Chapter 1 – Secrets and slips

“Morning,” I call over my shoulder when I hear the tell-tale sound of uncomfortable heels approaching. “A 10 on two.”

“No way, no more than one, I don’t believe it,” Sasha insists.

“Then you should have nothing to fear,” I tease her.

“A 10 on 30,” she bets and throws her purse on her desk. “How was the family?” She pulls out her chair, so she can look around the gray cubical wall. I mimic her and push mine out too.

“They are family.”

“Did Hale make it home yet?” I tilt my head and raise my eyebrow. “What? He’s hot!”

“He’s my brother! Besides, you are far too young for him.”

“He looks younger than you do,” She points out. I throw a pencil at her and miss by several inches.

“Why do you think I didn’t say he was too old for you?” I ask her. Hale would never go for someone like Sasha, he’s too calm to put up with her temper. Besides, I think women are the last thing on his mind right now, he’s too busy seeing the world.

“You know for someone with such fine motoric senses your aim really is terrible,” She informs me like an echo from gym class.

“Tell me about it,” I mutter. It’s not really my aim though, it’s my hand to eye coordination that sucks. She should see me at home – I could paint the Mona Lisa freehand if freehand meant I was free to not use my hands.

“Is Hale home yet?” She insists.

“Still in Australia. Criss is home though, you can have him if you want, that’d get rid of Nina.”

“Isn’t the wedding in a week?” I nod discouragedly. “You are not giving me much time to work with here, but I’ll do my best.”

“Well, if all else fails you can always chase after the baby in a few years.”

“Nico is 8 by now, isn’t it time to stop calling him that?”

“He’s 8 years younger than Marie, he’ll always be the baby of the family,” I assure her. Then again, Nico was a surprise. “I hope.”

“Not hoping for more siblings?” She laughs.

“No. No, I think 5 is enough. Just imagine how crowded it’s going to get when Nina starts popping out children too.” And how spoiled they’ll be.

“Invite me to the wedding, I’ll make a scene worthy of spoiling it all.”

“Oh, I wish I could, that would make it all endurable.” I smile at the idea of Nina’s face when she’d see the outsider on her big day.

“I have known you since Nico really was a baby, I had to listen to you complain about sowing ballet costumes for Marie and bitch about Andy stealing your CDs – when are you going to let me actually meet them?”

“Sorry Sash, family rule.”

“Your family is weird,” She informs me with a disbelieving shake of her head.

“Well can you blame us? With how much you’ve been drooling over Hale just from pictures, can you imagine the circus it would be if we actually allowed people to come home and meet him?” I laugh, even though it’s not really a laughing matter. Home is the one place we don’t have to hide, that has always been the rule. We can’t risk someone seeing the baby flying across the room or a message from Hale writing itself on the whiteboard – and people could get seriously hurt with Andy spewing fire all over the place whenever he likes. No, it just won’t do. Even if Sash will never understand it.

“Did you finish the assignment?” I ask instead.

“No,” She says hesitantly. “Did you?” I hold up my folder and smile.

“Do-gooder!” She accuses. “The Mat is going to have my head for this!” Matthew Wells, the boss who treats everyone like they weren’t fit to wipe his shoes, but begs and grovels at the feet of his wife whenever she’s around – hence the nickname the Mat.

“Well, that all depends I suppose.”

“On what?” She demands.

“On whether or not you can manage to print it out in the next…” I look down at my watch. “30 minutes.” She looks at me intensely for a few seconds, then her chair and her head disappear behind the cubical wall and I hear her fingers drum against the keyboard.

“You finished mine!” She exclaims in a whisper. “How did you manage that?” Her demanding head pops back out.

“I stayed late last night.”

“No, you didn’t, I was with you, we went out for drinks,” She says as if I were an Alzheimer’s patient.

“No offense sweetie, but you left at 10. I went back here and finished up.”

“There is something seriously wrong with you girl.”

“Nina is staying at the house to make sure all the preparations go smoothly, and she can have ‘the most wonderful wedding in all of history!’” I make my voice light and fairy-like and wave my hands elegantly in the air. She looks at me with the intense ‘I’m reading your mind’ stare so common to those who have never actually read a mind or seen it done.

“This one needs finishing too.” She hands me a nearly empty folder like she’s doing me a favor.

“No, no, no. You need to do your own work every now and then.”

