“Do you think we can’t track everything you do on this computer?” I asked.
He squinted, trying to make sense of what was going on. I could hear the squeak of rusty gears turning inside his head. All this thinking was hard for poor Josh.
Taking pity on him and his feeble powers of deduction, I decided to walk him through the features of the keylogger. “Here’s a record of everything you did on this computer last night. See, this is where you disabled the virus scanner. And here’s where you visited a website called GiganticAsses.xxx. It says you spent about fifteen minutes there before heading over to PokerParty.com. Two hours later, you deleted your browser history, and then turned the virus scanner back on.”
Finally, understanding dawned on his face. “You’re spying on me?”
“Very perceptive.”
“That’s illegal.”
“Oh, but it’s not.”
I stood up and pulled a thick stack of pages from the cabinet above my desk. The other day, after Bob had told me to wipe the keylogger from Josh’s laptop, I’d pulled a copy of the Hatch Code of Conduct from our corporate intranet, and reviewed the section titled Company Resources. In the second paragraph, I found the following statement:
All members of the Hatch community, including full-time employees, part-time employees, contractors, and Hatchlings, shall use company resources only for legitimate business purposes. This includes, but is not limited to, Hatch-issued mobile phones and electronic devices, such as laptops and desktop computers. Hatch retains the right to monitor usage of said devices to ensure adherence to company policy at all times.
In other words, Bob was wrong. What Josh did on his own time on a Hatch-issued laptop wasn’t his own business. Installing a keylogger wasn’t against company policy. I’d been right all along.
I had printed out the whole Code of Conduct, all eighty-five pages of it. Then I highlighted the section on the use of company resources, as well as a number of pertinent passages about Hatch’s policies against pornography, gambling, and offensive stickers. Now, I presented these to Josh, pointing to the sentences marked with neon yellow lines.
“See?” I said. “It says it right there. And there. And there.”
He sputtered like a malfunctioning engine. I couldn’t hide the satisfaction I felt, putting this jerk in his place, watching him struggle to find a rebuttal.
“You’re not gonna get away with this,” he said. What a sad attempt at a threat. As if he was capable of plotting some brilliant revenge. He couldn’t even hide his porn consumption properly.
“It’ll take me a couple of hours to fix this,” I said, casually ignoring his threatening remark. “Just leave it here and I’ll—”
“I’m not leaving this here, you crazy bitch.”
With one beefy hand, he slapped the cover of his laptop closed and snatched it away. And then he was gone.
Too bad I didn’t know how old he was or where he lived. If I did, I’d have logged him on JerkAlert as a precaution. Don’t date him, girls. He’s a raging sexist douchebag. Also, painfully stupid.
Regardless, I decided to check in and see how my baby was doing. According to the dashboard, I’d had over a hundred new visitors overnight, half of whom had logged new entries in the database. Profiles now numbered well into the thousands. Things were looking up.
Except for one tiny problem. The performance monitor on the server showed increasing signs of slowness: backlogged requests, delayed responses, pages that took forever to load. From a coding standpoint, I’d done all I could do to address performance. The only solution was to upgrade my hosting plan. Which I couldn’t do until I got some more cash.
Out of desperation, I pulled up my existing code, searching for weaknesses I might have overlooked. Maybe a minor tweak somewhere could help the pages load a little bit faster.
I became so engrossed in my work, I didn’t hear Alex sidle into my cubicle.
“Melanie.”
At the sound of his voice, I shrieked and startled, spinning around to see him standing there, looking dapper as always.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, totally fine.”
He looked past me, at the computer screen. “What’re you up to?”
“Nothing.” My hand fumbled for the mouse, clicking furiously to close the working window.
“Are you coding something?”
“No. I mean, nothing interesting. Just some scripts to push out next Tuesday’s updates.”
It’s not like he could tell I was working on JerkAlert. From his vantage point, the words on my screen were tiny and unintelligible. It could’ve been any programming language, for any piece of software.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just dropped by to see how you were doing.”
“Um...” I’m overtired, underslept, coming down off an adrenaline rush thanks to a fight with your fellow Hatchling, freaked out about the stability of my website, and completely unsure whether to believe a word you say. “I’m fine.”
He furrowed his brow. “Are you sure about that?”
Rather than lie, I looked down at my feet.
“I’m really sorry about last night, Melanie.”
Again with the apologies. It was like Alex lived in a perpetual state of remorse. Did he even know what he was sorry for anymore? Or what he should be sorry for?
“It’s okay, Rico.”
I met his eyes and he flinched. “What?”
“Isn’t that what Greg called you? Rico Suave?”
A flush crept up his neck. “Melanie, I can—”
“So how much did you win?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Last night, Greg said you won. Was there some kind of bet going on? Like which one of you Hatchlings was gonna be the first to get me in the sack?”
“No!” He looked genuinely horrified. “Of course not. Nothing like that happened at all. Greg’s just an asshole.” With a wince, he glanced over his shoulder, suddenly aware of how loudly he was speaking. In a softer tone, he said, “I would never do that to you. You know that, right?”
