Under My Skin

by A. E. Dooland

  “Or,” she said, her cheeks a bit pink, “you know, I could do something else...” She looked up at me from underneath those long lashes with her other arm still slung around my shoulder. Her face was really close to mine again. I could feel her warm breath on my lips.

  On some level I definitely wanted to at least kiss her, but all I could think of was those failed fantasies I'd had in Broome. On top of all the shit that was going down in every part of my life, I didn't have the energy to try and overcome the wrongness of my body and let her touch me anywhere, no matter how much I might end up enjoying it if I could.

  When her hand on my thigh moved up a fraction, I inhaled sharply, alarmed. “I wouldn't find that relaxing, Bree.” I said quickly, pushing her hand off in panic. She broke eye contact and nodded. I exhaled at length, feeling really guilty. I didn’t want to make her feel unattractive, because she wasn’t. She really wasn't. It was just that I was a complete head case right now. “I'm sorry. It's just that I'm—” I didn't know where I was going with that one, so I tried something else. “I mean, I can't—”

  “It's okay,” she interrupted me when she could see I was struggling. “No pressure. I just offered because I thought that was what you wanted.”

  I groaned and rubbed my face with my hands. What I wanted? What I wanted was a Golden Ticket out of this fucking existence to somewhere where anything in my life went right. In your fucking dreams, Min, I thought. You're stuck here. Get used to it.

  “How about I just get you a glass of orange juice?” Bree offered, changing the subject again. “I got some really nice organic stuff.”

  She went off to do that, and I left my face in my hands. My head was one giant tangle and I was exhausted just thinking about everything, but when she returned I still managed a few sips of her organic juice to humour her since she'd got to the effort of getting it for me.

  She looked very happy about that, and there was something really gratifying about making her happy. “I bet after all of this crap, this pitch doesn't get cancelled and goes really well and everything will be okay,” she said, I think just trying to comfort me. “And if not, maybe Jason will get hit by a car or something.”

  I snorted orange juice through my nose and coughed. “I mean, I hate him, but that's a pretty awful thing to wish on someone,” I said, spluttering. I couldn't say I didn't secretly like the idea, though.

  “That fuck makes me want to learn to drive.”

  When I looked across at her, I realised she was completely serious and I had to laugh a bit and hug her. “Thanks, Bree,” I said, kissing her forehead. I could see her delighted smile in the reflection of the mirror. There is no way this girl was capable of harming anyone, despite what she'd said. She got emotional over rescuing flowers for fuck's sake. “Thanks for listening.”

  “My pleasure,” she said, blushing.

  I was finishing my glass of orange juice when I noticed her blush had faded and she was frowning. “There's just one thing I don't get about all that stuff you said,” she told me when I looked across at her. “If the CEO is on your team, why are you scared to say anything?”

  It was a bit of a weird question, I thought. “Diane's not really on my team. This project is just really important to her for some reason. And she's scary in general.”

  Bree looked blankly at me. “Not her, Sean.”

  I put my glass on the bedside table and frowned at her. “Sean's not on my team.”

  Her brow lowered. “He's not?” I shook my head. “But I thought...”

  A knot began to form in my stomach. I felt uneasy about where this was going. “Why, did I say something to make it sound like he was?”

  She was staring at me, confused. “I just saw you together that time, before the party. And then when he came down to make me feel better and we were talking... So, wait,” she said, piecing everything together and looking more and more worried, “if he's the other CEO, that means he's the one that Diane didn't want to know about project, isn't he?”

  My heart practically stopped in place. No, it couldn't be, no. I turned and put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Bree, did you say something to him?”

  Recognition passed over her features, and she looked mortified. “I thought he was on your team. I even said ‘since you’re working with Min’ and he didn't contradict me!”

  The timing of the cancellation fell into place; Diane and Jason had been right: it hadn't actually been a coincidence after all. God fucking damnit! Bree! “Jesus, Bree, how much did you tell him?”

  She flinched at how loudly I was speaking. “I'm sorry, Min!” she said, which basically meant she'd told him everything. “He said he wanted to know what you’d told me! And then he said not to worry and not to mention it to you because it would just stress you out and you were so stressed out already and he was right!”

  I released Bree only to put my hands to either side of my head. Bree had been the leak, not John. Which meant a whole lot of things, mainly that Vladivostok pulling the pin had been my fault, and that an innocent young man was getting fired as a result.

  Fuck. I couldn't even... I couldn't even deal with this. On top of everything. I could have had two supply contracts signed instead of being the focus of Jason's ire, and then maybe everything would have...

  And I couldn't... well... I had to say something, didn't I? That it was my fault, but... then again John maybe had done other things wrong.... Fuck, I couldn't fucking think straight.

  Sean wouldn't do that, either, would he? Maybe it was a coincidence?

  Nothing made sense. I couldn't think. I could hardly breathe. “Bree, someone's getting fired because of that,” I managed to say to her. “Maybe two people, if I do as well.”

  She looked really upset. “But I didn't mean to!” she said, as if that made one ounce of difference.

  “You never mean to do things!” I told her. “But you still always do them anyway, intentionally or not!”

