The night before Sidney the werewolf’s wedding, I stay up until midnight.
There are more than a few reasons for this late-night debacle. The primary reason is that I’m toggling between twenty-four-hour-ahead confirmation emails for Sidney’s seventeen vendors and an email chain with her venue’s event coordinator. It’s been a lot of work, a lot of stress—but it isn’t what’s keeping me up. No. The source of my insomnia are the two emails from EFG with the subject lines:
Checking In About Samantha’s Monday Arrival
And:
Samantha’s Reassignment
Within the latter, I discover a long email chain—evidence of what’s been going on for several weeks behind the scenes—that outlines my immense corporate peril.
Steve and Desmond have mutually determined I don’t have enough hours to qualify for FMLA, and losing pizza privileges is insufficient retribution for leaving my MicroOrange audit team underresourced on their project. This leads to the HR admin’s rebuttal: As a woman, surely I wouldn’t be penalized for societal expectations to take care of family? That would be sexist, right?SurelyEFG would not let itself be accused of sexism. Again. For which Steve was partially responsible, last time, in a public exposé.
So it has been taken up the chain. To thepartner.
Who has reassigned me to a new team with a less flashy client,with the additional encouragement that I find a way to wrap up my family matters by the start of next week.
It’s worse than a bad rating. It’s the first step toward being fired.
This house is so worryingly quiet. All I can hear are distracting, annoying questions whirling around like pinwheels in my head. I’d been planning to shoehorn in exam reading and problem sets before bed, but I’ve put those aside, replacing them with blind panic. I wish I wasn’t so alone right now; that I had someone to talk to. I tried texting Hanry, but he’s on a short trip to visit his parents and pretty much AWOL. At least he’s promised to be back by Sunday in order to take me to a Halloween party for which he’s already bought us couples costumes.
Despite that sounding like the pinnacle of my worst phobias, for some reason, I said yes. Possibly because Hanry gift wrapped my costume and left it on the porch for me, which seemed so romantic I couldn’t say no.
So here I am. All alone, suffering from some kind of bizarre, unending insomnia, spooking at every thud, and—
Maybe I should just give up. Watch something on TV.
“Bulan!” I call out. “Bulan, let’s binge something!”
When he fails to answer, I go hunting for him. For once, the head doesn’t turn up immediately in the places I’ve come to expect him. I look in the sink, in case he’s lounging in a sink puddle; on the recliner, in case he’s snoozing on a TV remote; at the ceiling, in case he’s planning to drop from the rafters to scare me. Grandma’s place doesn’t have exposed beams, but I wouldn’t put trying that past him. Maybe I should take down the ceiling fans.
In the guest bedroom, at last, I find a sign: a partially opened window. But what’s it mean?
Could it be the saboteurs? Or could he have… jumped?
“Bulan!” I shout, worry spiking. I stick my head out the window and search the ground below. “Bulan!?”
Only when I cast my gaze upward do I see it: crested by moonlight, ten enterprising crows caw and honk while suspending a black trash bag midair.
“Sabby!” Bulan’s voice calls out—from the trash bag. Of course. “My friends just picked me up. We’re off on a little adventure!”
“In the middle of the night?” I shout back.
“Halloween’s only two days away! I need a costuuuume!”
The window drops a little on my head. Goddamn it, that’s going to bruise. Rubbing my scalp, I say, “Fine, whatever. Stop making a scene!”
“Okayyyyy! To the dump, friends!”
The crows flap off, briefly catching Bulan against a telephone pole, before bravely soldiering on into the inky night.
Godspeed, Bulan. Godspeed.
“He’s not a pet,” I explain to Mandy the next morning as we wait behind a local butcher shop. “There’s no need to be mad about it.”
I’m certainly not upset. I’ve pushed it out of my mind, along with all thoughts of Grandma’s malicious will and my reassignment at EFG. So successfully, in fact, I’m not thinking about it this very moment.
A fair distance down the alley, the butchers stuff a half-dozen blood-besmirched Igloos into our rented van. I’d have us stand closer, but the smell of frozen raw meat upsets Mandy’s stomach. Impressively, nausea isn’t stopping her from attempting to finish a five-pound Halloween bag of Laffy Taffys before noon. I’m not judging, really. It’s good to have goals.
