Rae Alcorn wasn’t expecting a package. She doesn't get gifts or win contests or get promotions—because life’s never handed her anything. 

Some people believe positivity summons good things from the universe. But Rae believes the universe is a bitch—not that she’d say that word out loud. The universe gives lazy babies to old-money families and diligent souls to doomed Idaho farms. The universe sends career women to abortion doctors, and nurturing women get empty cribs. 

The universe gave Rae a gambling husband, a cashier job, and a parade of useless bosses. She grew up believing the meek would inherit the earth, but now she knows that if she wants a bit of the blessed earth, she has to fuckin’ take it. Not that she’d use that word out loud.

She eyes the delivery that’s been sitting on her plaid sofa for six hours. It bears her neighbor’s name, but it also has her address. She supposes it’s more likely that the sender got one number wrong, than twelve letters. But it’s possible. Rae tears into the parcel with both hands.

A potato peeler—but of course it is. 

Rae hates potatoes, likely because she ate so many as a kid in Idaho. She ports her serendipitous parcel to the guest room, where an arc of space barely allows the door to swing open. She nests the box on a cardboard city of deliveries that she’s harvested from two zip codes of unattended door steps. The universe is a bitch.