“Jesus, lady, make up your mind! Are you taking the seat or not?”

“I was, I just thought—”

“Far as I’m concerned that means no. Move it.”

Clara, head thudding dully from the lasting gift of her terrible blind date, stood on the rocking subway car with her mouth hanging open. Her morning had begun in a way even she, whom Elsie often referred to (lovingly, of course) as the resident Pollyanna of New York City, couldn’t spin as something positive. Something she could get past and still have a decent day, maybe, but even she couldn’t pretend it had been a good start. She’d woken up with her television still on and blaring with some hideously tan man yelling at her about how much his special broom was going to change her life. On the floor beside her, Bo was mewing loudly, either in protest to the awful infomercial man, or because she had totally forgotten to give him any food last night. As punishment he’d made sure to crap on the floor and nowhere near the litter box, something he appeared to be trying to draw her attention to the way a toddler would draw his mom’s glance to a mess he’d made in order to regain her undivided attention.

“Seriously, Bo? On the floor?”

She’d almost reminded him that he knew how bad her night had been and then stopped, feeling stupid for trying to have a rational conversation with a cat. She’d always been happy to be able to truthfully report that she had not, in fact, actually turned into a cat lady, but if she started trying to have logical conversations with the cranky old tabby she’d have to kiss that affirmation goodbye. She laughed, something that sounded pathetic to her own ears, which only made Bo mew louder.

“Alright, I got it. You want your food. Just chill, will you?”

She’d sat up then and immediately wished she hadn’t. It wasn’t like she’d had a whole ton to drink the night before, but Clara wasn’t someone who ever had a whole lot to drink and so the two—two? Or Lord help her, had it been three?—shots she’d grudgingly taken the night before had done their damage the way a larger quantity of alcohol would to someone with more experience under her belt. Not to mention the fact that she was terribly petite. For these reasons or some other crueler, less-obvious twist of fate, Clara had woken up with the headache buzzing behind her eyes and a mouth that had tasted something foul. She’d showered for as long as time would allow and brushed her teeth three times, but the head and the sour taste were still lingering somewhere in the background of her head, ready to pop up again at full force without any notice at all. She’d tried to ignore it as she moved onto her subway car, doing her best to ignore the whole host of terrible smells she found there. She was resolved not to let the foul start to her day make her cranky with the people around her. For that reason, she had stood to let an elderly woman who was making her way towards her have her seat, only to have some jackass in an expensive suit chew her out and take it for himself.

“I was actually standing up to give my seat to—”

“Then you’re a sucker. You think that broad would give you a seat?”

“Well, no, but I don’t need someone to give me a seat.”

“Then you don’t have anything to be bitching about!”

“But she’s—”

“Look, if you wanna stand around running your mouth at me, I’m gonna expect something in return. You’re a cute chick, even if you are dumb enough to get up out of your seat, so if you wanna work something out, I’m all ears. Otherwise, I get paid a lot of money to talk to people. No reason for me to do it with you for free.”

God, in moments like that Clara wished she was Elsie. Elsie or Finnley. Either one of them would have taken one look at this jerk and totally let him have it, especially for that comment about working something out with him for his time. If it had been Elsie, she would probably have just reached down and punched him in the nuts, then slipped into the seat again while he pitched over to one side. From the way they both acted, you would have thought they were the ones born and bred in New York instead of her. All she’d ever really wanted was to be halfway decent, but as of late, that was starting to feel like more and more of an impossibility.

Stepping into her neighborhood coffee shop hadn’t done anything to improve matters for her. First a man ran into her and spilled his coffee all over the front of her dress, only to make a snide comment to her about how he’d probably done her a favor because her dress wasn’t “all that” to look at anyhow. Then a guy who was yelling loudly into his cell phone, and yelling words nobody had any right to yell out in public to begin with, cornered her on her way out with a wad of napkins. After trying to wipe the front of her dress off and copping more than a little feel while he was at it, he’d tried to bully her into giving him her number, or even better just dropping all of her plans for the day and coming with him while he did his business. By the time she actually made it through the front door of Cubed, it had also begun to rain, driving the humidity level up through the roof. She felt like the unwitting star of a show centered all around the girl with the worst luck in the world, a role she was not at all interested in taking on. For a minute, she just stood there, dripping wet and trying to shake off the excess water on her with hands and a cardigan that were every bit as wet as the rest of her.

