Chapter no 6

The Coworker

EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER

To: Vixed Employees From: Natalie Farrell Subject: Welcome party!

I hope everyone will give a wonderful welcome to our newest employee, Dawn Schiff! She’s replacing Edgar Hines as our new accountant, so she has some big shoes to fill, but I can tell already that she will do an amazing job. I brought some refreshments to enjoy in the break room at 3 as a welcome to the newest member of the Vixed family.

Please join us! Natalie

To: Mia Hodge From: Dawn Schiff

Subject: Re: Greetings

Dear Mia,

This week, I decorated my cubicle. I wanted to do something similar to what Natalie has because I love her sense of style. She has a plant growing in a pot in her cubicle,

with pretty purple flowers, which I noticed her watering every day. I asked her about it yesterday, and she said it was an iris plant.

So yesterday, I went to the grocery store after work and I bought an iris plant just like Natalie’s.

I know what you’re thinking. You always said I shouldn’t try to be like other, more popular girls. I should just be myself, yadda yadda yadda. But I didn’t do exactly what Natalie did—I added my own unique touch. I decorated the plant with some of my turtles from home. I don’t mean real turtles, of course. I have a bunch of glass turtles in different shapes and sizes and even colors, although it isn’t really biologically accurate.

I put one of the turtles in the soil next to the flowering iris. Then I surrounded the pot with a few more turtles. I also have a turtle mouse pad that I brought in for myself—it’s a photograph of a sea turtle swimming through the green-tinted ocean. Even though I still feel uncomfortable working in a new place, it made me feel better to have my turtles with me.

Natalie has made me feel welcome though. She has been so sweet. At the end of my first week, she threw a little welcome party for me in the break room with refreshments and everything! Well, the refreshments were just a bag of Doritos and a bottle of diet cola, but it was still very nice of her. I don’t know if anyone has ever thrown me a party before in my entire life.

You always asked me why I never had birthday parties as a child or allowed you to make me one, and I was afraid to tell you. Well, here’s my confession. When I turned five years old, my mother threw me a large birthday party in our house, inviting every child in our preschool class. But the children wouldn’t stop playing with my stuff and I started screaming, threw my beautiful vanilla frosted cake on the floor, and then locked myself in my bedroom and refused to come out. After that, I was too traumatized to ever want a party again and my parents weren’t excited to make me one.

I always preferred to have a private party with just you and me. Remember when we made that cake together, including

our own buttercream frosting made entirely from scratch? Except we accidentally used double the butter and the buttercream frosting tasted like pure butter, and the cake was underbaked. We still ate it all though, and it was better than any party with a bunch of kids from school.

But Natalie’s party was nice. Even though I dislike Doritos.

And diet cola.

There’s a café downstairs where a lot of people purchase their lunches, but I bring my lunch every day and store it in the refrigerator, although I strongly suspect nobody is cleaning it on a regular basis. I suggested to Seth that I could create a schedule for people to alternate cleaning days and post the schedule on the refrigerator door. He told me he would think about it. That was a week ago, and he hasn’t given me an answer. Maybe I’ll ask him about it again later today.

Today my lunch was white. Yes, I still prefer monochromatic meals. I can’t explain why. I just feel uncomfortable when, say, I’m eating a sandwich that is mostly white and then there’s this big hunk of green lettuce in it. Not to say I won’t eat it, but I would prefer the sandwich was all one color. You’re the only person in the world who didn’t judge me for it. Remember how in the cafeteria at school, the other kids would play a game to try to squirt some ketchup or mustard onto my lunch to ruin the color integrity of it?

I’ve been eating lunch every day at approximately 11:40, give or take sixty seconds. I walk to the break room, retrieve my sandwich from the refrigerator, and then I fill up my mug with cold water from the filter. I was just sitting down to eat when Natalie and Kim came into the break room with their lunches (salads) in identical Tupperware containers.

