Page 2 of Lift Me Up

This is off to a great start, clearly. Tracey glances at her watch, then back up to me with a curt expression.

“Right. If you’ll follow me.” She begins to walk away without even waiting to see that I have indeed followed her. This can’t be good. I should just turn around and head home while I’m ahead.

I suck in a large gulp of air, holding it in until my lungs scream for air. Twisting and tangling my fingers until the tips go white with pressure.

“Georgia, are you coming?” My eyes snap up to where Tracey has turned around in her doorway, hand on hip and the other on the door handle. I clear my throat and nod, then nod again nervously before plastering a smile on my face. Dread fills me.

“Yes. Coming.”

Despite every warning in my mind telling me to turn around, I trek forward. No turning back now.

CHAPTER TWO

GEORGIE

Ipress my knees together, clasping my hands in my lap to hide my nerves.

Her eyes keep glancing up every so often from the resume I brought with me. Her expression is unreadable, it makes me uneasy. I fear I made a mistake. I should have just listened to my brain when it said to turn around, called it a day and written it off as a situation I couldn’t control. But I didn’t do any of that and I regret it now, sitting here under Tracey’s scrutinizing gaze with my thighs sticking to the weirdly warm leather seats of her office. There’s something about her that just seems off. Maybe it’s the repeated blinking, perfectly timed to the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes, the matching beat of her repeated sigh, or the tiniest of nose whistles on every intake.

I swallow and look around, trying to find something to prove that Tracey isn’t a robot. She has nothing in this office that tells me anything about her aside from being… tidy and proper. All framed photos look like they’ve been posed and positioned from stock photos. One is of Tracey and a greying man in an oversized suit—both with arms around each other and faces stoic, like they hardly want to be near each other. Another is of a cat whose expression is not unlike Tracey’s resting bitch face. It makes me want to laugh, but when I look back at Tracey her eyes are watching me with a professional calculation, and she’s set my resume down.

“So, Georgina–”

“Georgia,” I correct, and she presses her lips together again, a pinched expression. She really couldn’t care that she’s gotten my name wrong more than once.

“Right, sorry. Georgia.” Tracey looks like she wants to pinch the bridge of her nose—like her hand is just hesitating from doing so. Instead, she tucks her hair behind her ear and clasps her hands in front of her on the desk. She’s taking this too seriously. “After looking at your resume, I see you don’t have much… experience in this line of work.”

I hold in the sigh that wants to come out. She’s not wrong, I don’t have experience in the field of fashion or retail. If I’m honest, I don’t have much experience in any line of work. Sure, I’ve done small jobs here and there—a babysitting gig here, a random wall painting job there. Anything to make spare money, but never a full-time, permanent position.

There are reasons for this, but if there's one thing I’ve learned already, the last person in this entire building I’d want to try and explain it to is Tracey. She hardly gives off the impression that she’d be remotely open to learning and understanding as she waits with that thin-lipped, narrow-browed stare. It’s infuriating.

“That is true. There were… certain circumstances that prohibited me from finding work until more recently. But I do have a letter of recommendation from my previous job–”

“The babysitting job,” she supplies.

I press my lips together in a firm line that nearly matches hers to keep me from saying… something. “Yes. That job. The employer–”

“Parent.”

“Yes,” I say through a clenched jaw, growing more irritated the longer I speak with her. “She wrote the recommendation letter to support my resume. I am a dedicated person. I strive to always be better and learn, and my work ethic is–”

“Do you know how to work a register?”

“No? But I can learn, I’m very quick at picking up new skills.”

“What about folding? Can you customize an outfit suited for a mannequin? Design a front of store display?”

I open and close my mouth like a fish out of water. Am I supposed to answer these questions? Or is she asking them because she already knows the answer and is trying to prove a point?

“Listen, Georgia……” She genuinely does pinch the bridge of her nose now, like she’s finding it hard to be around me. Does she find me as irritating as I find her? “I appreciate you coming in, I do. But I think there was a miscommunication. My HR person—Shelly—she’s just gone off on leave, and she told me last minute about this interview. What she didn’t realize is that we were looking for someone with more… experience. Someone we would have to do minimal training with. Someone with a different image. Someone…” She pauses. Her words stumble while reaching for the right thing to say. In doing so, she gestures. To me. At me rather, at my body. Her face manages to turn even more sour than it already was.

“Someone who isn’t me. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Her eyes snap to meet mine. She realizes I understand exactly where this is going; what she’s saying, and what she’s explicitly not saying. It was one thing for me to walk in here a few minutes late. I could see the reasoning behind this. That’s on me. But the direct lack of empathy—the obvious disapproval of me? That’s on her. And while I could be sad, I could be ashamed, I am neither of those things. I am absolutely pissed.

In an ideal world, Karma would hit her like a strike of lightning. Her boss's boss’s boss would just happen to walk in and realize how shitty she is, how shitty her attitude is, how shitty she’s treating me; that this is how she probably treats everyone. They’d fire her and her shitty attitude. She’d drive away in the shit-coloured car—the one parked crooked outside that is probably hers—and everything would be righted. But this is real life, and sometimes the cards are not dealt even.

“You know what…” I stand almost too quickly, catching myself upright, jaw set and determined to not let her get under my skin, to not let her see me break.