The bus taking me from the university zone to the industrial park smelled of stale humanity and burnt brakes.
It was an invisible border. At the university stop, kids with noise-canceling headphones and designer clothes got off; at my stop, men with cracked hands and women with the thousand-yard stare of someone who's been on their feet too long got on.
I carefully took off my white shirt in the gas station bathroom before arriving, folding it meticulously so it wouldn't wrinkle in my backpack. I put on a cheap grey cotton t-shirt, already stained with old grease, and my safety boots.
When I crossed the gate of the North Logistics Center, I stopped being Lucas, the International Business student. There, I was just number 402. A pair of arms and a back rented by the hour.
"You're late, college boy," barked Gutiérrez, the foreman. He was a short, wide man with a belly as hard as a rock and a stopwatch hanging around his neck that he used like a whip.
"Three minutes till the shift, Gutiérrez," I replied, clocking in at the biometric scanner. The green light beeped, marking the start of my second workday.
"Less talk, more action. The truck at dock four is bringing white goods. Washing machines. They weigh as much as your conscience."
I walked toward the dock. The warehouse was an immense cavern of metal and concrete, filled with the echo of forklifts and the shouts of the dockworkers. The air was thick with cardboard dust and diesel. There were no theories about the elasticity of demand here. Here, demand was a conveyor belt that never stopped, and supply was my vertebrae.
We started unloading.
The work was brutally simple: lift, pivot, stack. Lift, pivot, stack. At first, my mind tried to keep reviewing Dr. Montero's class. Hyperinflation. Secondary market. Inelastic goods. But after the twentieth washing machine, abstract thought shut down. Physical pain has that virtue: it anchors you to the present absolutely.
My muscles, already tense from academic stress, began to burn. Sweat ran down my back, plastering the shirt to my skin.
"Hey, 402!" shouted Beto, my crewmate. He was a guy around thirty, with faded tattoos on his arms and a laugh that was missing a tooth. "How are the rich girls today? Did any of them propose to you?"
Beto thought university was like a soap opera. He didn't understand that for people like us, it was a minefield.
"They're still rich and they still don't look at us, Beto," I grunted, adjusting my grip on a box marked "FRAGILE" that weighed like it was full of lead.
"Someday, brother," he said, wiping his forehead with his forearm. "Someday you'll hook one and get us out of this hole. Remember the poor."
I half-smiled, lacking the energy to explain that my plan wasn't to hook anyone, but to become the owner of the damn warehouse. Or better yet, the guy who decides where warehouses are built.
The hours blurred by. The sun went down and the halogen lights on the ceiling buzzed, bathing everything in an artificial, yellowish light.
At eight in the evening, we had a fifteen-minute break. I sat on a wooden pallet and took the Tupperware out of my backpack. I opened it, letting the aroma of cumin and bay leaf escape. It was a lentil stew with chorizo that I had prepared myself on Sunday.
Cooking wasn't a hobby for me; it was pure financial mathematics: buy in bulk, cook for the whole week, and freeze. While Beto and the others ate sandwiches of pale ham bought from the vending machine at a markup, I ate something hot, nutritious, and homemade. I had learned to handle knives and spices at twelve, when my mother worked double shifts and someone had to feed Lili.
In this hostile environment, that Tupperware was my small victory, proof that no matter how low my bank balance was, I still knew how to take care of myself better than anyone.
"That smells like glory, kid," Beto said, eyeing my food with envy.
"It's just about being organized," I said, savoring a spoonful. It was good. Better than anything I could afford at the university cafeteria.
My hands trembled slightly from the effort of the load, but the homemade taste restored a bit of my humanity.
I pulled out my phone. I had a message from Lili.
"The backpack strap broke. I tried to sew it but it won't hold the books. Sorry :("
The sad emoji hit me harder than any of the boxes I had carried today. Lili never asked for anything. If she told me, it was because there really was no fix.
I made a quick mental calculation. If I worked overtime on Saturday, I could buy her a new backpack. A good one. Not a brand name, but sturdy. One of those that last the whole degree.
"Bad news?" asked Beto, sitting next to me with a sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil.
"Just expenses," I said, putting the phone away. "The usual."
"Life is expensive, kid. Especially when you want to fly high." Beto took a bite of his dinner and looked up at the tin roof. "Is it worth it? Studying so much."
I looked at him. I looked at the warehouse, the endless rows of products people bought to feel momentarily happy. I looked at Gutiérrez yelling at a rookie on the other end.
"It has to be worth it," I said. It wasn't an opinion. It was a necessity. If it wasn't worth it, then all this pain, all this exhaustion seeping into my bones, was senseless torture.
The whistle blew. Break was over.
I stood up, my knees cracking in protest. I went back to the loading line.
The rest of the shift was a battle against my own biology. My body wanted to give up, to collapse on the concrete floor. But my mind projected the image of Lili's backpack. One more box, a new zipper. Two more boxes, reinforced seams. Three more boxes, waterproof fabric.
When I finally left the warehouse at ten-thirty at night, the cool night air felt like a blessing. I hurt everywhere. From the soles of my feet to my neck.
I walked to the bus stop, dragging my feet. My shadow stretched under the streetlights, a solitary figure in a deserted industrial park.
Tomorrow, at seven in the morning, I would have to be back on campus, with my pristine white shirt, ready to discuss macroeconomics with people who thought hard work was going to the gym for an hour a day.
I rubbed my eyes, feeling the grit of exhaustion.
Dr. Montero had said that I understood the difference between the textbook and the street.
She had no idea. The textbook weighed a kilo. The street weighed tons.
I got on the empty bus, leaned my head against the cold glass, and closed my eyes, allowing myself, for the first time in sixteen hours, to simply be a twenty-three-year-old guy who just wanted to sleep.