Natalie and Kim spend a lot of time together. You don’t have to ever worry about me becoming best friends with Natalie (as if anyone could ever replace you!), because Kim appears to have filled that role. Kim recently got engaged, which I know because Kim keeps coming over to Natalie’s cubicle and then they talk about wedding planning for an hour or longer. Sometimes I consider joining in the conversation,

but I don’t know anything about wedding planning so I have little to offer. I wish they would ask my opinion on one of the dresses in the magazines Kim brings to show Natalie, but so far, they haven’t. But today they asked if they could join me, and of course, I said yes.

In general, I prefer to eat by myself, but this was a good way to get to know Natalie better. And Kim as well. Maybe all three of us could be friends together. In school, it was always just you and me, and I know you said that was all we needed, but three people can be friends. That’s allowed.

Kim asked me if I liked working here. I told them it was fine. I didn’t want to tell them that the previous accountant left everything an indecipherable mess. I have had to sort through everything from scratch. But I don’t even know that man, so it wouldn’t be nice to talk about what a shockingly terrible job he did.

“I could never be an accountant,” Natalie said. She flipped that silky blond hair over her shoulder, then she started talking about how bad she was at math, how she was always just barely passing her classes by the skin of her teeth.

I didn’t want Natalie to get too down on herself, so I pointed out that she is very good at sales. My mother always taught me that paying people compliments is a good way to make friends. I never used to listen to her, but now I realize she was probably right. And since I have a chance for a fresh start, why not take it?

And anyway, the compliment was true. I haven’t been here long, but I already know Natalie is one of the top salespeople. The best at the company, according to the spreadsheets. She’s extremely skilled at talking to people. I hear her on the phone sometimes, and I’ll pause what I’m doing and just listen to her tap dance.

Kim started giggling and said, “Nat could sell ice at the north pole. Especially to a man.”

That comment resulted in Natalie and Kim bursting into giggles. I guess they meant that Natalie is so attractive. There’s a sales intern who is about twenty-five years old, and

he always asks Natalie if he can get her something for lunch, but he never asks anyone else—and I’m fairly sure he doesn’t make her pay for it. Kim is sort of pretty too, but she doesn’t quite have the same indescribable quality as Natalie does.

Then Natalie paid me a compliment. “Cute mug,” she said. So guess which mug she was talking about? It’s the one you gave me years ago, as a birthday gift. A lot of people will go into a store and buy the first thing they see—usually a candle—but you always put a lot of thought into every gift. This is the ceramic mug which is painted the color of the ocean, with the three-dimensional turtle swimming through it. Sometimes I like to run my fingers over the bump of the turtle shell. I can’t even tell you how much I love that mug, and every time I drink from it, I think of you and get a happy

feeling.

Natalie’s words felt like a genuine compliment. Sometimes when people say nice things to me, it’s clear they don’t really mean it. Sometimes it almost feels like they’re making fun of me. But Natalie meant it. For a moment, I was sitting at the cool table in high school.

So I thanked her. Then I asked the most important question of all: “Do you like turtles?”

Natalie said she did. Then I explained that the turtle’s shell is actually part of its skeleton. That it’s a bit like a rib cage, which is why turtles can’t be separated from their shells. Not without killing them. When I told her that, Natalie said, “Wow.”

I felt so excited that Natalie and Kim were interested in learning more about turtles. You’re the only one I’ve ever met who has been interested in hearing turtle facts, and that includes my parents. And honestly, there were times when I wasn’t sure if even you wanted to hear about turtles. But me and Natalie and Kim ate together for the next twenty minutes, and I told them a lot of other interesting facts about turtles. They both listened to everything I had to say, and they even asked some questions that I of course was able to answer easily because I know so much about turtles.

There’s a lot more I could have told them, but then Natalie said she had to get to a sales call, so they both had to leave. I’m already planning out some new interesting things about turtles that I can talk to them about tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Sincerely, Dawn Schiff