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“What’s it going to take to hack her laptop?”
I look up, surprised. “Why?”
Syn just grins at me.
XX
Tori
Asound in the middle of the night wakes me with a jolt. Feeling completely disorientated, it takes me a moment to realize the noise is my phone ringing and not the alarm as I reach for it and stare blurrily at the screen.
Doris
“Hi, Ms. Doris,” I say, my voice croaky.
“Ms. Tori, where are you? Your shift started half an hour ago.”
Instantly, I’m sitting up, shaking my head. “No, I’m not down for the morning shift today.”
“Yes, you are. And unless you’re dying, you’d better get in, sharpish.”
“I’ll be right there,” I say before she hangs up.
Confused, I stare at my phone. After my run in with Syn last night, I’d come straight back to my room and went to bed. But the last thing I did was open the JKUFacultyApp to check what shift I was scheduled for today, to make sure the appropriate alarm was set.
Dinner.
The shift I had down was to do the closing clean after the dinner service had finished. But as I open the app up to check now, it’s clearly telling me I’ve got the breakfast shift, which, as Doris pointed out, did start half an hour ago.
“Fuck.” I jump out of bed, hurrying around my room in a slight panic. A broken laptop and the ever-decreasing inclination to go to the library if I was likely to be found there by Syn again meant that I needed to earn more money.
I manage to make myself presentable in record time before I’m leaving my room and running across campus to the dining hall. After apologizing profusely to Doris, I quickly jump in and try to catch up with my jobs, apologizing just as much to the chefs who had to do the food prep instead of their own job.
My shift flies by, and before I know it, I’m out front, restocking the breakfast items as they deplete during the service. The slight advantage to everyone ignoring me is that no one asks me to prepare anything, but my guard is up as I have to avoid people walking into me.
The shift finishes an hour before the breakfast service does, which is enough to allow me the chance to eat. However, after I clock out, I head straight back to Doris’s office to apologize again.
“I really am sorry,” I tell her, ready to finally explain what happened, but instead, I just shake my head. “I messed up. I won’t let it happen again.”
Doris nods. “You’re actually not a bad worker, which surprised me, because I didn’t think you’d last longer than your first shift.” She purses her lips as her gaze drifts up to my hair. “Technically, there’s nothing in the rules to say you can’t color your hair, but that is…”
“A prank.”
Her lips settle into a thin line, but I see pity in her eyes. Then she waves her hand and dismisses me.
I start to leave but stop. “Just to confirm, my next shift is tonight?”
Doris shakes her head. “Tomorrow morning. And tomorrow night as you requested Saturday night off.” When I don’t leave, she tilts her head. “Is there something else?”
When I’d taken the job here, aside from earning some money, I’d seen the opportunity to be able to ask the staff questions about Cole. I’d kept quiet at first; I didn’t want to scare anyone off and I also wanted to get a feel for everyone so that I knew who to talk to first.
The day before Syn’s announcement, I’d finally asked one of the sous chefs as we prepped in the morning, but he was new and hadn’t been here at the time. Since then, while they weren’t exactly going out of their way to avoid me, even the small talk had dried up.
“You’ve worked here a while, right?” I ask. “Do you remember what happened to JP—James Patrick Keyingham?”
Doris turns back to her desk, focusing on a curled printout of inventory that’s resting over her keyboard. “I’m sorry, Ms. Tori, but I need to finish this. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“I know, I’m sorry, it’s just—”
