Magnetic

Chapter Sixteen

Tesla was singing when she arrived to work today. She has always hated singing.

Singing of any kind drove her insane. If you sang in the car, prepare to be kicked out and have to walk home. All the songs on her phone were instrumentals of popular songs instead of the regular versions. In the car, we'd have to listen to instrumentals.

I teased her about it all the time, because it didn't seem normal. I mean, who doesn't like singing? I had a firm belief that she was the only one that didn't.

But when Tesla came into work, singing some Lady Gaga song that had been popular nine years ago at the top of her lungs, it scared me for a moment. I was stunned. I had never heard her musical voice, and honestly, it was beautiful. For someone who hated singing, it must've been a God-given talent to have a voice like hers.

I didn't even realize it was Tesla when I heard it. I played it off, thinking it was just another customer. It wasn't until the person with the voice was right beside me, writing prices on small colored dot stickers, that I jumped, almost startled by it.

"Tesla?" I said, looking at her through squinted eyes, "are you singing?"

"I guess so!" she giggled as she threw away an old Sharpie and dug through a drawer to find a replacement.

Dominic walked in from the back room, carrying out a box of ready-to-be-labelled items (I guess hell must've froze over, because we were actually starting to get along; he would bring out the fixed-up donated items instead of yelling at me to get them) and almost dropped it in surprise. "What's going on?" he asked me, referring to Tesla. So he had obviously realized her hatred for singing as well.

I shrugged and turned back to Tesla, who had quit singing and started humming. "Are you on drugs? If someone offered you something on the street, you shouldn't have taken it."

"I'm just in a good mood!" she gushed, smiling widely. "I have never felt so alive before. I feel empowered. Like I could do anything."

"Why?" Dominic asked as he pushed the box onto the table in front of Tesla.

"Nothing is holding me back. Nothing is tying me down. I'm a free twenty-six year old woman who doesn't have any restraints." She looked up to us, amber eyes widened. "I should quit."

Dominic and I exchanged a glance. "Quit your job?" I asked.

She nodded. "Yes. I need a change, and I've been working here forever." She checked her reflection out in one of the donated mirrors that she needed to price. "Maybe a new hair style. Or color. Or cut." She glanced back at us and smiled as wide as she could. "Or all of the above!"

"Tesla, I think you're going crazy," Dominic said. "Just calm down or something and don't make any decisions until you think everything through. Completely."

Tesla smiled sweetly at him, like a mother watching her child argue, in an it's so cute that you think you're right way. "I'm just thinking outside the box. Because of Roger, I've been stuck in the same cycle for years. I finally have the opportunity to be different, you know," she told him, crossing her legs as she sat at the pricing station.

"After a break up, most people tend to be sad and depressed for a while," Dominic pointed out to her. "Then they're angry. Sometimes irritated. But you, you're extremely happy."

Tesla glanced up at Dominic, her eyebrows furrowed. "Yes, I am. You say it as if it's a bad thing."

"It's odd," I said to her, realizing that for the first time in my life, I was siding with Dominic. Never thought that would happen. "You just need to take a step back and reevaluate everything. Rushing into new changes and opportunities isn't good."