Something She's Not Telling Us by Darcey Bell

Author:Darcey Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

15

Ruth

Obviously I planned to tell Rocco that I no longer worked at STEP. But first I had to process the shock. I told myself to be grateful I hadn’t known what was really going on, grateful that the frat boys excluded me from their inner circle. I didn’t have to disappear or go to the dark side or underground—or wherever they went.

One day my boss and coworkers were there; the next day they weren’t. One day STEP was up and running; the next day it wasn’t.

I didn’t care if I ever saw them again, except that I wanted to ask, What the hell? Also I missed the paycheck, tiny as it was.

There was a new doorman on duty that day. That last day. Gus, the regular doorman, had been there forever. I knew people left jobs, quit, and got fired. But Gus would have said goodbye. We’d been friends.

The new doorman asked me to sign into the visitors’ log. He was new. I wasn’t a visitor.

I explained that I worked in the building, on the sixth floor. He said there was nothing on the sixth floor but empty office space. I explained: That wasn’t possible. Friday I’d gone to work there, and it was only Monday morning. He said he didn’t know about that. He’d started on Sunday. The previous doorman had a health emergency. Something crazy happened in the building. Some cops and an ambulance came.

A chill ran down my spine. What kind of a bullet had I dodged?

“What happened?” He had to tell me. “I mean, what happened to Gus? What kind of health emergency?”

“Gus? I’m sorry. I don’t even know the dude’s name.”

He’d started work on Sunday. We’d never had a Sunday doorman before.

I said, “Can I go take a look?”

“Go ahead. Be my guest. But do me one favor. Two favors. One: Don’t tell anybody I let you up there. And two: Don’t steal anything. Anyhow, there’s nothing to steal, which is the only reason why I’m letting you do this.”

The glass door to the office was locked. I saw cubicles and a few desks, overturned chairs.

A ghost office.

Where was the African violet I’d kept on my desk? It looked as if no one had been there in ages, as if no one had ever been there. My head was starting to ache in a way that felt like the start of a red-alert, heavy-duty migraine.

I thanked the doorman as I left. He didn’t even look at me.

I sat on a bench in the park. I put my head (seriously hurting now) in my hands.

I should have called Rocco. I should have begged the doorman to let us back in and taken Rocco up to the sixth floor and asked him to help me figure it out.

I don’t know what stopped me. Maybe I didn’t want to admit how out of the loop I’d been.

The guys didn’t trust me. They didn’t like me. No maybe about that. Would this be an unsolved mystery? It made me look so flaky, so naive.

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