Corporate Secrets

CHAPTER 4

ANNE

"Don't you have anything else to wear?"

I stop walking when he speaks, lifting my eyes to his. I can't read his expression, but from the tone of his voice, I know it isn't flattering. "Sir?"

"Do you have anything to wear that isn't black or brown or some variation of that?"

I moisten my lips, and my stomach starts to get that nervous feeling again. My shoulders drop into their habitual slouch and I hunch into myself. I looked at myself in the mirror before coming out. I looked the same as always. I even made my hair into a bun. Why isn't that enough?

"This is... This is the only dress I... I mean, I usually attended events in my suit when I worked with Mr. Manning. I didn't think-"

"You need to change. I'll send someone up to help you in a moment."

When he turns and walks back to his car, I feel the tears begin to roll down my face. Memories run through my mind. Memories of being laughed at for my appearance, of being made fun of. I stagger as I turn, and walk back to my room.

I calmly close the door behind me. Then I fling my purse so that it hits the opposite wall with a loud crash. Then I sink to the floor, burying my face in my palms. As my eyes close, I see it, all over again. I see the nightmare that hunts me, that has hunted me for more than a decade. I see her.

She was only twelve. Tall for her age, she already had to endure the teasing from her classmates. Giraffe. Everest. She laughed them off, but the words hurt all the same.

There was a talent hunt show coming up. She wanted to be in the pageants like her older sister. Ariana was sixteen and had been doing pageants for eleven years since she was a baby. She'd even acted in two movies. She was beautiful, and everyone loved her.

But she... She was clumsy. Weird. She had brown hair to Ari's blonde, and brown eyes to Ari's blue. She had scars on her legs from falling all the time and getting into scrapes. Everyone said she acted like a boy instead of a lady.

But she could do it, too. She was going to prove to them that she could be in the pageants. She'd told her mother about it but was ignored. So she was going to take matters into her own hands.

She opened the grocery bag she was holding and glanced into it, a smile on her lips, then closed it again, skipping all the way home. And of course, of course, there had to be a twig on the sidewalk. And she didn't see it until too late, so she went crashing down.

Her first thought wasn't for the pain though, or the bruises. She reached for the bag; the contents that had spilled out. She sighed with relief that nothing had spilt. Nothing had broken.

It would have hurt because she had used most of her savings to buy everything in the bag. She couldn't afford to lose any of it. But nothing got broken. So even as she limped the rest of the way home, she smiled. Even though blood dropped from the wound on her knee, she had her head in the clouds, her mind on nicer things.

The pageant was in two days, on a Saturday. On Friday when they teased her in school, she took no notice of them. They would all see her tomorrow, she thought, smiling mysteriously. Nothing could bother her.

That evening, she waited until everyone had gone to bed. She wanted to surprise them all. She didn't tell them about it. She would surprise them the next day when she won.

She waited until the TV went off until she couldn't hear her parents murmuring. She waited until Ari got off the phone with the new boy she met last fall who was in the movie with her.