The next morning I wake up to the smell of something burning, I swiftly fly out of my bed and rush downstairs to find Paul waving at a flaming pan with his hand, I push my way past him and grab the pan to take it away from the stove top, after I remove the pan I turn the stove off and set the pan back down. I skillfully take over the cooking pan with a baking pan to get the fire to suffocate out, then I turn around and see Paul just standing behind me looking like a fool. I look at him and in a harsh tone say
"Were you trying to make bacon?!" he straightens up
"Yes, I felt like I should make you breakfast for your first day here but as you can see I'm not the best cook" I slap myself in the face and let out a sigh and a laugh of exhaustion.
"Okay don't try something like this again, besides how do you even get by with those cooking skills? You don't eat out a lot do you?" I looked up to find him obviously ashamed so I slapped a smile on my face "I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to be rude it's just that it was very dangerous for both you AND me." As I stand there he stares at me and I quickly realize I'm in a tank top with no bra and some very short shorts, my face goes completely red and I rush upstairs to my room. Once I reach my room I unwrap one of my boxes labeled clothes and grab the first bra I see then reach for my favorite purple shirt, it's a v-neck that has a red laced neckline. I whisper to myself "This is my fanciest shirt, it will have to work I guess" then I grab a pair of skinny jeans and rush into the shower with my face as red as a tomato. I kept thinking to myself that this is going to be the fresh new start of my dreams stepping into the shower as I turn on the water the room starts to steam up and I feel the water running down every crevice of my body I squeezed my new lavender shampoo into my hand then put my hands together to lather the soap into my long black hair. As I wash out my hair I notice there is a naught in my hair and I neatly unravel it and it leaves a curl in my hair. Next I do the same with the conditioner. When I finally finish washing my crazy hair I put the two soaps aside and grab the body wash. As I look at the bottle it seems to be a name brand of some kind, not one I've heard of (I giggled to myself realizing how poor I am). I finish my shower with ease and step out of the tub, I grab my towel and start drying off. Just then I look in the mirror and I notice how absurdly skinny I am, I just shrug it off like normal. I put on my clothes and step out of my bathroom and get a shiver down my spine because the window has been open all night. I go over and shut the window and lock it with a click. I start to head out of my room then my instincts kick in and I head back to my packed box and grab my small pocket knife juuuuust in case~ I mean you never know what could happen! I continue to head downstairs with my trusted knife in my pocket, luckily Paul doesn't seem to notice it and shouts out
" You ready to roll?" in a loud confident voice. I follow him out to his car with a happy skip in my step, then he reminded me to call him boss and not paul
"Okay, I promise I will try my best". We were only on the road for about five minutes then we pull up to an office building, he pulls up to the door and and tells me to go inside and wait until he gets there. I step out of the really nice red car and walk up to the building. He zooms away with a loud roar of the engine into the parking garage, as I head into the building I notice everyone is either in a suit or some really nice clothes and I let out a sigh of disappointment. Just as I start thinking about how out ranked I am in financial status Paul walks up behind me and says
"Okay you can follow me now miss Kokio" I look at him in shock as he calls me by my last name but continue to follow him as he walks up to the front desk "Excuse me but do you have the work badge I asked for?" he says with a nice gentle voice to the receptionist, the lady reaches into her desk and grabs a purple name badge with a scan bar on the back. He thanks the lady and hands me the badge, he suddenly snaps at me "This is what you will use to clock in and out along with accessing different points of the building" we start to walk towards a elevator as he continues to explain the rules and obligations I will have to do, as he was talking I notice there is tall brown haired man with black glasses as I turn my attention back to Paul I feel something touch my back pocket when he passed, when we reach the fourth floor we enter a carpeted hallway and the man in black glasses follows then turns into one of the rooms for editorial management, I stop in my track as soon as he enters to realize that man pickpocketed me! Paul doesn't seem to notice and continued walking, I turn around and enter the room. Almost immediately one of the men in the room comes up to me, he is a shorter man with straight black hair that goes to his ears. The man starts to ramble
"Excuse me miss but I'm going to have to ask you to leave, you don't have a badge which means your not authorized to come in here." I glare at him and reach into my front pocket grabbing my purple badge and notice he has a yellow badge. He looks at me and smiles "Okay thank you for your proof miss Kokio, may I ask what business you have here?" I point my finger at the man with the black glasses
"I know you took my wallet." with a stern voice then I continued to speak as I looked at the short man who approached me "May I ask for your name?" he looks at me with a worried expression and mutter his name is Drew, he then goes to stare at the man with the glasses and chuckles
"So someone finally caught you Jack?" The man named Jack looks back to us "So you must be pretty smart to have caught me!" he stops and looks at me "I like her! She got spunk!" Drew waves his hands as if to say "stop! your so screwed", he chucked my wallet back at me and I catch it and proceeded to walk up to him and punch him where his badge is tucked into his shirt, he puffs out a breath as if I'd hit him too hard. Suddenly Paul walks into the room and sternly announced himself
"What did you do now mr.Jack?" Jack looks as if he is being targeted with a nuke and sits up straight
"N-Nothing sir, we were just talking" I glare at him as Paul motions over to me to come follow him, as I am about to leave the room I turn around and give a wicked smile at Jack flashing his badge in my hand the walk out quickly as he looks around for his badge a little ways down the hall I hear Drew shout at Jack with his funny accent
"You just got beat at your own game dude!" as we head to Paul's office I smile with satisfaction. When we get to the end of the hall there is another elevator that looks nicer than the others, we take it up to the top floor and enter a huge room with a deck near the windowwall in the back. Paul sits down at the desk and lets out a huge breath, he quickly says
"Which department would you like to join?" I look at him dead in the eye knowing my answer!