  I shook my head at her, trying to figure out what the fucking fuck I should do. I should turf her out of here, I thought. I should yell at her, tell her everything that the failed pitch and her being arrested by the police and me needing to chase Cecilia all day today had caused. Two careers were potentially over because of this. I should delete her number and block her on Deviant Art and never talk to her again…

  …but as I looked down at that nose of hers that went pink when she was about to cry, I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I knew what she was like, I shouldn’t have told her anything. It was just as much my fault as it was hers. And who was I kidding, anyway? She was fucking infuriating, but I would have gone nuts if she wasn’t here to hug me and comfort me and bring me organic fucking orange juice.

  I didn’t know what I should have done, I didn’t know what to do. Everything was too fucking much and this was just one more thing I needed to worry about. It was too much. “Fucking hell, Bree…” I said, exhausted, flopping back on the mattress and draping my forearm over my eyes. “Why the hell do you do this stuff, and exactly when everything is already complete shit? Why…?”

  Bree still looked like she was bracing for me to blast her, and was surprised when I didn't. “You're not going to yell at me and throw me out for completely wrecking everything?” I shook my head, I was too tired to explain. Cautiously, she lay down beside me, as if she thought I'd change my mind. We stared up at the ceiling for a minute or two. I felt the doona move as she turned her head towards me. “I am sorry, though. Like, really, I know I’m completely fucking hopeless. Dad always says it, and he’s right, I am hopeless.”

  I just sighed. I want to murder you, I thought, and I probably would, except I’d miss you far too much.

  She was still looking at me. “I know what you meant about everything being total shit right now.”

  I glanced towards her, still angry. I'd forgotten she'd been recently crying when I'd arrived home. “Yeah?”

  She exhaled heavily. “My family is really angry at me for missing Easter. Like, grandma an
d my aunt and uncles and stuff. They don't know about what Andrej did and what it's like at home so they just think I'm being bratty and ditching Easter for sex and drugs or whatever.” She shifted her weight on the mattress. “And, like, I don't really care about that, but then Andrej sent me a message on Facebook and all it said was, 'So Courtney told me where your friend lives'.”

  I considered that. “Do you really think he'd do anything with my address?”

  She thought about that. “Maybe. Not like anything violent, but maybe something dodgy if he thought there was anything in it for him. It's not about me, I'm just his scapegoat.”

  I touched her hand because I just had no emotional energy left to say anything comforting. “'8' on the phone is security,” I told her. She nodded, and we just lay there together, holding hands.

  I was so exhausted and so conflicted about what to do about Sean and John and what Bree had said that I must have fallen asleep like that, because when I woke up in the morning I was lying the wrong way on the bed with a pillow under my head and wrapped in the doona. The culprit was still asleep, cuddled up against my side. For just a moment I smiled at how peaceful she looked, gently stroking her cheek with the knuckles of my fingers. Then I remembered she'd told Sean Frost about Russia.

  That opened the floodgates. I just lay paralysed for a couple of seconds as everything came back to me: Jason's constant bullying, the entire marketing knowing about my gender stuff and all the torment that would come from that, the fact I kept fucking everything up and, oh, yes, someone was getting fired because apparently I didn't understand the meaning of 'confidentiality agreement'.

  I couldn't lie here and stress, though, because my heart was starting to race and if I freaked out I'd never make it to work early enough to avoid everyone and barricade myself in Oslo.

  I dressed in something Jason would probably consider appropriate and hated every second of it, threw on the rest of my costume and high-tailed to work before everyone else could arrive. I did actually buy myself an energy drink because unlike Sarah, I couldn't dry-swallow my painkillers, but I thought better of drinking most of it. If I needed to go to the toilet too often, I'd have to leave Oslo and face the rabble on the Marketing floor. Even with Jason it was safer in here.

  Then I watched the clock nervously and reviewed every tiny millimetre of the materials to make sure everything was perfect while I waited for my team to arrive.

  When the door opened I expected it to be Sarah, so I swung around and was in the middle of saying, “Hi—” when I saw it was Jason.

  I went bright red, and he gave me a really suspicious look. “Just for your information, sucking up doesn't help your cause, Mini. Not unless it comes backed up with nineteen grand and the renewed respect of Diane Frost.” He looked me up and down, and when he didn't say anything about my dress, I knew I'd chosen the right one.

  He seemed a bit more subdued today, I observed, and I wondered what had caused that. I turned back to my desk to keep working. It was hard, though, because as he moved around the room, despite the fact he wasn’t saying anything and didn’t seem like he was going to yell at me, I could feel where he was. The hair was standing up on the back of my neck, especially when he was right behind me.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, after he'd been standing there for a few seconds. It sounded like a loaded question.

  My clammy fingers slipped on the ruler. “I'm checking the dimensions of the material to make sure it was printed correctly and it will fit in the packs we ordered.”

  He stood there for another minute or two watching me check and make note of the measurements; it was fucked up. He had no reason to be scrutinising me. At least no work-related reason. I realised he was probably waiting for me to make a mistake so he could yell at me. I didn't, and after a while he got bored with standing over me and went to do something productive. I released a breath I didn't even know I'd been holding.

