Under My Skin

by A. E. Dooland

  “Thanks,” I said vaguely, wanting to follow up with, ‘Listen, I’m really freaked out that you Googled me, you and your friend are too full-on, I feel extremely uncomfortable right now and wish everyone would stop looking at us, and your curls are perfectly symmetrical how do you even do that? I can never get mine that round...’ But what I actually said was, “I have to go.” Serendipitously, the pedestrian crossing went green.

  I went to walk across it, but she didn’t release my hand. “Come on,” she said. “Courtney owes me ten bucks because she said I’d never be able to find you. I’ll get you a coffee!”

  It was approaching five in the evening. Not that it had ever stopped me from slamming caffeinated energy drinks before, but it at least sounded like an acceptable excuse. “Thanks, but it’s a bit late for coffee,” I said, and tried to pull away again before the lights went red.

  Courtney was laughing away in the background. “She clearly thinks you’re a scary stalker, Bree,” she told her friend, as if I wasn’t there. “Which you are, by the way. They should totally lock you up.”

  Bree snorted. “Please,” she said over her shoulder, still holding my hand between hers. “I’m not a scary stalker. It’s not like I built some shrine to her that I sacrifice animals on and have a wall covered in photos that I masturbate to every night or something.”

  What on… I didn’t think I’d actually heard right. Her sentence echoed in my head and it was only when several sets of people standing around us started to nervously laugh from the shock that I realised she had actually said it. I couldn’t laugh, though; I felt sick. I really didn’t want to be there. Somehow, I’d found something more humiliating than having people make fun of how I looked.

  When I tried to tug my hand free this time, I managed to finally escape from her grasp. I’m not sure what I actually said—it was probably something apologetic about being in a rush—and I spun and ran out in front of traffic. Fortunately nothing hit me, and the flow of cars that followed prevented either of them from chasing after me. Once I’d turned the corner, I broke into a light jog and nearly rolled my ankles in the process. I couldn’t get home fast enough, though some part of me was legitimately afraid they would follow me there.

  Once I was upstairs and had the door shut behind me, I exhaled and leant against it. I listened for footsteps in the hallway, and then had a moment of clarity where I realised how ridiculous I was being. Min, they’re schoolgirls. Like, little schoolgirls, and they’re obviously completely harmless. You’re not even at school anymore, you’re a grown woman.

  What was I afraid they would do if they had followed me, anyway? Embarrass me to death in the privacy of my own home? Oh, the humanity.

  Fuck, though, I felt sixteen again. I took my phone out of my bag and was about to call Henry when I noticed it was only 5 pm. He’d still be in meetings, so I texted him instead. ‘Really weird, a couple of schoolkids looked me up on Google because of my art and they just pounced on me as I left work…’ Even as I was typing it, I felt stupid. This was not a big deal. I sent it anyway.

  It must have been a pretty boring meeting, because Henry had replied even before I’d made it to the bathroom. “Hah, fans! Not surprising, your stuff is fantastic. Bet they were completely awestruck by the great Min Lee xoxo.”

  I read his text a couple of times, standing there in the doorway of my bedroom with the phone. I was being ridiculous. That Bree: she’d been messaging me for months and she had asked for advice on some pretty personal topics. It shouldn’t be surprising she was being so familiar. She was really intense in real life, though. Fuck, she’d exhausted me after two minutes; give me the internet any day. It took me ages to get into the shower because I felt the need to go through every message she’d sent me. None of them were creepy; they were just ordinary, sociable messages. In some of them she was upset, in some she was happy… they painted a picture of an ordinary but extremely enthusiastic teenager. Not the scary monster I was acting like she was. Seriously, what the hell, Min?

  After my shower, I investigated my almost empty pantry with a game controller in hand, still berating myself over those damn schoolgirls. I couldn’t even comfort eat because all I had was a can of Homebrand spaghetti, a couple of packs of instant noodles and an ancient, half-finished jar of pickles from 2009. Vinegar preserved things for years, right? The date on the jar reminded me I needed to go grocery shopping at some point this year. I shouldn’t always have room service.