Funny thing was, I didn’t. I didn’t know what to believe. And now he was standing here, staring at me with those gorgeous brown eyes, waiting for an answer I couldn’t give him.
Where was a mandated fire drill when you needed one? Or maybe an actual fire. I willed someone to burn a Hot Pocket in the office toaster oven to save me from this conversation I was in no mood to have.
But somewhere, my signals got crossed. Because instead of a kitchen fire, my interruption came in the form of Bob, who’d poked his bald head around the corner of my cubicle. He nodded toward Alex, then glowered at me. “My office, now.”
Shit.
He disappeared, and Alex knotted his brow. “What was that all about?”
I shook my head. There wasn’t enough time to explain, and even if there was, I wasn’t so sure Alex was the person to turn to for a sympathetic ear. I’d conspired to catch Josh in a lie, and it worked. In a way, wasn’t I trying to do the same thing to him? Except instead of keyloggers, I was using JerkAlert and following his old girlfriend on Twitter.
“I’ve gotta go.” Grabbing the Code of Conduct off my desk, I brushed past him and stalked down the hallway toward Bob’s office, where he was already sitting at his desk.
“Close the door behind you,” he said.
“I take it this has to do with Josh Brewster.” There was no place to sit in the cramped, messy room, so I stood there, the thick stack of paper in my arms, shifting from one leg to the other.
“Why would you tell him you installed a keylogger on his machine?”
“Because I was sick of him lying about why it was always broken.”
“I told you to uninstall it.”
“But I didn’t have to
.” I flipped open the Code of Conduct, pointing out the passages I’d highlighted. “See? We have every right to monitor their devices, especially when they’re doing things that cost the company time and money. Think about how many hours I’ve spent wiping viruses off his laptop. We never would’ve gotten to the bottom of it without the keylogger.”
Bob’s whole head turned the color of a pomegranate. He placed both palms facedown on his desk and took a centering breath. When his face returned to its normal pallor, he said, “Melanie, I ask this with concern for your well-being. When’s the last time you took a vacation?”
“What? I don’t know.” In truth, I hadn’t taken an actual vacation since I’d started at Hatch. It’s not like I had enough money to go flitting off to Cabo whenever I felt like it. The only time I ever took off from work was when Benny from HR phoned me up to tell me my paid time off was about to expire. Then I’d spend a week or so binge-watching Netflix in bed. Which wasn’t exactly what I’d call a vacation.
“It would do you some good to have a break from the office,” Bob said. “Take a few days off to relax and unwind. Book a trip outta town.”
“Where is this coming from?”
“Look, it’s okay. Everyone needs a break at some point. Burnout is a very real thing.”
“I’m not burned out.”
“Are you sure? Because I’ve noticed over the past couple of days that you’ve been slacking off around here. That’s unlike you.”
Shit. Bob had noticed my half-assing, and from the look on his face, he wasn’t pleased. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly wasn’t happy at Hatch, but I also wasn’t looking to get fired.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll make sure to focus my efforts from now on.”
He sighed and tapped a pen against his desktop. “You know, maybe it’s my fault. I’ve probably been giving you more responsibility than you can reasonably handle.”
“I can handle my workload just fine. What I can’t handle is being constantly disrespected.”
He recoiled, like my statement caught him off guard. Like I hadn’t alluded to it a thousand times before. “Who’s disrespecting you?”
“The Hatchlings.”
“Not this again.” He scrubbed his hand down his face. “Melanie, we’ve been over this before. They’re all under an immense amount of pressure.”
“That doesn’t give them the right to be verbally abusive.”
“No one’s being verbally abusive. Let’s not be dramatic.”
I wasn’t being dramatic; I was merely telling the truth. But Bob was rolling his eyes, so I decided not to contradict him. When a man whipped out the D word, it meant you were on shaky ground. Even if your argument was solid, you’d have to tread carefully, or else he’d dismiss everything else you’d say out of hand.
“My point is,” I said, “that they come in my cubicle and throw around the f-bomb, they cover their laptops in offensive stickers, and they bad-mouth me to you behind my back. And they do it all with impunity.”
“The thing you’re not getting is that Hatch isn’t about you and me. We’re here to support the founders. They are the stars of the show. Vijay has made that abundantly clear.”
“There’s still a Code of Conduct. In that all-staff meeting the other day, he was going on and on about the importance of integrity and decency.”
“You know as much as I do that it’s all lip service. And I cannot have you giving the Hatchlings a hard time, all right? Because they’ll go complain to Vijay, and then life will become very difficult for the both of us.”
I snorted. “I’m sure it won’t be that difficult for you.”
“What does that mean?” He leaned forward in his seat and scowled. “You think these Hatchlings are any nicer to me than they are to you?”
“I do, actually. That is, when they can find you, since you have the luxury of hiding out in the server room while I’m out on the floor, dealing with their complaints and abuse.”