"Definitely the editorial department, but shouldn't you ask your boss before giving me the choice?" he laughs a whole hearted laugh
"I am the boss you ditz" I laugh at Paul in disbelief and he starts to get a serious look on his face and says it again "I am the boss, so are you sure that's what you want to do?" I look at him with confidence and say yes again. Paul starts to type out something on his computer, after about five minutes of pure awkward silence there is a ding on his computer and says "okay, let go introduce you to the crew. I am going to warn you these guys are a handful, you only saw a glimpse of their personalities.'' I stood up straight and gave him a look of pride, he shrugs his shoulders and starts to walk me back to the elevator.
I put some pep in my step and follow close behind. When we arrive back at the fourth floor we walk up to the editorial room again and Paul made his way in before me, everyone in the room freezes when they see him including one guy i didn't notice before he was also quite a tall man but he was slouched over with his brown curly hair in his face, I look to read his name tag and all it said was "Mark" just then Pauls booming voice interrupts my inner thoughts as he starts to introduce me "Hello editorial team, this is Max and she will start working with all of you tomorrow as your overall manager." he motions for me to say hi or something so I step up and say what I can to not make myself look like a dunce.
"Hello my name is max, it's a pleasure to meet all of you. Let's hope we can get along '' and when I finish up I throw Jack back his badge like a ninja star with a giddy smile on my face. Jack glares at me as if he was mad, when I was finished talking Paul acts as if nothing had happened and continues
"Please stand up and introduce yourselves" one by one they stand up and say their names but Mark seems to be very shy or not interested, I can't tell… Paul cuts into my thoughts once again "Okay she will be watching for the rest of the day to get a handle on things" he let out a sigh and said in a pleading voice "Please get along and don't fight" with that he is about to leave then looks at my pants with a confused expression, he walked up to me like he was already exhausted "Hand it over" with a grim look on his face, I look at him with a glare and reach into my pocket to pull out my pocket knife "Great now I'm defenseless". Everyone in the room is staring at me with some unique looks on their faces so I turned to them "You can never be too cautious" and laughed a little. I decide to walk up to Mark because he seems the nicest "What are you working on?" everyone laughs in the room except me
"What? What'd I do?" in the most innocent voice I've ever done. Jack leans over his desk in the middle of the room and chuckles out
"Looks like you're the first victim Mark" then goes back to his work. After that Drew walks up behind us and blurts out
"You're not the typical office worker are you?" I look at him blankly and unsure what he meant.
"I've never stepped foot in an office once in my life" with a matter of fact tone, Mark looks up at me and asks in a hushed voice
"Then how did you get a purple badge?". I look at him and all I can think of is him looking like a tiny kitten hidden away in the corner of the office
"Um, i'm not sure what you mean by that??" Soon after Jack joins in on our little corner huddle
"Only one person has a purple badge and that's mr. big boss CEO" then thinks for a second and continues "I guess now two people have it and that's a big deal considering you've never been in office work. I mean that card gives you access to anywhere in the building!". I gasp in shock and look back at Mark
"Well I guess that's good, but shouldn't we get back to work?" everyone laughs at his quiet comment
"Ah oh god, I can't believe I said that!" soon after Mark looks down at his computer then Jack and Drew perk up
"How come?" in perfect sync. Thinking about how to reply I stutter out my thoughts
"Well, before this I was a fast food employee who only wrote on my blog for fun" I started trailing off and looked down at my feet. Suddenly I heard a huge crash come from Jack's desk. I looked up to see him laughing so hard he knocked off some things from his desk. As he is laughing I go to pick up the papers from the floor and am greeted by Drew's smiling face, he starts to help me pick up the papers and comments in a soft tone
"There's only one thing to do to prove your worthy of our support" I look at him blankly
"What's that?" when we finally hear Jack stop laughing he cuts Drew off
"We have to see this WONDEROUS blog that got the boss's attention, what else?!".
