Always/Never

Chapter 13 / Just Here to Apologize, and Other Little Admittances of Guilt

With Rory's phone in one hand and the other on the computer lab mouse, I stared at the sunrise.

Each picture formed a gradient. Deep crimson bled into yellow, but a curve marked each row, reminiscent of the stair step of a WiFi symbol. Six lines stuck out around it; two in the centre forming antennae.

Below the Horizon logo was the company name in blocky lettering. With a blank document open beside it, I typed the single word, trying it out in italics, bold, and underlined. Serif and sans serif fonts. Horizon filled both screens. The z sat on a curve I guessed was edited, but if I combined some of the options, I could get it pretty close.

Next, I dropped the image of the logo into my document until it was flush with the reproduced text. Another couple of searches brought me to the company hiring page, where I filtered for entry-level positions until I found one hiring for multiple candidates: Data entry assistant.

Perfect. The job title, I added far beneath the image, leaving enough space to insert what I wanted between them.

I glanced at the key card. It would have been nice if I still had a sidekick. For all of my complaining, Tandem kept me on track, getting the supplies I needed so that my brain didn't have to organize the steps of the plan. Now that I didn't have him reminding me in what order I needed to do what, I was alone.

While the document busied itself with saving, I got up. Campus store wasn't too far away from the computer lab, one floor below, tucked away by the printer where I'd gotten my student ID in first year.

I'll come back for that. I headed right to the corner section, where notebooks and scissors sat next to the shampoo and soap. I grabbed a pair of scissors in purple, for posterity, a metal tumbler, and a hazelnut chocolate bar.

On my way back up the stairs, I wrestled with the packaging, discarding the plastic in the trash of the third floor. As I approached the laboratories, an older technician darted across the room, lab coat flapping behind him, and returned to take a seat next to a student who'd toted their tablet and pen to ask a question.

I removed the tumbler cap and shuffled inside. On the benches were bottles of distilled water and what I'd come for: Isopropyl alcohol. Grabbing it, I moved out of the room and into the bathroom across the hall.

The scent of Isopropyl made me lick my lips. It filled the room like gasoline, and breathing in for too long would affect the CNS, which made it sound like some weapon of war—simultaneously harmless and dangerous. I poured until the tumbler filled, sliding back to stick it on the countertop.

Once in the safety of the computer lab, I drenched the card, face-down, into the alcohol, until the old information rubbed off to a clean white. The photo of my face watched me, a buoy in the metallic reflection of the Weston cup.

I waited for my document to print and ate the hazelnut chocolate bar. The paper was warm in my grip as I cut it out, carrying it downstairs. The ID machine was on, so I scanned my new key card, dragging the image where the mock-up of the university ID was meant to go, and let the plastic card print.

Dianne Daemon was now, for all intents and purposes, an employee at Horizon.

◎ ◎ ◎

Though I knew of Accha's roommate, I hadn't met her. The university's apartments were larger than residence halls, and even further from the main building, which wasn't a problem for Accha. Rather, other students were the source of why she left, so she could focus on her classes without having to avoid their parties en masse.

As I cut across the track field to get to them, I tried to think about what to say when I arrived.

You're right, I wanted to tell her, but she already knew that. I don't know why I'm still angry. I don't know why I'm still holding on to this grudge. But that wasn't true either.