“Oh my God, Clara! What the hell happened to you?!”

“What happened to me? I don’t even know how to start answering that question.”

Although Clara was almost always in an annoyingly good mood, she was mortified to feel the onset of a wave of tears she was pretty sure she would in no way be able to handle. Finnley, who had sort of a rough-and-tumble, tomboy exterior, saw the struggle on her friend’s face right away and hopped to her feet. She hurried to Clara’s side, taking her by the arm and leading her towards the bathroom as nonchalantly as possible. Unfortunately, they had to pass Bradley, who was about as subtle as a box of bricks. He took one look at Clara and let out a laugh.

“Oh man! You look like a drowned rat, Clara! Never thought I’d be saying that to a girl as hot as you, but you totally do!”

“Hey, Brad?”

“Yes, oh mighty Finnley?”

“How about you sit and spit, huh?”

“Hey! What the hell?! I didn’t even do anything!”

“Jesus, sometimes you’re a real idiot, you know that? If the boss comes in, let him know we’re in the ladies.”

“And what am I supposed to tell him you guys are doing in there?” Bradley asked sulkily, pushing his glasses up his nose before crossing his arms moodily across a chest so slim it almost looked concave. “Having some kind of chick fest?”

“Tell him one of us has female problems. That should do the trick!”

Bradley made a disgusted noise, far from hearing anything even remotely resembling female trouble, and clammed up entirely. Finnley squeezed Clara’s arm and grinned devilishly, enjoying torturing her male co-worker just as she always did. It wasn’t until she got the two of them behind closed, sequestered doors that she turned to talk to Clara, and by that time, tears were already spilling over her lids onto her face.

“Aw, come on now, don’t do that! Seriously, Clara. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cry before. You’re supposed to be the happy one!”

“I know,” Clara gulped and sniffled. “I’m trying.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Clara sobbed, absolutely appalled to find that instead of calming down she was starting to cry harder. “Honestly, Finnley, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Well, for starters, you’re covered in coffee. Here, hold on a minute, will you?”

“Where are you going?” Clara asked quickly, grossed out by the hint of panic in her voice but feeling utterly powerless to stop it. “Not to get anyone else, right? Please don’t tell Travis I’m in here losing it. He’ll want to send me home for a sick day or something, and I don’t want to do that. I really don’t want to just go home and sit there. That’ll drive me totally batshit.”

“Batshit?” Finnley laughed, reaching out with one expertly placed thumb to wipe away a combination of tears and mascara, “Ha! Now I know you’re having a bad day.”

“What, just from the word batshit?”

“Definitely from the word batshit. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say anything stronger than ‘heck’ before this.”

“That’s not true,” Clara responded immediately, giving a pathetic hiccup as she spoke. “Is it?”

“Maybe not quite, but close. But just chill, okay? I’ll be right back. I just want to get a couple of things to help clean you up.”

Clara sniffled and nodded, waiting until Finnley slipped out of the door to get a look at herself in the mirror.

“Oh, good Lord, Clara,” she sighed, admonishing herself without any real power behind it, “you’re acting like a total baby.”

She definitely was, and she knew it, but saying it wasn’t seeming to make any kind of difference. Clara was typically what someone from the South would call a “pick herself up by her bootstraps” kind of a girl, but even she had her breaking point, and for some reason, she was coming up on it quickly. Give her a day or two and she’d be a-ok, but for the moment? For the moment, not so much.

“Knock knock.”

“Finnley?”

