She went on her 7th job interview. Despite all her smiling, her happy and positive tone, she felt a knot in her stomach everytime they told her the expectations of the job.
But I can’t do that, she thought. I’m not a Designer. I’m not a Developer. Her biggest fear was that she’d have to ask for help on one of the most basic programs.
She COULD design, draw amazing things, and wished they could just see her potential, dammit!!
She was frozen and broken. The ride took her by a giant pond. Frozen over. All she could think about was her brother. It was right by where he had disappeared.
She couldn’t drive by it everyday.
And that’s the thing that gave her courage. That’s why she took the job in Cambridge, she wasn’t working FOR MIT, but she’d be passing by it regularly. Missed it by so little. If she hadn’t screwed up her last semester of junior year in high school. His disappearence drove her crazy, even today, 5 years alater. Still a fresh wound.
The world was ice. Black ice on the roads, looking shiny but dangerous slippery. Grey and a hint of blue. Blue lips, is that how they find you, drowned?
SCENE OF BEING HAUNTED IN THE BEFORE!!
If he were around, she’d ask him for advice. And because he’s not, she’ll figure it all out on her own. The decision is simple, really, what part of your soul do you want to sell out?
The part that will make you cringe by designing stuff for them, and cringing when they ask you to code?
The part that will be better paid, but will require just more business bullshit. They taught you how to dress, how to act in a boardroom, at a meeting.
MBA at 24. Genius.
She’s smart. And doesn’t the degree on her first “real” ie not Vistaprint businesscard indicate her genius before she even walks into a meeting?
They don’t trust me because I’m so young.
In Edinburgh, they ate her up like piranhas.
Don’t you have any GOOD recommendations?
SCENE
Stuff to get you fired for sure. Not that she wasn’t doing a “good” job (according to what SHE believed, and everything her teachers had taught her). No, the guys who were in “control”. The ones who would report back to her boss.
When she signed on, she kept asking for direction. “You’ll figure it out,” he kept saying.
“Don’t be scared, you’ll do fine”
All sorts of pandering encouragement, like she was a little puppy. Or a girl with no self confidence.
The funniest part was that she was SO NERVOUS about that last day in Edinburgh.(Chicago?)
Terrified to get that email from her boss.
And then, she opened it.
And the joke was on him.
He fired THE OTHER GUY.
The one that he had just hired, Hmm, if you are a manager and your first hire has tremendous difficulties trying to read your mind and the second one you hire quits after a few months, doesn’t that tell you something??
SHE LAUGHED. Closed her computer and at 11:37am went out to enjoy the day properly, like a tourist. She was growing proud of her Bic City magnet collection. Something easy to stow away.
Her life, her past.
What if she was born like other people, on the day she graduated?
Take all that stuff off your resume that indicates a “school project”, it doens’t matter in the real world.
And so she put her real past into an imaginary box, tied it up with chains, like Houdini and tossed it into the bottom of the ocean, where it could never get to her.
But like Houdini, her secret broke through to the surface. And it HIT HER IN THE FACE (change!!) just as she was celebrating her 1st anniversary of her new job.
(SHE’s 25)
HE WAS A CODER
SHE WAS A DESIGNER
There’s a website/blog that nobody would know about. They used their SECRET NAMES with each other.
She’d draw sketches, and the next day, it would be online. And he’d give her access to a page for a story. And, like snow, the lines of text would build up.
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