Sothy drops her mop back into its yellow bucket. "Let's take him to the hospital."

"Everything's gonna be okay, right?" Kayley asks.

And Tevy responds, "Well, we can't just leave him here."

"Stop fighting and help me," Sothy says, walking over to the man. She carefully lifts him up, then wraps his arm around her shoulders. Tevy and Kayley rush to the man's other side and try to do the same.

Outside, the streetlamp is still broken, but they have grown used to the darkness. Struggling to keep the man upright, they lock the door, roll down the steel shutters, whose existence they'd almost forgotten about, for once securing Chuck's Donuts from the world. Then they drag the man's heavy body toward their parked car. The man, barely conscious, begins to groan. The three women of Chuck's Donuts have a variation of the same thought. This man, they realize, didn't mean much at all to them, lent no greater significance to their pain. They can hardly believe they've wasted so much time wondering about him. Yes, they think, we know this man. We've carried him our whole lives.

Excerpted from Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So . Copyright © 2021 by Anthony Veasna So . Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.