  The rest of the team trickled in, and today Sarah was last. She arrived looking unslept with giant bags under her eyes that she'd failed to effectively conceal with foundation. I gave her a questioning look, but there wasn't anything she could say because Jason launched us right into a meeting and soon after that, the Sales boys Diane had chosen arrived to learn the material.

  Jason wasn't their boss, and it showed. They checked their phones, whispered to each other, and interrupted him from time-to-time while he was introducing himself and the project. It pissed him off, and you could see the rising frustration on his face. That worried me. I didn’t want him to get angry again and go off at us. I had a sudden thought about what he might do if he found out that I’d told Bree about the project and Bree had told Sean. He'd have fired me on the spot, wouldn't he?

  I had no idea what happened during the rest of the meeting, because my head was swimming around that question. I wondered if what I’d told Bree about this pitch was enough for Sean to cancel it—except it wasn’t cancelled so it mustn't have been, right?—and I wondered what would happen if the whole department found out how much I’d fucked that up on top of knowing about my gender stuff.

  When Jason called a break and went to check on a couple of the other teams, and our boys went to grab coffee or food, Sarah came up to me. “Min,” she said, glancing behind her to make sure they were all definitely gone, “I couldn't sleep last night because I was thinking about what happened in the toilets. What he did was so not okay, and we shouldn’t let him get away with it. We need to report him.”

  I shook my head. There was no one to report him to, not before the assistant manager of HR got back from his leave, and especially not after what Bree had revealed last night. “We can't report it now,” I whispered to her.

  She made a face. “Sure we can, Sean’s in the office today, I checked on his—”

  “Sarah, Bree told Sean about Vladivostok right before they cancelled.”

  She hadn't been expecting me to say anything like that and for a second she frowned at me like she didn't know what I meant. “What?”

  I swallowed, elaborating. “She was always around when I was painting for the project, and that time when I was looking for stock photos, she helped. And then the other day when she was downstairs, just before the police thing, Sean managed to get the story out of her. Straight after that, the pitch was cancelled.”

  She took a few seconds to process that. “You told Schoolgirl about a confidential pitch?” she asked, incredulous, and then followed straight up with, “Are you sure about the timing, though?”

  I scrunched up my face. “I think so.”

  Sarah stood back. “Wow,” she said. “Wow.” She thought about that for a second. “Then again, okay, let's go through this carefully. The withdrawal came at open of business for Vladivostok, so I actually don't think anyone blames you really, apart from Jason. But I think he’d blame anyone right now, he’s just angry in general. And since it came at open of business, it's possible the boss decided the night before and then emailed us the following morning. We normally find out in the morning if pitches flop. So, are we sure it was Sean? I mean, how much did you actually tell Bree? Did you tell her it was to Impressions?”

  I shook my head. “I just called it 'Vladivostok'.”

  She made a tada motion with her hands. “Are you still sure? Sure enough to not report really serious bullying to management?”

  I watched her. “Regardless, we can't be seen talking to Sean, anyway. You know that.”

  She was about to say something else, but she couldn't because the Sales boys came back in with their coffees and muffins. They were speaking quietly, but I was sure I heard one of them griping about Jason micromanaging them. They stopped when they saw us, though, all looking at me and then at each other. They didn’t say anything — I didn’t know them well enough for them to risk bringing up anything personal with me — but I guessed someone on the floor had told them about what Jason had said yesterday.

  I looked through the crack in the door as Ian and Carlos came ba
ck in and recognised a few familiar faces outside. Someone spotted me and grinned. I turned away from the door, inhaling.

  For the rest of the meeting, I tried to imagine what was going around the floor about Jason’s tirade and what was going to happen to me as a result. The stuff that had been done to me in high school was pretty awful, and they’d just been immature kids. What could immature adults do?

  When the meeting was over, I'd been so lost in thought that I didn't notice Jason coming to stand in front of me with his arms crossed. When I finally did and I looked up at him, confused, everyone except Sarah laughed at how distracted I'd been. Jason shook his head in disgust at me, and then he and all the boys went out to lunch together. They invited Sarah, too, but she had something she needed to do for her other team. She told me later privately that she wouldn't have gone without me, anyway.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she asked as she left. “You want something to eat? I can go out there and get it.”

  “No,” I told her, “Thanks, I couldn't eat anything anyway, but I need to go down and set up the media room.” I actually didn't need to do that right now, but it gave me an excuse to be somewhere private by myself.

  Getting down there meant five minutes of psyching myself up to leave Oslo and brave whatever was waiting for me outside, and then bursting out of our office at a brisk walk so I looked really busy and fewer people would try and talk to me. Luckily, most people were at lunch and the odd person who'd stayed back was hard at work with whatever task he hadn't finished.

  I went down the internal stairs anyway, just to avoid any more uncomfortable lift rides.

  The media room had been left in disarray from the last pitch; there were chairs everywhere. I counted how many chairs I'd need on my fingers: there was Diane, Jason and the four of us in Pink, and then the four Sales boys, and Burov's entourage. He'd said he was bringing that PA of his, a 'good friend'—Russian code for 'bodyguard', I was told—and another guy from his business.