“Nope, it’s Model Search America. We heard there was a sobbing, wet girl huddled in here and we thought what the hell?! Sounds like our type of girl!”

“Very funny. Come in.”

Finnley did just that, chuckling to herself merrily, but not in a way that felt at all unkind. Finnley, although only a year older than Clara, felt like a big sister. This was the way Clara imagined things would have been if she’d had a real family growing up, a thought that only made her tears well up all over again.

“Come on now, stop that. Bradley was right; you really do look like a drowned rat. Here, put these on.”

“Gee, thanks. You sure do know how to compliment a girl.”

“Have you looked at yourself?”

Both girls turned to look at Clara in the mirror, Finnley standing slightly behind her so that she could get a really good look. There she stood, her hair stringy and wet, her face resembling some kind of terribly macabre clown, or maybe a mime, with her mascara running down it in long, sloppy streaks. She looked like a hot mess, is what she looked like, and when she made eye contact with Finnley, she let out a shaky laugh. It felt good, the laughter. It made her feel like she was finally starting to be herself again, and by the time she spoke up again, she was sure she was done with her crying. For the moment, anyway.

“Truth time?”

“Definitely,” Finnley laughed, hopping up on the bathroom counter, “that’s my favorite.”

“Drowned rat. Drowned rat for sure.” 

The two girls laughed, and Clara began to feel better for the first time since realizing (which happened very quickly) that the blind date was going downhill, and fast. Finnley went to work on her, cleaning up her face and making it over again with surprising proficiency for a girl who didn’t seem to care about makeup whatsoever. The last thing she did was give Clara a change of clothes, something that wasn’t totally covered in coffee and drenched with rain. What she gave her was a shirt that was so long it went down to her knees and a pair of cut off leggings that went all the way down to her ankles. Finnley was a good deal taller than Clara, and the end result was that she looked like a child playing dress up in her older sister’s clothes. Looking at herself in the mirror caused another burst of laughter, one that had Clara feeling almost all of the way better. Finnley took her by the shoulders and made a big show of looking her up and down, evaluating her work and then nodding in approval.

“You could do with a belt or something, I’m not gonna lie.”

“Happen to have one of those with you as well?”

“Not on me, no. But you’ll do. Now, what are we going to do about the hangover?”

“What?!” Clara exclaimed, knowing she was turning crimson and completely unable to stop it. “What are you talking about?”

“Please, like I’ve never shown up to work hungover before. Just because you haven’t, doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t do it on the regular. A lot of people do it. There’s nothing to feel bad about, believe me.”

“But how did you know?”

“Because your eyes are totally bloodshot, and despite valiant efforts to get rid of it, I can smell the tiniest hint of whiskey on your breath.”

“But that means Travis will be able to smell it, too!”

“Nope, not true. Here, pop one of these. They’re cinnamon mints and they might not taste great, but you definitely won’t smell like anything aside from that. I’m going to give you some eye drops, and that’ll take care of the whole bloodshot thing. Aside from that, lots of water and maybe a red bull. We’ll make it through this, okay? I promise.”

“Thanks, Finnley,” she said quietly, feeling dangerously close to crying again and fighting very hard against it. “I really do appreciate it. This made my whole day turnaround.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Finnley answered with a grim look on her face. “Travis wants a meeting.”

“With me?”

“Nope. Or at least not with just you. He wants a meeting with all of us, which probably means something’s up.”

“Maybe not,” Clara said slowly, trying to spin a positive angle she didn’t at all feel. “Maybe it’s just some kind of status meeting.”

“But he always plans those.”

“Maybe it’s an impromptu meeting then. Maybe he’s trying to keep us on our toes.”

“Um, if you say so. Something tells me that’s not quite it.”

