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Chapter 1 – Sadie
“Sadie, you’re pen-clicking again. Stop it, or I’m switching out all your pens for white crayons.”
“Good. I have a bunch of black construction paper I’ll finally get to use.”
“You do not.”
I rolled out of my cubicle and pen-clicked about a hundred more times until Carmen stomped over and stole the pen from my hand. Not that I put up any real resistance. A pen fight sounded like a great way to get stabbed.
“What are you doing?” she asked, peering at the monitors behind me. She had to swipe her bangs out of the way. She was going through a bangs phase, and while they looked fabulous on her, they were constantly falling in her face. “Is that the website redesign you’ve been working on?”
“No.” I rolled back to my desk and turned off all my screens in quick succession before blocking them with my body. Very mature on my part. “No work here. I’ve been watching Mr. Beast play Minecraft all morning.”
“It was one time,” Lenny called from the next cubicle over. Didn’t matter. Any time Carmen and I could work his embarrassing YouTube history into a conversation, we did.
Carmen plopped herself down in the extra chair by my desk. “Seriously, Sadie. Did you show it to the uppity-ups?”
“The Mr. Beast videos? Yes. They were highly impressed with his gaming skills. And his eternal baby face.”
This earned me Carmen’s best mean stare, which was not mean at all. Carmen was like a wriggly puppy, all sweetness, hope, and enthusiastic energy. Which was pretty much how we’d become work friends. She pretended we were buddies, until we were. My stand-offish personality was no match for her optimism.
“I showed them the redesign I made,” I finally admitted, knowing she wouldn’t leave my cubicle until I leveled with her. “Our fearless VP basically patted me on the head, told me it was nice, and said he’d think about it.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yes, huh. So, I’m going to continue to update inventory listings until the end of time on our trusty old website, and do maintenance as needed. Just like always.”
“But you showed him the updated customer demogr—”
“Yep.”
“And how the zoom function—”
“Yep.”
“And the new way to search for—”
“Yep.”
Carmen, sensing I’d reached my limit on this particular conversation, got up to leave, but not before gathering up all the pens on my desk and muttering something in Spanish I was glad I couldn’t understand. Her bangs slid back out of place, and she blew them away with a huff. “I’m keeping all these pens, and I’m never giving them back. Also, you should quit this place with me and defect toyou know where.”
“Whatever.”
Once she left my cubicle, I turned my screens back on and closed up all my work on a project that no longer mattered. I didn’t know why I even cared so much about trying to sell my bosses on a website revamp. Connecting Hearts was one of those old-people gift companies that would only innovate when they were dragged into it kicking and screaming, and certainly not at my insistence.
With all my pens gone, I picked up a pencil instead, rolling it between my palms. Not nearly as satisfying, dang it.
In my defense, I only pen-clicked when I was frustrated, and at the moment, my frustration was high level. It went deeper than the design rejection. Lately, I’d been plagued by a restlessness I couldn’t shake, a need to do something different and impulsive. Sort of like that itchy feeling you got right before deciding to ditch bumper-to-bumper traffic by maybe driving over a gravel divider and a curb to get to the frontage road next to the freeway. Not that I had done that….often.
Work was supposed to be so much better now that the marketing disaster upstairs had been canned, but it wasn’t better. I missed improving the sloppy work Marcus used to send down before letting it go live. I missed putting out fires and fixing things that seemed unfixable, and then watching the sales numbers revive as a result.
Web design, graphic arts, ad copy, marketing. I’d been doing it all. And while the credit would have been nice, it was the importance I’d cared about. Being the smart one in a sea of idiots.
Missing that feeling of superiority meant I had to be a huge egomaniac. Right?
Okay, who was I even arguing with?
I dropped the pencil back on my desk and ignored the idea that had been pestering me ever since Carmen told me GoWithFriends had opened a corporate office in Phoenix, and she was applying. The shiny new building was only three blocks from my apartment.
