Ella had always loathed the phrase, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” It was laden with hauteur, superiority. The type of person who bandied such an “adage” was the type of person who genuinely believed they were in control of their own destiny. As though nothing—least of all “unforeseen circumstances”—could ever deter their “course.” The one they had so meticulously laid out for themselves with all of their strategic planning. Ha! Ella was more in tune with the Lennonism, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Or planning at all.

Ella learned this lesson more than a few times throughout her twenty-four years on this Earth. Like when she had planned to go to college in Los Angeles (specifically, UCLA), only to learn after getting her acceptance letter that her father, James, had gambled away all the funds her mother, Abigail, had spent years saving. All of that saving achieved before she died of breast cancer when Ella was just thirteen. Again, something she didn’t plan for. Nor, of course, did Abigail.

However, one thing she did plan for was ensuring that Ella could go to whatever college she wanted. Without concerning/limiting herself over the cost. But Abigail had been naïve to entrust James with the money…or maybe it was one final “good faith” gesture on her part. A way to show James that she trusted him enough to be the father she expected—particularly now that Ella would be without a mother. James was immune to such gestures, giving in to the temptation of dipping into the hallowed funds only a year after Abigail’s death.

At first, the amount extracted was “modest”—relatively speaking. Just something to “take the edge off” his insatiable gambling need. A need that, he would have liked to remind, had been severely quelled while tending to Abigail during her cancer battle. Yes, it was a need he had suppressed for far too long during Abigail’s illness, caring for her day and night after chemo. Useless chemo. From where he was standing (though mostly sitting), he had earned this money. Most other men would’ve left Abigail. After all, there was a reason behind that statistic about how many men leave their wives in the wake of a “sick person” diagnosis (roughly twenty-one percent).

In contrast, James had dutifully stayed. That was something he felt Ella should have understood and appreciated too. But no, all she could express toward him now was outrage and indignation, total contempt. He would forever be seen as “the man who ruined her life,” “destroyed her chances at success,” etc. That was a burden he would just have to live with. Or maybe it would feel more burdensome if he wasn’t perennially drunk.

In moments of sober “clarity,” however, he would muse to himself that Ella might have changed her tune if he had tripled the funds as intended. Because, yes, he had been on a winning streak the night he used up the last of the money from her college fund. There had been a point during that streak when he had doubled the money. All he wanted to do was triple it. Thereby offering her double and, “obviously,” keeping the triple portion for himself. When viewed from that angle, James “reasoned,” wasn’t he technically a great father? Only if he had won—that was the answer. James, thus, resigned himself to the idea that he was a born loser, through no fault of his own. It was a fate that simply couldn’t be controlled. As no fate could. Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

And since the plans Ella had been making for most of her life fell through, and catastrophically so, she had to allow herself to be swept up by new ones. New ones that her old self could have never even fathomed. And naturally, these remade “plans” did not involve going to Los Angeles, as she had long dreamed. What they involved, instead, meant staying in Reno, working at one of the very casinos her father had gambled away her life in and attending community college courses during the day. The night, however, was for working. Always working. That was her destiny now. She wasn’t counting on much else happening for her with an associate’s degree (that is, short of becoming a dental hygienist). About on par with a GED.

So it was jobs like serving drinks at the casino or bust. These past few weeks, she was starting to think she might definitely prefer “bust.” As in, to literally do so. Though she meant no disrespect to her mother, who would have killed to stay alive even a few minutes longer, a certain death might surely be better than getting her ass pinched every night by drunk men (and women) for the bulk of her life. In fact, the pinching was so common that there were some early mornings when she got home and took her clothes off to find severe bruise marks on her erstwhile unblemished bum. The twelve-dollar-an-hour wage she was receiving hardly seemed like adequate recompense for such a job hazard. Yet all any employer would likely tell her was that one had to anticipate a.k.a. plan for such contingencies, and somehow “act accordingly.” Which is precisely why she never brought it up to them—the use of the word plan, or any of its synonyms, would only make her want to deck whoever said it.

Thus, Ella went about her nights in something akin to a fugue state. That was how she coped with reality now. She approached the slot machines with her drink tray in hand, focusing more on not spilling than trying to avoid an unexpected pinch. What was the point? Attempting to sidestep such maneuvers would only result in a spillage or, worse still, a glass breaking. And who would be blamed for that? Not the customer, that’s for sure. However, one night, when it was her own father who, in a drunken stupor, not even recognizing the daughter he had robbed blind, also decided her ass was for public “consumption,” she, in turn, decided to react. By throwing a vodka soda right in his desiccated face and then punching him in the nose.

That, she told her boss minutes later after being called into his office, was something she just couldn’t have planned for. It was out of her hands, much like being fired and arrested due to this unforeseen circumstance (her father, naturally, opting to press charges and sue her for damages). Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Or even just trying to mind your own business.