  What I did have lots of was red wine. I grabbed a bottle; it was the perfect method to start cultivating some serious amnesia. Wineglass and controller in hand, I settled down on the couch. Even though I’d forgotten to buy those games I was after, this was shaping up to be the evening I’d been expecting.

  Time to try to relax, I thought, pouring myself a very generous glass of red. So I had a fan, so what? That was normal, right? My art was pretty good for the website, so it shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise. And she’d probably Googled me because she’d only found out just yesterday that I was a woman; meeting an adult man as a schoolgirl was probably a big no-no. I took a big mouthful of wine. Fuck, I hoped that girl wouldn’t try to accost me in the middle of the street again. Actually, I decided I should probably send her a message to let her know that I wouldn’t be okay with it.

  I opened Deviant Art, trying to figure out how I was going to phrase that sort of request without coming off sounding like a complete bitch, but she’d beaten me to it. There was already a message from Hazumichan95. I tapped it, a sinking feeling settling in my stomach. “omg so amazing to meet u!!! sorry I was a bit star struck!!! :) :) :) :) wow I cant believe it u have been my art hero for like a whole year nearly. definitely worth the train trip into the city. btw that awesome pic of u on the balcony is my screensaver”

  I sighed. Well, fuck. I couldn’t tell her to go away now, could I?

  Since I had Deviant Art open, I checked the painting again. There were a few more comments, so I scrolled through them. Down near the bottom, I spotted another one from her. “btw guys min lee is a totally amazing artist. she seriously looks exactly like this just check out her photo. how do people even make stuff like this omg i wish i was this talented at like anything!!” There were a whole row of exclamation marks as though the key was jammed.

  This was the girl that freaked you out, Min. I shook my head at myself; she wasn’t a creepy stalker, or any sort of stalker. She was just being nice, and I was just a fucking hermit who needed to spend less time with a screen and more time with actual humans. I read her comment again. It was nice, but it was wrong. I didn’t look exactly like that in real life. If I did, I wouldn’t have to wear uncomfortable crap that I hated and I wouldn’t feel so weird when I stood next to other women like Sarah. There was no point in getting upset about that, though, because I knew being miserable about it wouldn’t change anything. It was just a painting.

  I threw my phone on the other side of the couch and looked back at my half-empty wineglass. I was supposed to be celebrating that fantastic conversation I’d had with Diane Frost and instead I was stressing myself out over stupid crap again. Really, if I’d felt like having a painful evening, I would have joined Sarah and those beautiful friends of hers.

  I topped up my glass and then switched on my PlayStation. Fuck all this crap, I just wanted to relax and celebrate. Why couldn’t the world pause for just one second and let me be happy that after years of hard work, the billionaire co-CEO of my company told me she wanted to make me a manager?

  I hoped mass murder and copious amounts of alcohol would shut my head up. It usually did the trick.

  I hadn’t realised I’d been drinking that much, but when I woke up at 3 am on the couch with no idea where I was, I had to concede that maybe the whole bottle might have been a bad idea—especially on an empty stomach. I drank as much water as I could then hauled myself off to bed.

  As a result of my ‘celebrating’, I missed my alarm the next morning and gave myself twenty les
s minutes to do my hair and makeup. I had such a headache and was in such a rush when I opened my front door that I nearly tripped over something that had been placed in front of it. I stopped myself just in time.

  It was a takeaway coffee cup with a little shortbread biscuit in the shape of a star on the plastic lid. Henry was known to do things like this, so I smiled and bent down to retrieve it. My boyfriend was the nicest man on the planet, I swear. After I’d picked it up, though, I noticed someone had scribbled in marker on the side of it. I held it up in front of my face to read.