As it turned out, Finnley was right on this one. The moment she and Clara came out of the little bathroom, they were summoned into Cubed’s tiny excuse for a conference room where the rest of the small company were already waiting. They attracted quite a bit of attention, albeit of the nervous sort, as each of the others (all males aside from the two of them) seemed to have no idea where to look or how to handle the fact that Clara had just been crying. Men were funny like that. They were all pomp and bravado, right up until a woman started crying, and then they couldn’t seem to figure out what to do with themselves. It was finally Bradley who approached Clara to try and say something, looking down at the floor and clearing his throat awkwardly as he came.

“Look, Clara. I didn’t mean to act like a dick, okay?”

“I know that. You weren’t being one.”

“Except that I kind of was, right?”

“I don’t know. Want me to be honest?”

“Probably should. I’m gonna have to learn someday, right?”

“Right,” she laughed, tugging at the too big shirt she was now wearing as a dress. “I guess so. If I’m being honest, you kind of were, but I don’t think you were doing it on purpose. And I wouldn’t have gotten so upset about it if I wasn’t already having a bad time.”

“Somebody spilled coffee on you?”

“They did indeed, and that was after I got yelled at and hit on by some jackass on the subway and then another jackass in the coffee shop.”

“A lot of us jackasses roaming around, huh?”

“You’re not a jackass, just a little bit clueless sometimes. And yes, there definitely are.”

“Hey, Clara?”

“Mhm?”

“Some of it was my fault, wasn’t it?”

“Come on, I just told you—”

“No, I mean the fact that you were already having a bad time or whatever.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The date last night?”

“What about it?”

“Come on, Clara, I heard about it.”

“Oh God, did you really?”

“I did. Greg came back to my girl’s place last night. He’s her cousin, did I tell you that?”

“No, actually, and neither did he.”

“Well he is. That’s why I was angling so hard for you to go out with him. My girl’s been nagging me to find someone for him, someone who could, you know, straighten him out. That’s how she put it, that he needed straightening out. I would never have said something like that because I’d never even met the guy before.”

“You’d never even met him?”

“Um, no? Is that bad?”

“I don’t know. Not bad exactly, but I was kind of trusting that you knew the guy when you asked me to go out with him.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t really know the etiquette of that kind of thing. I guess I do now, but you don’t need to worry. I won’t try and set you up again. Honestly, I don’t think I know anyone worth your time.”

“That’s sweet of you to say. But what did he say?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Greg,” she prodded gently, not really wanting to know what the guy had thought about her, and at the same time feeling incapable of ignoring her morbid curiosity about that very thing. “You said you’d heard about our date from him. What did he say?”

“Right! Man, I don’t know. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“No, but also yes. You better just tell me, or it’s going to bug me.”

“Jesus, I don’t know. He said you were a prude, okay? He may have used the term cock tease once or twice. It was messed up. I want you to know I told him that, Clara. I know we fuck with each other, but you’re like a sister to me, and I would never let some douchebag talk about you that way without getting into it with him.”

“You don’t have to do that. I don’t want you and your girlfriend to fight, especially not over something like that. I don’t think it’s worth it.”

“Don’t worry about it. We didn’t fight. My chick finally realized her cousin’s sort of a piece of shit, so I guess you could say you did me a favor, as messed up as it is.”

“At least something good came out of it.”

At that comment, Bradley made a face like someone was shoving splinters of wood under his fingernails, and Clara laughed sympathetically. She threw her arms around him and gave him a fierce hug, thinking to herself that if she were to have a brother she would like him to be something a lot like this. She wouldn’t say it because it was too sappy and they would probably only make fun of her, but she loved her guys. She loved Finnley, too. She loved her little family, and no shitty blind date was ever going to change that. These were the people who made her feel safe and that was worth a whole lot, especially to someone who’d spent a lot of time feeling the opposite of safe when she was young.

“Brad, come on, seriously! You have to stop. I’m not mad, okay? Not mad at all. You have to stop feeling bad, or I might have to start crying again. Do you want that?”

“Oh man, so much no.”

“Good. Then hug me back and drop it.”

“Yes ma’am. Dropped.”

