“Another day. Just three more hours and then I can go home,” Faith thought as she sat at her desk eating her ham and cheese sandwich with strawberry yogurt, just like every day. The white walls bored her. The calls all day about people’s problems with their money which was there yesterday and gone today bored her even more. No one called wanting to speak to her anyway. They all wanted Him. Her boss, who was certainly the most obnoxious, self-absorbed man she had ever met. With every call she transferred over to him she could hear his booming and cheesy “Hello! What can I help you with?” through the walls. Most of the time she day dreamed about marching into his office one day and saying “F*** you Mr. Marrs and f*** you ANH Bank”. But that would never happen. She knew it and everyone else knew it. That’s why she was always the one running errands for everyone. Picking up her boss’s dry-cleaning, or going out to Staples because someone ran out of paper, and why she was the one to always get the coffees for some of her other “esteemed” co-workers in the morning.
“Skim milk latte with a shot of espresso for me, Faith!” Fake blonde haired Lindsay would say.
“Don’t forget my cappuccino with three sugars, Faith!” High-pitched voice Garrett would yell. She wished he would go through puberty already and drop a few octaves.
“Just regular coffee for me. No milk like last time, Faith.” Mr. Bird would say from his office not even having the decency to get up out of his chair. Mr. Bird was a big old man, a lazy one at that, but he made money for the company at the end of the day, so they kept him on.
“Get me a decaf espresso medium roast, Faith? Thank you!” Joan said, her eyes crinkled from many years of smiling.
And of course her boss, Mr. Marrs, who liked his coffee half-caff with two splendas and half a creamer.
Every morning Faith would get everybody their coffee and donuts, every night she would go home alone after a long day of dealing with Mr. Marrs and his constant need for emails, phone numbers, and messages to be delivered. She was unfulfilled to say the least. There’s not many little girls who want to grow up to be a receptionist for a struggling bank chain.
5 o'clock on the dot and she was out of there. Faith walked out of that office in her white Keds, and right down to her eight year old Honda Accord with only 33,000 miles on it. She didn’t drive fast because she had nowhere to be, and she didn’t drive slow because she didn’t want to be “that person” holding everyone up in rush-hour.
When she got home, she made herself soup for dinner or something microwaveable, then watched an hour of TV and read some of a book or magazine before going to bed at around 9:00 every night. She had no dreams that she could remember. Ever. She only awoke to her alarm going off and her socks having fallen off during the night.
Tonight was different though. Tonight she dreamed and dreamed. She was floating above an empty planet. She watched the planet with its gray clouds floating above everything else. This planet was empty though. It was as empty and gray and white as her own office. It was kind of eerie how empty and quiet it was. She wanted to change it and with that single thought, the clouds were no longer gray and foggy, but white and puffy. The sky became blue instead of white. She was creating oceans and mountains and ponds and valleys. Although her world was not complete, her alarm interrupted. She awoke the next morning and felt refreshed and somewhat happy. Realizing it was only a dream, it had ended and would never be back, impelled her to re-enter the real world and realize she was going to be late for work.
Work was the same as ever. Same white walls to stare at, same orders from her boss to do ridiculous tasks. Today she went to his daughter’s pre-school and picked her up, even though they do have a nanny. She clocked out of work at 5:00 as usual and went home. Her mother called her that night.
“You know you’re a really smart girl, Faith. You’re only 35, you still have time to do something with your life.” This is what all of Faith and her mother’s conversations drifted towards.
“I know Mom, but maybe I don’t want to do anything with my life, maybe I just want to be a receptionist forever.”
“So you’re really telling me that you want to cater to some conceited jerks your entire life?”
“No…” Faith said, now being distracted by other thoughts. She had gone to art school for five years. She had won many awards and honors, but for some reason just stopped drawing, painting, and sculpting entirely. She looked at her unfinished oil painting which she had started over a year and a half ago.
“Faith? Hello? Are you there?” Her mom said.
“Yes I’m here.”
“All I want is for you to do well in life and be happy.”
“I know.” And with that, Faith hung up the phone and walked over to her TV, shut it off, and laid down in bed.
That night Faith was once again floating about the planet. Her planet. With a thought, she could create a tsunami, wrecking the beach. With another thought she could recreate that beach, putting all the trees right back to where they belonged. She had created rivers, ponds, trees all over this planet. Tonight she created little animals which all looked out for each other and could chatter amongst themselves. Faith knew everything they were saying, and she communicated with them too. She finally felt like she could control something in her life. That her thoughts mattered. She had painted this world with her dreams.
Each morning she would wake up and go through the motions, each night she would dream and dream. She sat at her desk every day waiting to go home and go to sleep.
After a week of her dreaming, something was different about her. Faith had come to life again. She started painting again. She painted her own little planet. The white, puffy clouds, tall mountains, and oceans with turquoise rivers running into them. She painted different scenes with different colors, exactly how she had remembered them in her ongoing dream. She drew the little birds and chipmunks, no humans to disturb them or take their woods away from them. Her world had become a bright and beautiful place. She made the sunsets pink and orange every evening, the light coming out of the sky was a bright orange. She could see other planets, Saturn, Venus, and her own Earth in the distance between the mountains. When night came, she lit up the deep purple sky with stars in one thought. In another thought, the sun came back up, the sky becoming blue again, and the birds coming out to sing again. She was living in a fantastical world by night and by day she was just back to going about her normal life. Just like in her world though, the sun kept coming up on Earth every morning too.
Two weeks later, she found herself waking up an hour late to work. She jumped in her car and sped to get there.
As she walked in, Mr. Marrs said, “I hope you are late because you were getting me coffee and a donut.”
She hadn’t gotten either.
“No Mr. Marrs I didn’t get your coffee. Maybe you could do it for once.”
“Or maybe you could just do it,” he said with a smile too big for his skinny face.
“No. And I’ll never do it again. I’m done. I quit.”
With that, she walked out of the door, and never returned.
After going home and finishing her last painting of the planet she called her mom. The phone went right to voicemail, and on the message Faith only said, “Mom, I know what I want to do with my life.”
Driving only five minutes away, she entered the building. She walked in confidently and asked if there were any job openings. The tired looking secretary in a purple jumpsuit handed her some forms, which Faith filled out with a huge smile on her face. “This could be it.” Beaming, she handed the paper to the secretary.
A week later, her dreams stopped. The first night without any dreams made her sorrowful. She missed the dreams, they had brought color to her life and she was fearful that without them, she would go back to a gray life. She got used it though and her life didn’t go back to gray.

One year later, Faith walks into work, smiling and saying hello to her other co-workers. She had a dozen coffees in her hand, all of which she volunteered to get everyone.
She opened the door to room 130. She looked around the room at the walls filled with colorful fingerpaints of big flowers, construction paper snowflakes and snowmen, and crayon giraffes, lions, and flamingos.
“Good morning everyone!”
“Good morning Ms. Faith!” Eighteen bright-eyed second grade students replied back.