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But I also needed to escape.
Now I felt a flutter of panic in my throat. “Hey. You know me. You know I need to move. I can’t just sit here and—and… and marinate in all my misery. I need to be in motion. I need to go somewhere. I’m like a shark, you know? I just always have to be moving. I need to get water through my gills.” My hands gestured at my ribcage, as if to show him where my gills were located. “If I stay here,” I finally said, “I’ll die.”
“Bullshit,” Glenn said. “Dying’s a lot harder than you think.”
Glenn hated it when people begged.
I begged anyway.
“Send me somewhere. Anywhere. I need to get out.”
“You can’t spend your entire life running away,” Glenn said.
“Yes, I can. I absolutely can.”
I could tell from his face we’d hit the wall. But I still had some fight left in me.
“What about the thing in Burkina Faso?” I asked.
“I’m sending Doghouse.”
“I’ve got three years on Doghouse!”
“But he speaks French.”
“What about the wedding in Nigeria?”
“I’m sending Amadi.”
“He hasn’t even been here six months!”
“But his family’s from Nigeria. And he speaks—”
“Fine. Forget it.”
“—Yoruba and a little bit of Igbo.”
That was the crux of it. Glenn had a rep to protect. “I’ll send you,” he said like we were done here, “when it’s a good fit. I’ll send you when it’s best for the agency. I’ll never send you over somebody more qualified.”
I narrowed my eyes at Glenn in a way that just dared him to fight me. “There’s nobody more qualified than me,” I said.
Glenn looked me over, using his well-honed powers of observation like a weapon.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said at last. “But you buried your mother yesterday.”
I met his eyes.
He went on. “Your pulse is elevated, your eyes are bloodshot, and your makeup is smeared. Your speech is rapid, and your voice is hoarse. You haven’t brushed your hair, your hands are shaking, and you’re out of breath. You’re a mess. So go home, take a shower, eat some comfort food, grieve the death of your mom, and then figure out some goddamned hobbies—because I guarantee you this: You’re sure as hell not going anywhere until you get your shit together.”
I knew that tone in his voice.
I didn’t argue.
But how, exactly, was I supposed to get back to work if he wouldn’t let me get back to work?