  “7 am isnt too late for coffee is it?? :) :)”

  FOUR

  “That doesn’t look like a Red Bull,” Henry remarked as he leant over my partition, his eyes on the full coffee cup in the centre of my otherwise empty desk. I was frowning at it, too. “Are you trying to quit again?”

  Hah. I’d long since surrendered to the fact I would be drinking myself to death on those things. Instead of saying as much, though, I just bent forward in my chair, picked up the cup and held it at eye-level for him so he could read the text.

  He squinted at it. “’7 am isn’t too late for…’” His eyebrows lowered for a moment. “Am I missing something?”

  I sighed and put the cup down on the desk in front of me, sitting back in my chair and staring at it again. “Those schoolgirls I told you about last night,” I explained. “One of them left this on my doorstep this morning.”

  His frown disappeared. “Ah,” he said, looking intently at me, “And let me guess, you’re not going to drink it?”

  “Doctor Freud, you’ve cured me,” I said dryly. “Of course not! Who knows what could be in it?”

  As usual, he didn’t even flinch. “You’re absolutely right. The milk might be low fat.” He gestured at it. “They’re schoolgirls, and by your account, big fans of yours. Do you actually think there’s going to be anything other than coffee in there?” I pressed my lips together rather than concede that he was probably right. He wouldn’t let it slide, though. “You didn’t throw it out, either, so I’m guessing you don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with the coffee, either.”

  Of course I didn’t throw it out. I had been going to, but in the lift on the way down, the creepy lopsided smiley faces on the cup and I had been staring at each other and I just couldn’t do it. I’d paused by every rubbish bin between home and Frost International and not managed to toss it into any of them. When I’d made it to work, I’d even spent a couple of seconds staring into the bin under my own desk before just putting it beside my keyboard.

  “Maybe I’m just keeping it as evidence to be tested in case I go missing,” I said, half-heartedly. The thing that always got me was how quickly Henry cut through everything. He was right, they were just schoolgirls. What was I expecting? Arsenic? Rohypnol? There was almost no chance it was anything but coffee. I sighed. “It was just weird, that’s all. If fans of yours ever went leaving coffee on your doorstep, you’d be freaked out, too.”

  “If they were that proactive? I’d hire them, actually,” he said. “At the rate Diane goes through personal assistants, it would be good to have a standby waiting in the wings. And speaking of that,” he waved a stack of manila folders he’d had tucked under his arm up in the air. “As much as I love your company, I actually came up here to give these to that poor girl.”

  They looked very similar to the piles and piles of folders that had been all over the assistant’s desk yesterday. “What are they for?”

  Henry sighed. “Diane and Sean are at it again,” he said, making a frustrated gesture up towards the ceiling. It was common knowledge that the co-CEOs did not get along with each other, so that wasn’t a surprise. They were also twins; sometimes it all felt like the premise of a B-grade movie. Between them they’d managed to draw battlelines along different departments so each of them was in charge of something they were better at than the other. There were turf wars all the time, though, and the HR department was always one of the contentious areas. Officially it was Sean’s, and Sean was Henry’s boss, but according to Henry that didn’t stop Diane from meddling in it. Or with him.

  I laughed once. “What happened this time? Did he forget her birthday or something?”

  Henry shrugged his shoulders. “With them, who knows? I just do what I’m told.” He pointed at my coffee. “Are you really not going to drink that?”

  I glared at him.

  His eyes twinkled as he reached over the partition and plucked the little star-shaped shortbread from the lid of the cup, popping it in his mouth. Then, pretending to look shocked, he grabbed at his throat with his free hand and made exaggerated choking noises.

  Since I hadn’t put my handbag away yet, I looked hurriedly around us to see if anyone else was watching and then thumped him with it. “Shut up! It’s creepy, okay? She must have followed me home.”

  He stopped. “You’re in the Whitepages,” he pointed out. “It’s how your mother got your landline.” Well, that was true… “Anyway, let me solve your serious dilemma about what to do with the coffee.” He lifted it off the table and drank deeply from it. Because it wasn’t hot anymore, he was able to just pour the whole lot down his throat. When he was done he very politely returned the empty cup to my hand.

