Impostor Syndrome by Kathy Wang

Author:Kathy Wang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Custom House
Published: 2021-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

Julia kicked shut the door to her office. She’d nearly run back from the Bowhead, murmuring sorry, she had to go, next meeting. The pain in her breast now temporarily forgotten, and she set down her bag and retrieved her phone. The call with Leo was still active, and she could hear him clicking his pen over the line.

“Okay,” he said, with a slight note of impatience. “Are you alone now?”

Julia was still stunned by the news and silent at first. In their entire relationship, not once had Leo asked to place anyone into her company. To install someone else at Tangerine, a person with actual knowledge of her—Why would you do this, she wanted to scream.

“Who is it?” she finally asked. Forcing her voice out calm as she bashed an employee tchotchke, a key chain in the shape of a tangerine, against her desk. The fruit had a GPS tracker inside, so you could always find your keys—one of her personal inspirations, as she’d seen how the local hirelings paraded about in their corporate swag.

“Another patriot,” Leo said. For once the connection was clear of static. “Like you.”

“Someone important?” The president had four sons, and the youngest had a supposed interest in technology—now that would be a nice challenge, one with many possibilities . . .

“No, another asset. He’s worked with me for years.”

Her knuckles went white around the orange casing. “Why are you sending him?”

“We think he’d be good on the ground. Another pair of eyes. We don’t want all the pressure on you, Julia, we know how much work you have.” All these words, so many wes.

“And you expect him to do . . .”

“Oh, he’s very versatile. I’m not sending someone unqualified. He was top in his class for computer science.” He coughed, and she knew they were both thinking of her own mediocre grades. “But since then he’s worked in the industry. A lot of good experience.”

“What’s deemed good in your world may not fly over here.”

“Shall I send you his résumé? Currently a product executive at Siemens. Prior to that, McKinsey, also in Berlin.” He paused. “I would like Aaron placed in a managerial position. Enough so that he has high-level data access, can approve ad campaigns.”

Aaron. So that was his name. Though it was good news about the ads: the less her involvement, the better. If you wished to be depressed about the world all you needed was the click-through rates of some of the SPB’s widgets—see how many believed they had a 99.9 percent IQ or resembled Julia Roberts. All while the SPB scraped their data and photos. “It won’t be so easy to find a position. You understand people wait years to become a vice president here. If they ever get it.”

“But surely a chief operating officer has a great deal of autonomy, no? You can make nearly anything you want happen.”

And somehow—in the way two people in a long marriage can argue over a subject without ever directly speaking of

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