“But what if—” I said.
“What if you succeed?” she asked me.
I breathed in, and nodded. Checked my hair and face in the glass-front window. I was looking great. Smartly dressed. Curly brown hair in a Hermione bush. Makeup game tight. Eyebrows that were near enough twins to be satisfied.
“Let’s do this,” I said.
“When do you have to be in again?” she asked.
“Nine.”
“You have three minutes,” Tamara said.
I cursed and ran out the front door, my heels clacking on the sidewalk as I pushed past people. Thankfully, the building was right there…
Chapter 2
There was nobody at the front desk, so I wandered for a little bit through the lax security and into a front room where some people were congregating around a coffee pot. It seemed like a lounge—bean bag chairs and recliners and modern-art furniture fixtures were tossed here and there. Some vaguely familiar people I was used to watching on YouTube videos were shambling around, all wearing pajama pants or hoodies. Most looked hungover. Coffee seemed to be their only lifeline.
“Sorry,” one girl my age had said, yawning. “Doing an article on sleep deprivation. I’ve been awake for forty-eight hours. I think it’s gonna be awe—” And then she tipped over, dropping like a slow fall of timber onto the ground. I stared, horrified, until the sleeping woman started snoring. Someone else just as hung-over stumbled over and dropped a knit blanket over her that smelled like cigarettes.
“Stacey?” I heard. I turned and nodded. A powerfully built woman, round and with all the air of a middle manager, swooped in like a rather officious pigeon. My danger sense went off immediately at the sight of her wide smile. I filed the woman under ‘Do not fuck with’ in my head and politely nodded. She was the only other one dressed up, in business professional, like me.
“That would be me,” I said.
“So nice to finally meet you,” the woman said. “I’m Peggy-Ann. On behalf of the whole team, I want to welcome you to Feedworthy.”
She was all ebullience and roundness, air and light, and she gave me a tour of the offices, grabbing me and steering me away.
“Don’t want you to get the wrong idea here,” Peggy-Ann continued. “Most of these are contract journalists. We don’t often have people on full-time, you understand, and some of the other departments are run individually. The kitchen and office areas are one of the few benefits we have to offer, even if it functions as a dry tank most Monday mornings.”
“What department are you from?”
“Human Resources,” Peggy-Ann said.
“Oh,” I said, and then thought: Fuck. “I don’t…”
“Work for me? No, dear. We have you for a very special project. You’re directly reporting to Andy Brewer.”
“The Andy Brewer?” I gasped.
“Yes, dear. He seemed to come away from your remote interviews with a very high impression of you. He’s going to put you on special assignment.”
“Huh,” I said. Gobsmacked was an understatement. “Are you sure it was me he asked for?”
“Absolutely,” Peggy-Ann said. “A word of warning, though. You seem a respectable woman by any accounts.” What Peggy-Ann meant by this seemed to mean like me. “I want to warn you. A place like this. It has an office culture that can swallow a naïve woman alive. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“To be careful, I think.”
“I’m telling you not to lose sight of who you are,” Peggy-Ann said. “The big city. It has a tendency to take innocence and civility and strip it away. Places like this. They don’t just accept aberrancy. They glory in it. And that’s absolutely fine, to a point. Nothing wrong with people from all walks of life. But dear. You have to be a rock, a foundation, to make it through unscathed and still leave your mark.”
We stopped suddenly, outside a door. And not just any door. The Door, the one with Andy Brewer’s name in all caps on a nameplate. My heart was jackhammering in my chest. Andy Brewer was a big deal. He was one of the earliest Feedworthy journalists, there since the beginning. Reporting to him was like getting an assignment from Dan Rather.
“I appreciate the advice,” I said. “But maybe I want to be changed. A little, at least.”
“Growth is always a process,” Peggy-Ann said diplomatically, but there was an air of minor crispness that came from her, like an ice wall that rose up. “Here we are. Good luck on your first day. And if you have any problems, please. Come find me.”
And then there was nothing left but me and The Door, and then eventually, after I screwed up enough courage, my trembling hands reached out to grab the handle.