  I placed it back next to my keyboard so those lopsided smileys could keep staring at me. “Well, I hope you have me listed as a beneficiary on your life insurance. I need a holiday.”

  He laughed, and then stopped being silly. “Sometimes people are actually just being nice, Min,” he said with a smile, and then went to deliver the folders.

  I swivelled in my chair so I could watch him leave.

  He wasn’t really a big coffee drinker, which meant he’d only done that to make a point. I couldn’t figure out exactly what that point was, but whatever it was, a big component of it was trying to prove that he was right. I narrowed my eyes. The most frustrating thing was that he was usually right about people, and he was usually right about me, too. Usually. I hadn’t figured out how he’d still not noticed how much I didn’t like sex, though.

  I spun back towards my empty desk. I still hadn’t been assigned a team, and it was weird having nothing super urgent to do.

  Being team-less actually continued for several days. I didn’t hear any more about the top secret project Diane was planning and when I crossed paths with Jason in the kitchen, he didn’t mention anything, either.

  On the third day I’d been having grand visions of leaving work on time and finally getting to the game store before it closed, but as soon as word got around that I wasn’t assigned a project yet, I suddenly became everyone’s best buddy. Tragically, it wasn’t because of my dazzling personality; if they could get someone to work on their layouts and colour schemes—namely, me—that was money they’d save in outsourcing design. The project leads didn’t alter their timelines for me just because I was volunteering my services, either. They kept me back late with everyone else.

  Leaving the building after dark did drastically reduce the likelihood I’d run into those girls, though. It was stupid for me to be worried about it; they were just kids, so they’d probably already be in bed by 9 pm, right? Still, just in case, I loitered around the doorway and peered down the street every night as I left the office. The security guards were just about ready to have me committed by the end of the week, but luckily, the girls still hadn’t turned up outside.

  That blonde one kept messaging me on Deviant Art instead. Each time I answered, I must have spent half an hour trying to make sure every word in my one or two sentence replies was clear. They had to say, ‘I appreciate your attention, but I hope my disdain is enough to put you off trying to meet up with me again’.

  By Monday I’d almost forgotten about the whole thing, so when I walked straight out of the building, looking down at the screen of my phone, I nearly collided with her. I stumbled at the last minute, nearly falling ungracefully onto the asphalt. I stood up straight again, staring down at those blonde curl
s and trying to steady myself. Who stands in the middle of the pavement right in front of the door of an office building?

  This girl, apparently. She smiled brightly up at me. “Min!” she said, and then her smile faded. For a moment I thought she might actually apologise for nearly giving me a heart attack. That moment passed quickly. “Or should I, like, call you Miss Lee?”

  Yes, I’m far more likely to be offended if you call me by my first name than, say, if you were to use the internet to stalk me to my house and work. “’Min’ is fine.”

  As the shock faded and my senses returned, I remembered what had happened last time she had accosted me. Looking around us, I was grateful there were far less people on the street at this time of night than there had been last week. I checked my phone. “…It’s seven.”

  The girl smiled. “I know,” she said, and then changed the subject. “You can call me ‘Bree’. No one can pronounce my surname anyway. Have you had dinner yet?”

  I was still stuck on the part where she was waiting for me outside work at 7 pm. “Aren’t your parents going to be wondering where you are?”

  At the mention of her parents, she made a face and her nose crinkled.

  “No,” she said more firmly than I expected. “I said I’m at Courtney’s and Courtney owes me, so she won’t say anything.”

  I wasn’t happy about a schoolkid lying to her parents about her whereabouts to lay in wait for me outside my work. Actually, it was as stalkerish as her putting coffee on my doorstep in the early hours of the morning. Bree didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the fact she was lying to her parents, though. She didn’t even have anything more to say about it.