“Then you do yours.” She turns serious in a heartbeat. “I mean it, your designs are amazing. The detail, the stitching alone – you shouldn’t be stuck here doing the groundwork for others, you should be out there doing your own thing, you have the talent for it.”

“Never gonna happen.”

“Why not? Your skirt collection alone is turning heads on the street, you make clothes that actually look good and that normal people can wear and feel good in.”

“Then let normal people wear them and let others design the fancy, uncomfortable stuff.” She’s been on me for ages to show my designs to the Mat.

“I’m disappointed in you,” She pouts. Hurried footsteps come our way and a second later Dan looks in, all crouched down and flushed faced.

“He moved up the meeting. He moved up the meeting again!” There’s the familiar touch of desperation in his voice like he wasn’t expecting the coffee to be hot.

“When?” I ask.

“10 minutes.” He whispers. Dan has a theory that the Mat can hear any and every thing you say about him, even when’s he’s four floors up, but also seems to think that whispering will help. I guess that after being the Mat’s assistant for more than a month you start to get paranoid – Dan has had the job for nearly two years. My theory is that this is largely due to the fact that the Mat can never keep Dan in the room long enough to fire him.

I look down at my watch.

“I called it, pay up,” I tell Sasha.

“You bet he would move up the meeting?” Dan doesn’t approve of playing with fire.

“He always moves up the meeting Dan, and really, we just bet on how much, not if.” But he is running crouched down to the next people he has to inform. Dan is not the tallest guy to begin with, so there’s really no reason for him to be creeping along like that – but it always brings out a smile among us gray-wallers, so I’m not complaining.

Sasha reluctantly hands me 10$.

“Two hours early – how did you call that so easily?”

“You want to know my secret?” I ask her teasingly. She tilts her head and gives me that ‘seriously?’ look. “I’m psychic,” I tell her with my best poker face as I place the 10 in the jar full of 10s I’ve won from her over the past couple of months. Every year on her birthday I empty it and use it to buy her a present. “How else would you explain it?”

“You’re such a pain in my ass.” She picks up a folder and walks over to the printer for the project. I pick up my own and my notebook and follow her to the elevator.

“I mean, honestly, it’s not like as if I could tell from simply observing how many cups of coffee Dan has spilled this morning. I most definitely didn’t notice Mrs. Foot’s car in the parking lot last night, or that the Mat’s is parked in the exact same spot as yesterday. And of course, the girl with the pastries I met in the elevator this morning was no clue what so ever.”

“Okay, okay, Sherlock, I get it.”

“Maybe you’d stand a better chance if you weren’t so hopeful that you’d get the chance to finish your homework before class starts. 30 minutes, really?” She turns to me and walks backward instead.

“Just because you have everything filed a week before it’s assigned to you…”

“Sasha…” I try to point out the ‘slippery floor’ sign behind her.

“Don’t think you can act…”

“Sasha,” I try again with a smile.

 “Like you’re smarter than the rest of us! If you were so smart you’d be out of here by now!”

“Watch out!” I call, but too late. The folder flies up in the air and the papers fly everywhere. I don’t think, I just act. I lock onto Sasha and hold her in the air, slowing her fall. Already Dan is halfway on his knees to catch her. I lock on to the papers too and slow them down as well, just enough to not make it look like they are falling faster than Sasha. Dan is in position. I gently let Sasha fall into his arms and let the papers fly loose again. I look sheepishly around. No one noticed. Thank goodness.

“Don’t you know that you’re supposed to set up signs? You stupid, moronic, waste of a…” She shouts at the janitor.

“Sasha.” I point out the sign she hadn’t seen.

“Oh,” She says. She looks down for a second, and then: “Stupid, moronic death traps!” She picks up her shouting again, this time taking it out on her shoes. “Whoever decided these should be office wear should be hung!” She flings her shoe across the room into one of the gray walls, breaking its heal in the process.

“Thank you for catching her Dan, that was very heroic of you.” He looks like he just caught a dragon with his bare hands. In his defense he kind of did. A dragon who now has her second shoe in hand, ready to throw. I grab hold of it before she can take aim at the painting of the Mat on the wall.

“You, my dear, have a meeting in 5 minutes, and you already have to keep your balance with one broken heel.” She sends me a look like I’m the Anti-Christ. “I know, I know, you hate this place. Guess what, you’ll never save up money or get to quit with style if the Mat fires you first.” The dragon breaths out deeply, but no fire comes out. Dan gently sits her down on the floor, and I walk over and pick up her other shoe.