He hugged her fiercely to him so that she really did get choked up again, and from somewhere behind her, she could hear Finnley making exaggerated gagging sounds. Basically, everything was starting to feel like it had gone back to something close to normal, right up until Travis entered the room and shut the door with a bang.

“Woah!” Bradley exclaimed, breaking the hug but keeping one arm around her shoulders and giving her a noogie with the hand that was now free. “What’s up with the closed door, boss?”

“Because, Bradley, this is a closed meeting. That’s what you do with closed meetings. You close the door.”

That. That right there. All it took was that one comment and everyone in the room knew that something was up. Travis had never been anything close to a serious, stuffy boss, and to see him act like one now was more than a little bit jarring. If the rest of them were experiencing anything like Clara was, it was a little bit like getting chewed out by the parent that usually played the good cop in the house. It drove home what Finnley had said, too. Whatever had made Travis call this meeting, it wasn’t for a routine status report meeting. This was something different, and it was something that was making him unbelievably on edge.

“Alright, guys, there’s no sense in drawing this thing out so why don’t you all just sit down and we’ll get down to business.”

This, too, was totally unlike anything Travis had ever done with them, even when a meeting was happening because they’d screwed up and knew it. Usually there were doughnuts, bagels, and various other breakfast treats along with a good ten minutes or so of light-hearted banter that had nothing to do with work. Travis had never been the “get down to business” type of guy and the fact that he was trying to be now gave Clara a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Later, she would tell herself that she knew. Maybe not all of her, maybe not the part of her she was most inclined to pay attention to when she was out and navigating her day-to-day world, but the part of everyone that heralded from somewhere primal and deeply rooted in the past. It was that little voice of warning, the one that tried its damnedest to warn of impending disaster.

“Good. So I’m not going to beat around the bush with you guys. There’s something big coming, or maybe coming. Things might be changing for Cubed, and I thought you guys should know.”

“What’s the deal, Travis? Are you firing us all?”

“No, Finnley, I’m not, but we can talk about getting rid of you if that’s what you’re interested in.”

Everyone laughed, but Clara didn’t think it was all that funny. Truth be told, she didn’t think it was funny at all. It wasn’t the joke specifically, there’d been plenty of that sort of thing since she’d come to work with her merry little band of misfits. No, the thing that bothered her about this was that it didn’t feel like it was one hundred percent a joke. There was an edge to Travis’s voice she hadn’t heard before, and it was an edge that told her all bets were off. Even Finnley seemed to hear it, and instead of fighting back, something that was second nature to her, she sat back and slumped down deep in her chair, her eyes wide and trained on Travis exclusively. That seemed to make him rethink the way he was handling them, but not enough to make him revert back to his usual easy going self. Whatever was eating him up was doing a very good job of it, and all of the sudden, Clara was struck by an almost overwhelming need to clamp her hands over her ears like a child. She might have done it too, if she hadn’t been too slow. As it was, before she could even flinch, Travis had just come right out and said it, the thing that threw her entire notion of what her life was going to be into turmoil.

“You guys need to know this, and it needs to come from me. We’ve had someone come in and express an interest in the company.”

“An interest?” Bradley broke in, his brow furrowed in concentration and unhappiness. “What does that mean?”

“It means someone wants to buy us out. Someone wants to buy us out, and we’re thinking of taking them up on it.”

Amidst the immediate turmoil that broke out with that harsh declaration, Clara almost didn’t hear the sound of her phone dinging, letting her know she’d gotten a text message. For some reason, she was just sure that it would be from Elsie, that somehow she had known about the buyout and would have something totally uplifting to say. Instead, what she found was a message from an unknown number and what it said made her throat clench up so tightly she was sure she’d never be able to breathe again. Someone was watching her and that someone wanted to hurt her. What she wasn’t sure of was why, or how much.

“Good girls go to heaven, but only when they have a family waiting for them. Who will be waiting for you? If you want to find your family, you’ll visit the older Mr. Grant at the prison where he’s wrongfully held.”