scarred.

{9} begin again.

Note: I <3 you.

___________________

{9}

N I N E  |  B E G I N  A G A I N  

“Anette and her mother will be in shortly,” A tall blonde woman wearing white pumps told me as she placed her hand on the doorknob. The office I was in was located in one of the tall buildings with endless windows planted in downtown New York, and it had not taken long for Angela and me to walk there on foot.

I told the blonde girl, “Alright. Thank you.” And smiled at her politely.

“Thanks, Clo.” Angela also told her. She was seated next to me wearing one of her professional-yet-friendly outfits.

“Of course. Can I get you two anything? Some soda, Jill? Coffee, Angela?” She asked us, shutting the door with the side of her foot as she stepped inside and took a seat at the glass desk.

This woman—Clo—she seemed to know my name yet I had not introduced myself to her. Perhaps she was a colleague of Angela’s and she’d been told some things about me. I wondered if Clo knew anything else about me, like my story. My childhood. My years in school. Stuff like that. Had Angela told her anything else?

“Oh, please, Clo. Don’t even offer me coffee. I’m trying to quit—I swear it’s like I grow more and more dependent on caffeine to keep me from falling asleep on my desk.” Angela laughed softly, placing her hand on Clo’s glass desk and leaving her handprint.

Clo laughed, “If you say so, girl. And what about you, sweetheart?” Her eyes flicked onto mine, “Soda? Juice?”

Soda and juice? I wasn’t twelve anymore.

“I’m fine, thank you.” I replied.

“Alright, sweetie. Let me know if you change your mind.” Clo pulled out her keyboard from a sliding tray underneath her desk. She quickly adjusted her computer monitor, then started typing. The sound of her fake acrylic nails hitting each key was making me wish there was at least a radio in her office. I looked around for one, but it wasn’t found on either of the four shelves that contained dozens of books and a few framed pictures of Clo and her friends and family. There were even some pictures that were taken of Clo and children with cancer. Those made me feel like my heart ached for those children. It wasn’t fair for them to be stricken with such a horrible disease when they’d done nothing wrong.

“So, you excited to meet Anette, Jill?” Clo asked me, still typing but politely smiling and looking at me.

Angela looked towards me when I answered, “I—I sure am.” I stuttered. “I hope she’ll like me.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Clo waved her hand in the air in a dismissing notion, “I know Anette. She’s incredibly sweet—she makes friends within seconds. She’s one of those people that just loves everything, you know?”

“She sounds very sweet,” I told Clo. I looked at her glass desk and how it was neat yet a little cluttered. There were more framed pictures and the usual office items like staplers and paperclips. Then there were these animal bobble-heads that tempted me to poke them so that they’d bobble.

“I’m an animal lover,” Clo told me as she slightly laughed. She must’ve noticed me looking at the bobble-heads. “Don’t like eating ‘em, by the way.”

“God, I don’t know how you do it. Being a vegetarian has got to be tough. And you’ve been doing it for how long now?” Angela said.

“Twelve proud years.” She answered with a confident smile on.