Piper opens the door and leads the way inside. “Charlie!” she calls. “Magnolia wants to talk to us!”
Charlie appears from the bathroom door. She’s wrapped in a towel, and she has another on her head. “Where’s the fire?”
“Nothing’s on fire this time,” I reply dryly.
“Well, that’s good. I thought maybe something went wrong at work today again.”
“There was no fire at work today. At least not a literal one. It was more like a figurative dumpster fire.” I sink down onto our not-broken chair and smile at them. “I have bad news.”
“Why are you smiling?” Piper asks. She scowls and sits down on the edge of our accent chair that’s barely holding on. If anyone bigger than Piper sat there, it would end up in pieces on the floor.
“I got fired,” I say.
Charlie freezes from where she was unwrapping the towel on her head. “What? Why would they fire you?”
“Yesterday, when the fire alarm went off, I met someone on the stairs.”
They both stare at me blankly.
“And that’s why you got fired?” Charlie asks.
“No, of course not. Walking down the stairs isn’t a reason to get fired.”
“It’s the reason you just gave us,” Piper points out.
“I’m getting around to the reason if you would let me tell the story,” I mutter. I point at Piper. “You’ve already heard this story.”
Piper mimes zipping her lips, and Charlie merely raises an eyebrow.
“I met a man on the stairs?—”
“Oh, a man!” Charlie exclaims.
I glare at her. Charlie mimics Piper’s action of zipping her lips.
“Yes, a man. When the fire alarm went off, my boss asked me to get her Very Important Papers out of the safe.”
“Please tell me she doesn’t call them that,” Charlie groans.
I grimace. “She does. I’m not even sure what they are, but it was just a folder, so I grabbed it, and by that time, everyone in the office had cleared out, heading down the main staircase.
“I decided to take the service stairs. It turns out that they’re very, very narrow, and when I stepped through the door, a man ran into me, coming from the floor above. He was also carrying some papers, and we ended up dropping things. We were in a hurry to get out of the building because we weren’t sure if it was a real fire or not. He helped me pick up my papers, and I helped with his. Then we went all the way down the stairs and out the back of the building.
“Then, this morning, when I returned the Very Important Papers to my boss, I found out my mistake. Some of her papers were mixed with Nash’s.”
“Who’s Nash?” Piper asks.
“The man in the stairwell,” Charlie guesses.
“Exactly. So, my boss fired me because I hadn’t protected those papers with my life. As I was leaving the building with my sad little box of things, I ran into Nash. I gave him his papers, and he said he would have my papers sent up to my boss and try and explain things to her so that I could get my job back.”
“Well, that’s good, right?” Piper asks.
“Well, that’s what was going to happen, but then Nash got a phone call that his grandpa wanted to meet his fiancée, so I jumped in the car and went to the dreamiest neighborhood in town and met his grandpa. It was so sad. I think I cried all the way home. And that’s how my day went.”
Charlie and Piper look at me blankly.
“It’s almost like you left out every important detail in the story,” Charlie says.
