“Get on in here,” Shirley said from her doorway. “Got a lot of work to do, and not enough lifetimes to do it in.”
Anna followed her into the office and took a seat on the edge of a prettier-than-it-was-comfortable guest chair. She pulled her cardigan tighter around herself.
“Congratulations, you’re our new lead analyst. Gonna have to stay in school, have to continue with the certification series, but Corporate’s approved your promotion.” Shirley dumped a stack of papers at the edge of her desk. “All the resumes from the last six months. Pick out four or five you like, and we’ll interview them for your assistant.”
“My—wait,what?”
“Assistant. We need somebody to do your old job when you take over the vacant analyst position.”
It was stupid, immature, and really,reallystupid, but her chin trembled.
Then her core quaked, a rumble that emanated from her midsection and bounced through her chest like Rex’s motherboard on a Monday morning.
“There a problem?” Shirley said.
Anna licked her lips.
Of course there wasn’t a problem. “A promotion?”
“With a pay raise. Abigone.”
A pay raise. Comfort. Temporarily more security.
But—God, this was stupid—but—“Will I still do the filing?”
Shirley peered at her.
She pulled her glasses off, wiped them, pushed them backup her long nose, and peered harder. “No,” she said, enunciating the word so Anna heard at least six letters and eight syllables of highly uncomplimentary opinions aimed toward her person.
But it didn’t matter, because she was being offered a promotion. She’d proved her technical worth and her loyalty to the company, and she was in a position to convince the customer that she ran a lab as sound and smooth as the best damn lab analysts in the entire country. The experience would look fabulous on her resume after she finished her degree and started job-hunting. This was a gift from the heavens, a karmic high-five for all that she’d endured since the moment she set foot in the great state of Georgia. And she was honored to have the opportunity to serve her country while she taught someone else—someone fresh and green and eager—how to keep the paperwork of a laboratory in good working order.
She was the luckiest woman on the face of the professional and technical worlds.
And she would tell Shirley so as soon as she could get oxygen past that redremove before flighttab blocking the flow of air through her throat.
“Youdowant the job,” Shirley said.
Her lungs and nose and air passages snapped back into rhythm.
She forced an overly bright smile, nodded, opened her mouth, and said?—
“I quit.”
Shirley blinked.
So did Anna.
And then she gasped, felt her eyelids stretch so wide her eyeballs bulged and her vision crossed. She ordered her tongue to take the words back, to correct that erroneous statement.
It came out stronger. “I. Quit.”
And instead of feeling the earth quake and tremble beneath her, instead of being struck down by a sucker punch of God’s laughter delivered through a lightning bolt, instead ofimploding with a panic attack of epic proportions, Anna closed her eyes, inhaled the stale office air tinged with a hint of Shirley’s pre-workday smoke, and smiled a real smile.
Her chest expanded, free and clear andfree, wide-open to a new world of possibilities.
“Oh my God,” Anna said on a laugh. “I really do. I quit.”
Quit the job, quit the expectations, quit feeling the weight of everyone else’s disappointments in her failures.