His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared and I knew I had taken it too far. After a stony silence that lasted seconds but felt like hours, he threw up his hands. “All I suggested was that you take a little vacation. I’m just trying to look out for you, but you do what you want. Now go fix that laptop—and this time, uninstall the keylogger.”
“Fine.” I flung his door open and stalked down the hall, boiling over with rage. How dare Bob suggest that the solution to my problem with Hatch’s messed-up broflake culture was a vacation? A couple of nights in a hotel wouldn’t help me “get over it.” It would only plunge me further into debt, and at the end, I’d come back to the same terrible work environment.
Back in my cubicle, I tossed Josh’s laptop into the corner and collapsed with my head in my hands. I was fighting an uphill battle here, one I had no chance of ever winning. I wanted out, but I couldn’t afford to up and quit my job without a backup plan.
Whit had this master marketing scheme all sketched out for JerkAlert, but frankly, I was getting antsy. The proof of JerkAlert’s popularity was in the numbers on my dashboard. Investors cared about facts and figures, not crafty sales tactics. How much longer did I have to wait to cash in?
My phone buzzed once, twice, waking me from my mind-wandering. I pulled it out of my purse and found a chain of messages from the girls:
LIA:
I can’t even believe what is happening.
DANI:
What is it? Are you okay?
LIA:
I found out last night that Jay has been lying to me this whole time.
LIA:
He’s married, guys.
DANI:
WTF
WHIT:
Fucker.
LIA:
He has two kids and a house in New Jersey.
DANI:
Holy shit.
WHIT:
Of course he’s from Jersey. That state is crawling with assholes.
LIA:
I don’t even know what to do. I’m freaking out.
DANI:
Okay. Stay calm.
WHIT:
Don’t stay calm. Burn the fucker’s house down.
DANI:
DON’T LISTEN TO HER.
DANI:
When do you get off work?
LIA:
I couldn’t handle work today. I’m at home in my pajamas wondering how I could’ve been so stupid.
WHIT:
You’re not stupid. Men are assholes.
DANI:
Let us come over tonight. I’ll bring wine. And edible cookie dough.
WHIT:
Ooh, from that place near NYU?
DANI:
Yes.
LIA:
Don’t bother. I can’t eat. I can’t do anything right now but cry and stare at the wall.
DANI:
Just hang tight for another few hours. We’ll be there as soon as we can and we’ll make this all better.
WHIT:
Mel, are you in?
As I read through the thread, I alternated between feeling heartsick for Lia and furious with men in general.
What I didn’t feel, though, was surprised.
MEL:
I’m off at 5 and I’ll come straight to your place.
MEL:
I’m so sorry this is happening, Lia.
My chest tightened, my jaw clenched. Of all the people this could’ve happened to, why Lia? She was ceaselessly optimistic, always assuming good intentions. She believed in happily-ever-afters, and she believed everyone deserved one. And now, her own happily-ever-after was in ruins.
Because sometimes the greatest man in the world could turn out to be a dirty, dirty cheat.
19
After work, I jetted to Lia’s place in Chinatown,
stopping along the way at a discount liquor store to pick up a cheap bottle of Cabernet. When I got there, Dani answered the door and whispered a warning. “She’s kind of a disaster.”
“Understandably.”
“No, you don’t get it. I’ve never seen her like this before.”
I held out the bottle of wine. “Maybe this’ll help?”
Dani shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t get her to eat or drink anything. Not even the cookie dough.”
“Ooh. What flavors did you get?”
“Chocolate Dream and Fluffernutter. I waited on a forty-five-minute line for that dough and she won’t even taste it.”
“I’ll give it a good home.” I gestured inside the apartment. “Shall we?”
We entered the living room, where Lia was on the couch, curled into the fetal position atop a nest of blankets and balled-up tissues. She stared at the wall, her eyes vacant and dull, not even turning to acknowledge me when I said, “Hey.”
Dani was right; I’d never seen Lia so bereft. If I ever ran into Jay, I’d strangle him with my bare hands.
“How are you?” I asked, even though the answer was obvious.
She let out a heavy, hiccuping sigh. “I thought he was the one.”
Her voice caught on the final syllable as she broke into a fit of sobs. I placed the wine on the coffee table and sat beside her on the couch, stroking her back and making soothing shushing sounds.
“What is wrong with me?” she wailed. “Why couldn’t I see him for what he really was?”
Dani knelt on the floor in front of her. “This is not your fault.”
“Yes, it is.” She sniffled and unearthed a book from within her tangle of blankets titled Why Men Marry Bitches. “This book says I’m too nice. Too trusting.”
“Fuck that book.” Dani grabbed it from her and chucked it across the room. It landed beside the radiator, pages splayed. “It’s pseudo-psychology written by an ignorant hack. Nothing you did or didn’t do made Jay into a conniving liar. This is a hundred percent on him.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed, because it was the right thing to do in this situation. But secretly, I wondered if Lia actually was too trusting. She’d believed every excuse Jay ever gave her, forgave him every time he apologized. I bet she’d never even looked him up on JerkAlert.
How to Hack a Heartbreak Page 16
