the laptop onto her knees, and typed the password wrong once before getting in. The spreadsheet opened fully now, dense and ugly and alive. Names. Addresses. Grocery requests. Transit needs. Prescription pickups. One emergency hotel request flagged in yellow. Two families marked recurring. Three student requests she still had not assigned because nobody ever wanted the late shifts.

She rubbed her eyes, then typed back one handed.

Samira: hi yes, i’m so sorry, i’m checking the schedule now and i’ll get back to you in ten

A lie already. It would take longer than ten.

Her group chat had sixty three unread messages. The community fridge volunteer board had another nine. There were two missed calls from her cousin Leena, who mostly used missed calls as emotional punctuation. Her email app showed a reminder from her sociology professor about the reflection post due by noon. The sight of it barely registered.

Samira inhaled once, deeply, like she could vacuum all the chaos into something smaller.

Then she swung her legs out of bed and started moving.

By 7:25 she had on yesterday’s jeans, a black sweatshirt from a campus teach-in, and one gold hoop because she could not find the second. She brushed her teeth while sending voice notes. She microwaved leftover coffee and drank it anyway. She stuffed her laptop, charger, portable battery, notebook, and the folder with pantry receipts into her bag until it looked swollen and angry. On the walk out the door, she grabbed the keffiyeh hanging from the hook by her mirror and looped it around her neck without thinking.

Outside, the air was already damp with heat. Florida mornings never eased you in. They put a hand on the back of your neck and held it there. Samira crossed the apartment lot at a speed that was almost a jog, checking her phone again at the curb.

No new volunteers yet.

She sent three more messages.

Samira: hey any chance you can cover pantry setup this morning

Samira: super last minute but are you free for a med pickup around 5

Samira: if anyone can do one hour at the pantry today i owe you my firstborn

That one got two laughing reactions and no actual volunteers.

She reached the bus stop just as the bus sighed up to the curb. On the ride to campus she balanced her laptop bag on her knees and opened the spreadsheet again, using the Notes app to reshuffle the day in her head. If Dylan could not do pickup, maybe Mateo could do it after class, unless Mateo still had that work shift at the coffee shop. Nadia’s cancellation meant she needed someone to cover intake at the pantry table. Maya being sick meant no backup driver. The dialysis ride was still floating. The medication pickup on the west side was time sensitive and needed to happen before the pharmacy closed at six. She highlighted it red.

A message came in from Leena at last.

Leena: Did you sleep

Leena: be honest

Samira smirked despite herself and typed back.

Samira: enough

Leena sent a single thumbs down.

Campus was already awake when Samira got there. Skateboards clicking over concrete. Clusters of students with iced drinks and sleepy faces. Flyers taped to everything. She cut across the plaza without really seeing any of it, phone in hand, bag sliding off her shoulder every few steps.

“Samira.”

She turned. Her friend Tessa was standing outside the student union holding two coffees and wearing the expression of someone who had predicted a disaster and was now waiting to be annoying about it.

“You look terrible,” Tessa said.

“That is because I am a servant of the people.”

“You are a raccoon in eyeliner.”

Samira took the offered coffee. “That too.”

Tessa fell into step beside her. “You coming to political theory or are you planning to accidentally save the city again?”

“I’m coming.”

“That is not what I asked.”

Samira took a long sip and winced at the heat. “I’ll be there for most of it.”

Tessa looked at her. “So no.”

Samira smiled at the ground. “Can you maybe cover intake at the pantry from ten to eleven thirty?”

“Told you.”

“I have class until ten forty five. Nadia canceled.”

“Tessa canceled too. Tessa has a chem lab.”

“Tessa is gorgeous and morally obligated to help.”

“Tessa is blocking your number.”

But she was smiling when she said it. Samira bumped her shoulder lightly.

“Please.”

Tessa sighed the sigh of someone who had already lost. “Ten thirty to eleven fifteen. Not a minute more.”

“I could kiss you.”

“You say that to everyone.”

“Not with this level of sincerity.”

They climbed the stairs to class together. Samira slid into her seat with thirty seconds to spare, coffee in one hand, phone in the other, laptop half open. Around her, students shuffled papers and complained softly about reading quizzes. The professor began speaking almost immediately, but Samira was still looking at the message thread from the woman whose mother needed the dialysis ride.

Nothing confirmed yet.

She found Mateo online and sent a fast plea.

Then she forced herself to look up. The lecture was on Weber, bureaucracy, and social organization, which felt offensive on a day like this. Her professor droned calmly about systems, institutions, authority. Samira typed three lines of notes, then checked her phone under the desk again.

Mateo: i can maybe do 11 if she can wait

Samira: it’s for dialysis

Mateo: oh

Three dots. Then nothing.

Samira closed her eyes for half a second. When she opened them, the professor had moved to the next slide and she had missed enough that the words on the screen looked like they belonged to somebody else’s life.

By 9:27, her left knee was bouncing so hard the girl beside her glanced over.

At 9:31, Samira gave up on pretending and ducked out into the hallway.

She called the dialysis contact first. No answer. Then the pharmacy. Then a volunteer who did not pick up. Then a local rideshare contact from another mutual aid group. Then the woman again, who finally answered breathlessly and apologetically from a bus bench with her mother beside her.

“We are okay,” the woman said. “I just need to know if someone is coming.”

Samira looked down the empty hallway, fluorescent lights humming above her. “I’m working on it right now. I’m so sorry. I know that’s not helpful. I’m trying.”

The woman was quiet for a second. “Okay.”

Not angry. Somehow worse.