I look around the room and see Mark already on my blog page and he starts scrolling. I feel my stomach drop as he looks at me and says
"You naughty girl" with a mischievous smile on his face. I drop to the floor and put my hands over my completely red face, I muffle out the only words I can think of
"Nobody was supposed to see that, I mainly focus on the laws and legal parts! Read that instead!" now everyone is curious and gets up to see what's on the screen for some reason Drew turns red as I am realizing how inappropriate those few articles are that I had written YEARS AGO. Jack told him to go to the laws and legal section like he didn't see anything, he totally did! Mark goes to click on the laws section and looks at me without reading it "so who WAS supposed to see those articles, hm?" and I start to curl up into a ball even more when a sudden burst of joy comes over Jack and Drew. They walk right up to me and grab me by the arms to pull me off the ground. As soon as I'm able to stand I rush over to the other end of the room so they can't see my face being so red. All of a sudden,
"She is a literary genius!" Jack shouts, and is soon followed by Drew
"She's something special all right…". They start to bombard me with questions about how I learned to write like what was on my laws blog and I get so irritated with all the questions I blurt out
"Enough! I'm not that good, I only do it for fun!" Just then Mark walks up to me and said
"You put your opinions out there and made them fact! I know these articles could be used to persuade the laws and maybe even change a few." I look at him in disbelief as he says those kind words.
"Come on don't steal the spotlight you perv!" Drew shouts at mark laughing,
"Hey, I'm not a perv!" I let out a small giggle as Mark made that small defense. I finally let out a sigh and came out and said
"I don't actually think the boss read them, I think he got some input from a friend" they all look at me then look at each other as if coming to an agreement. Suddenly Drew puts his hand on my shoulder and comments
"He definitely read them! he is a huge closet perv!" I roll my eyes and stare back at him
"Don't you dare tell anyone about my blog" with cracking voice. We all finally calm down and they agree to it, as everyone is getting settled back into their spots Drew gets up and says he'll be right back so I nod at him. About five minutes later he comes back into the room hauling a chair with padding and rolling wheels then sets it in the front of the room
"Now you can keep an eye on all of us while being comfy!" as he lights up with pride I sit in the chair and roll over to his desk. I watch him typing for about forty five minutes the he stops and looks over some papers he set aside
"What do you think we could put in this column to make it catch the eye?" then looks at me. I already knew the answer because I was reading as he went along so I leaned over the desk to type it out and when I was done I caught him staring at me but as soon as our eyes met he shot his eyes back at the computer and started to type again. A little later I started to roll my chair between the desks and helped them all out when they asked, suddenly Jack sits up straight and abruptly says
"Wanna go out for drinks?" not knowing who he was talking to, I stay silent. Just as I was about to look at him from Marks desk I hear Drew
"Sure why not"
As soon as Drew was done Mark looked up to comment,
"Can we bring Max?" I look at him in shock, Jack sits there for a moment to think
"Well she is one of the team, so I guess that's fine" Drew and Mark simultaneously fist bump the air.
"So I'm one of the team now? Well don't I feel special". We all get back to work and in no time the day flies by in a breeze, as we're heading out of the office I quickly realize that Paul is my ride home
"Hey guys I actually have to back out for the drinks" just then I hear Paul's chivalrous voice come from right behind me
"What's this about drinks?" I turn around and stutter "We had all planned on going for drinks, but seeing as you're my ride I won't be able to join them hehe'' I explained with a sad look on my face. Suddenly I feel a warm hand on my shoulder and see that Drew is holding onto me and says
"Well I guess I will have to give you a ride home" looking at Paul with a smile. Paul looked back at Drew with a slightly irritated twitch and takes Drew's hand off me
"I don't think that would be wise, you don't even know where she lives nor should you" Drew fires back with a hiss in his voice
"I don't see why it would be a problem boss, we ARE coworkers why not have a little drink to celebrate?" feeling awkward as hell I step away from the two men and walk over to Mark along side Jack
"Hey let's get out of here while they're distracted!" We all nod in agreement and rush out of the building. "Hey guys I'm going to skip out tonight, see you tomorrow!"