I spoon the food around, mixing the curry sauce and rice thoroughly.
“It’s crazy, right?”
“Merrraw meh maw,” Oscar says around a mouthful.
“I mean, we’d be upending our whole lives on a whim and a dream,” I say, then blow on my spoonful.
Dreams are the fabric of the soul, stitched together with will and grit. Denying your dreams is like denying the essence of your identity.
The words from my favorite fanfic tighten like a band around my stomach. I swallow and set my spoon down.
If I say no to this opportunity, am I killing my identity?
What is the future like if I go into work tomorrow and accept the Junior Publicist role?
Patricia will keep stealing my work and getting the accolades I deserve. I’ll resent her forever. My work will suffer. My mood will suffer. I won’t have the same passion. Everything will feel pointless. My soul will wither and die. But I’ll have financial stability. I could make a two-year plan to get out of Waldorf and into another imprint, back at the mid-level Publicist position.
And I would always wonder what it could’ve been like to run away and chase a dream.
I spoon the curry into my mouth and sigh. It’s delicious, and the rich flavors awaken some fiery thing in the pit of my stomach. Maybe it’s future indigestion, but it feels more like defiance, and hope.
I open my EquiTrust app and pan over to my Waldorf shares. If I traded them all in, I’d get about forty thousand. That plus the loan would be more than enough to get the business off the ground and stay afloat for a year while I battled my way into the green.
I could take donated books in bad shape from libraries around the state and rebind them, giving them a second chance at life.
“That’s it,” I whisper. “Second Chance Fantasy.”
“Mreh mreh!” Oscar exclaims and I agree.
It’smysecond life, too. My fantasy.
I’m going to do this.
Dashbern, Wisconsin, here we come.
three
The High Road
Igave my notice two weeks ago and cashed in my shares at the same time. Vick has been extra salty about my resignation, and I think it’s because he knows Patricia isn’t all she’s cracked up to be. Two weeks of followingherplan from my idea has left the team going in circles and redoing work—work that I have not been helping with beyond the minimum requirement.
Malicious compliance, I believe it’s called.
I follow Patricia’s requests to the letter, no exceptions. When the art brief for the German relaunch goes tits up, as I knew it would, I get called into Vick’s office on my last day. To say that I have quitteritus is an understatement. I’m so,soready to blow the roof off this popsicle stand.
Vick asks me to sit. His eyebrows are already pinched in frustration.
“What happened with the German cover forSand and Sun?”
I pull up Patricia’s email on my phone and slide it across the desk. “She says, ‘Tell the art department less orange in the title.’”
“But that was for theFalling Back in Lovecover,” he says, his anger barely restrained.
“It says right here in the email chain,Sand and Sun,” I say, pointing to the title.
I know Patricia messed up and replied on the wrong chain, but I’m just doing what they said I was good at: Following her direction.
“Well, you should’ve interpreted what she meant!” he says, red-faced and fists clenched.