Samira made the call that fixed it. A graduate student she barely knew, who had a car and one free hour and said yes only after Samira promised to cover his volunteer shift next week. She thanked him four times in a row and leaned against the cinderblock wall after hanging up, the relief sharp enough to make her dizzy.

One crisis solved. Temporary. Unelegant. But solved.

Her phone buzzed again.

Community Pantry Thread: Who has the folding table key

Community Pantry Thread: Guys

Community Pantry Thread: hello???

Samira pushed off the wall and started walking before she had fully decided where she was going.

The pantry operated out of a squat community center three blocks off campus, in a room that always smelled faintly like cardboard, bananas, and bleach. By the time Samira got there, her sweatshirt was sticking to her back. Tessa was already at the front table with a clipboard, looking personally betrayed by the existence of canned goods.

“You’re late,” Tessa said.

“I was doing healthcare.”

Tessa pointed a pen at her. “One day, when you finally collapse in a dramatic but aesthetically moving way, I am going to say I told you so over your unconscious body.”

“Please make sure my angle is good.”

Samira dropped her bag and took in the room at a glance. Crates sorted by produce. Shelf stable goods stacked against the wall. Sign-in table crooked. Two volunteers in the back arguing about whether rice should be limited to one bag per household. A kid coloring on the floor beside his grandmother’s chair. Intake forms scattered because nobody but Samira ever clipped them together correctly.

She moved through it fast, fixing as she went. Straightening stacks. Greeting people by name. Checking which deliveries had actually arrived. Translating for an older woman more comfortable in Arabic than English. Pulling extra diapers from the storage closet when she saw a toddler tugging at his mother’s shirt.

This was the version of herself she trusted. The one that became sharper under pressure, warmer, quicker. The one who could remember that Ms. Alvarez needed soft foods because of her dentures and that Kendra’s son had a peanut allergy and that Marcus hated asking for help with gas money unless you made it sound like he was doing you a favor.

She could do this part. She was good at this part.

For an hour and a half, competence carried her.

Then she checked the time.

12:14.

Her reflection post.

She swore under her breath, shoved two granola bars into Tessa’s hand as thanks, and ran back toward campus.

The rest of the day broke into pieces.

Class. The reflection post submitted two minutes late from the back row of a lecture hall. A call to a church pantry about bulk produce. A text exchange with a volunteer who wanted to know if delivering groceries to “that side of town” was safe. Samira called him instead of answering by text because some things sounded uglier written down. By the end of the call he was apologizing, but she still felt dirty.

At 2:40 she was sitting on the grass outside the library with her laptop open, trying to update the spreadsheet while eating hummus with pita chips she had forgotten were crushed. The medication pickup was still unassigned.

She highlighted it red again even though it was already red.

Prescription for Mrs. H. West side. Must be picked up before 6. Card on file. Call first.

She knew Mrs. H. Not well, but enough. Enough to picture the exact apartment building, the fake flowers in the front window, the way Mrs. H. always said baby at the end of every sentence no matter how old you were. It was heart medication. Missing a dose mattered.

Samira sent five more texts.

No.

No answer.

Working till close.

Can’t today sorry.

She leaned back on her hands and looked up at the washed-out sky. For one stupid second she imagined just lying down there and not moving until everyone found somebody else to call.

Then her phone rang.

It was her mother.

Samira almost did not answer, because mothers had a supernatural ability to sense when you were one inch from unraveling and ask the exact question that would do it. But she answered.

“Hi, Mama.”

“You sound tired.”

See.

“I’m outside.”

“You sound tired outside.”

Samira laughed despite herself. “How are you?”

Her mother talked for three minutes about her aunt’s blood pressure, a neighbor’s son who got engaged, and a recipe she wanted to send Samira if Samira would ever answer a text in this lifetime. Samira let the words wash over her, grateful for the ordinary shape of them.

Then her mother said, more quietly, “You are eating, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Real food.”

“Yes.”

A pause. “Samira.”

“Yes.”

“You know helping people is not the same as belonging to them.”

Samira looked down at her crushed lunch. “That was very profound of you, Mama.”

“It was very obvious of me. You needed profound last year. This year you need obvious.”

Samira smiled and swallowed around something unexpectedly tight in her throat. “I have to go soon.”

“I know. I can hear your brain running. Call your grandmother tonight.”

“I will.”

“And do not say yes to everything.”

They hung up. Samira sat there a second longer, staring at the spreadsheet. Then she said yes to everything anyway.

By 4:50 the medication pickup was still not covered, so she decided she would do it herself after the emergency grocery drop on the east side. She could make it if traffic was kind and the volunteer with the car actually arrived on time. Neither of those things happened.

At 5:07 she was standing in a grocery store parking lot beside bags of produce and canned soup, calling the volunteer for the third time.

No answer.

At 5:12 he texted.

sorry my manager kept me late

Samira closed her eyes. Opened them. Called another number.

“Tessa,” she said when her friend picked up, “if I asked you for one more favor today, would you block me?”

“Immediately.”

“I need your car.”

A long exhale. “Where are you?”

The east side drop took longer because the family lived on the third floor and the father insisted on helping despite his bad knee and the little girl wanted to show Samira her drawing before they left. It was a good drawing. A house with too many windows and a sun with pink cheeks. Samira praised it like it was hanging in a museum and meant every word.

Back in the car, the clock on the dashboard said 5:36.

“Can we make it?” Tessa asked.

Samira was already calling the pharmacy. “Hi, yes, I’m calling about a pickup for Helen Rivera. I know you close at six. I’m on the way. I’m so sorry. I know.”