Sleepyhead

No Strings Attached

Operation Tiny Kangaroo in a Pinstripe Suit was now in action.

Which is, just a quick reminder, the ingenious plan devised by one Reed Roswell in a devious and evil mad scientist-esque attempt to gain back her position as head tea girl, or whatever. And of course, the side bonus’ of keeping my sexy relationship with Zayn Malik under wraps and allowing for Astrid to bank on a greater salary this summer.

But mostly it was for Reed. Because well, she was the one in charge.

I was just a little worker. A cute little worker who looked absolutely smashing in a pair of shorts.

Again, I digress.

There were various steps to OTKPS. (Or, Oatkips as I had deemed it.) Each step was carefully planned and typed out with annotations and footnotes and all that highlighted shit on Astrid’s handy-dandy little MacBook. (And by little I mean the largest size possible.) There was a laminated copy stuffed underneath the mattress in my bunk, inside a Pringle’s tube in Reed’s purse, and burned into Astrid’s photographic memory.

Originally, Oatkips was a far simpler idea. Before Reed even managed to spit out her masterplan, I’d rambled on about how we could do an Inception-style deal, planting in Winnie’s mind whilst she slept that she hated her job on tour and she wanted to be transferred to management headquarters.

That however, didn’t go over so well when I found out Inception was actually just a film. But whatever, anyone could make the mistake.

So then I managed to come up with the brilliant idea of recording my voice saying, “You hate working on tour. You want to be back home in London. You want to go home.” And then I planned to play it all the while Winnie slept a la Brave New World and all that Pavlovian conditioning mumbo jumbo.

To which Astrid and Reed just stared at me, blinking, before exclaiming that I was somehow a genius and a moron at the same time.

Honestly, I don’t even understand.

I paid attention in Psych class, people. I know what I’m talking about.

How Oatkips got its name is a bit of a story on its own, but I suppose that’s irrelevant, now isn’t it?

What is important, relevant, if you will, is the three foolproof stages on Oatkips.

Straight from the horse’s mouth, or you know, my abridged version which is highly more entertaining and I don’t know, probably a lot less foolproof. I am Sutton Lark, you know. I can’t be expected to be perfect, or you know, even remotely close to adequate.

Step One: Get on Winnie’s Good Side. Also known as the part where I kiss her ass and actually do my work and play even more stupid than usual. Which, surprisingly, was difficult. You can’t fake idiocracy. It’s just natural. I mean, it’s a bit nice to realize that I’m not quite as daft as I thought.

Sutton Lark: Scholar. United Nations, here she comes!

Step Two: Make Winnie Feel Superior. As in, totally and completely make her feel like she doesn’t need to be there. Make her feel like she’s so much better (which she already does, but, alas) that she deserves better.

Not hard. That one.

And finally, Step Three: Inception. Okay, so my inception bit sort of got into there. It took quite a bit of convincing, but I managed to persuade the two Einsteins that if we constantly told Winnie she should look for a job at management, she’d probably do it.

She wasn’t that smart. Even I knew that.

Of course, this was all so bloody complicated that Reed insisted we enlist the help of a few backups. And after a nice session of me on my knees, tugging at her legs, and begging until the end of time, she agreed to keep both Harry and Zayn out of said plans.