scarily

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At lunch, I decided to try and be as invisible as possible. I sat in the corner, kept my coat on over my polka-dotted shirt, and didn’t leave my seat a single time. Sally and Tracy spotted me, but when they saw that I was sitting alone and avoiding their eye contact, they left the break room. They were probably going to gossip about me to Diamond and Michelle.

I almost got through lunch in peace, too. I was nearly done with my grilled cheese—which, contrary to Diamond’s comments in the past, was not disgusting—when the door to the break room opened and invited a loud, almost obnoxious posse of people in brightly-coloured clothes and higher-than-high heels. They were obviously from Features. Leading the pack was Michelle herself, carrying some sort of portfolio under her left arm and her lunch in her right hand. She spotted me and waved furiously before turning to her friends and apparently bidding them a farewell.

“Penny! Thank goodness I found you!” Michelle exclaimed, collapsing into the only other chair at the table.

“Hi,” I said, trying not to show how startled I was by her insane amount of energy.

“You’ll never guess what just happened,” she breathed, chest heaving dramatically.

I sighed. “I probably won’t. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Niall Horan of One Direction was casually strolling around the office with a water gun, and then he passed my desk, saw the picture of us above that cute little potted cactus you got me and said, ‘You know Coffee Girl?’ So, of course, I was like, ‘Who?’ and so he was like, ‘Her, Coffee Girl. Penny.’”

So he does know my real name. Brilliant. “Then what?” I asked, keeping my cool as best I could.

“So then he dragged me along to this dressing room that smelled like weed and cologne and gave me this,” she said, slamming the portfolio down on the table. “He told me to show you. Said you’d understand.”

Reluctantly, I slid the papers out of the portfolio. I don’t know what I was expecting, really, but it was more of the same. Lots of them were of Perrie and of other members of the band, but the ones towards the back were most definitely of me.  Michelle took a dramatic deep breath and began bouncing in her seat.

I quickly shoved the pictures back in and pushed away, pretending to be completely fascinated by my grilled cheese. “Did you watch the news last night? There was a fire just down the block,” I said, as a lame attempt to change the subject.

Michelle gave me the Are You A Complete Idiot? Look, and I shrank back a bit in my chair. “Did you not look at those drawings, Penny?”

“I looked at them,” I sighed, “I just don’t have anything to say.”

“A famous guy is drawing you like a total creeper and you have nothing to say about it? How do you feel? How does he even know you?”

I shut my eyes. “Michelle, does it even matter? I spoke to him earlier, and he told me that I un-blocked him. So now we’re just going to forget about each other, I guess.”

She smacked my arm and I opened my eyes again. “No, you’re not,” she said, as if she was scolding me. “Do you want to read what he said in his exclusive Unique Magazine interview?”

“No?”

She scoffed and pulled out her phone. “He said, and I quote, ‘Perrie and I grew apart over time. It happens. We’ve been broken up for a while now, but we’re still good friends, and I’ll still support her no matter what.’”

“That’s nice,” I said, folding up my napkin and preparing to stand. “I have a lot of work—“

“Lies!” Michelle accused. “Here’s the part that baffled me; if he and Perrie have been broken up for so long, why did he not want to fuck me in that gross little dressing room? Because of this next part: when asked what he was looking for in a girlfriend, he said, ‘Girls with ambition, who know where they’re going. That’s appealing. Other than that, there’s no telling who you’ll fall for. I don’t think you can put blinders on it, like, oh, I’m only going to date blondes. I think the people that you run into by accident, and they just inexplicably inspire you and take your breath away. That’s what I’m looking for.’”

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