The Other Black Girl(38)
“I… I just asked if you had a good birthday.”
“Oh. Yeah, I did. Thanks.”
She looked back down at her magazine.
Nella felt her throat tighten. That’s it? she wondered as she stepped into the elevator and pressed thirteen. The metal doors shut in front of her at an excruciatingly slow pace, granting her one last long look at the woman who had given her such an icy reception.
Floors came and went beneath her as she turned India’s greeting over and over in her mind. Something had changed; the look she’d given Nella had matched the one she gave most of Nella’s white colleagues.
Hazel had spent more time talking to India over the course of three weeks than Nella had in the last two years. Was it possible Hazel’s kindness had caused India to group Nella in with everyone else? Had India and Hazel even concocted this note thing together in order to pull some kind of weird prank? India did have so many connections within the building. She knew where all the hidden entrances were… and probably had access to unlimited envelopes and purple pens.
But why?
Nella breathed out, then in. No. No. She had to be overthinking it. After all, her nerves from that scary note were still warping her perception of the world. India was fine. You came into the office before everybody else, and she just hadn’t expected to have to do her song-and-dance greeting so early. How would you feel if you had to smile at one thousand people a day?
This logic only got Nella through a few floors. She was mulling it all over into a pulp, and by the time the doors opened on thirteen, the words Oh hi, Nella had tacked themselves onto the words Leave Wagner, and it was all playing in one nasty loop in her mind, a warning of she didn’t know what.
Nella scrutinized every empty desk as she passed on the way to her own. She was glad to be free from the confines of the elevator, but she couldn’t say she was happy to be back in the office. This was what she’d thought she wanted—to return to the scene of the crime; to explore the premises undisturbed. But everything about Wagner felt different now. The bright hospital-ward lighting felt more clinical than ever. And the AC didn’t feel like it was on at all.
She dropped her things on her chair and booted up her computer before creeping over to Hazel’s cubicle, startled by what she saw. Nella had never noticed how clear or organized her neighbor’s desk was. Everything had its place: To the left of the keyboard were two piles; one labeled To Do, the other labeled Check with Maisy. Hazel’s office supplies were lined along the back wall, jars of rubber bands and thumbtacks on one side, boxes of staples and paper clips on the other. And in the far corner sat a mason jar filled with highlighters, pencils, and pens.
Black pens. One red. Two blue. And zero purple.
Placated for the time being, Nella returned to her cubicle, sat down, and closed her eyes. Instead of darkness, she saw interactions from the day before. People. Everyone she’d come into contact with had been fine: the production team, the publicists, the other assistants. And Hazel—Hazel had been chummier than ever before with Nella. Sending her GIFs and a link to a cool Black hair mecca in Brooklyn. Trying to distract her from Vera’s nitpicking.
Come to think of it, the only person in the office who’d had any kind of problem with Nella had been Vera. God, how stern she’d been. How unfair. Just because Nella had spoken her truth about Shartricia, and was absurdly late to work that one time… those things didn’t make her a bad assistant. She knew what a bad assistant looked like. Trust. All anyone needed to do was look around the office when the other editors went out to lunch. The other assistants were easily distracted. Dispassionate. Neglectful.
Neglectful.
Nella’s eyes popped wider than they had hours earlier in bed. She’d forgotten something. Not a hint as to where the note might have come from, but a task for Vera: tweak the online copy so that it spoke to a younger audience. Perhaps that was the real reason why she had felt pulled to work so early. It wouldn’t be the first time her subconscious was more on it than she was.
Newly humbled, Nella rapped her fingers impatiently on her desk while she looked for the original Word file on her computer and hit Print. The printer on the other side of the wall spat out the page immediately. Nella glanced over toward the sound of the machine, caught by surprise. Usually, first thing in the morning, the machine took close to ninety seconds to warm up from sleep mode.
She grabbed the page and trudged back to her desk. It was only after she’d gotten to her chair, poised to sit down, that she realized she had two pages in her hand, not one. She placed her page on her chair, then headed back to the printer to leave the other sheet for its rightful owner.
It was common courtesy to do this. Nella preferred this method to trying to figure out whose it was by either reading the page’s contents or by doing what Bridget always did, which was circle the office and wave the page high in the air like a pair of stray panties.
And yet, alone in the empty office, Nella broke etiquette and took an unabashed look at what she’d accidentally grabbed. What she saw made her stop in her tracks, just as she turned the corner.
It was a list. A spreadsheet, really. It looked official, like it had been drawn up using the software Wagner editors used to organize the books they were working on—except the titles in the left column weren’t book titles at all.
Aaliyah H.
Ayanna P.
Camille P.