Page 8 of Not the Puck Bunny

“Okay, I get the hint.” I started to look around for a set of stairs I could take instead.

My mother would remark that I needed the exercise anyway. I told her voice in my head to shut up. If only I could do that in person.

“Have you tried pressing the button?” A young man in a suit stopped beside the elevator. He pressed the up button with the tip of his finger. The center elevator door immediately opened with a happy ping.

He gave me a look like he was doubting mysanity, before gesturing for me to step into the car first.

To be honest, I was questioning my sanity too, but I stepped past him and pressed the button to take me to the third floor.

With any luck, it would actually stop there. Otherwise, I might discover exactly what the attraction of level four was.

If I recalled correctly, it was just office space up there. Hell, for all I knew, they'd turned it into a videogame arcade. If that was the case, I looked forward to seeing it for myself.

Lucky for me, my elevator companion only needed to go to level two. He kept his distance as far as the car would allow, before giving me another funny look and quickly stepping out and away.

“First order of business,” I said when the doors closed behind him. “Getting these elevators looked at. Second order of business, stop talking out loud to myself.”

I glanced at my reflection in the shiny walls of the elevator car and patted my hair down as best I could. My curls were as obedient as the elevator system.

I'd tried straightening them, and even wearing my hair short, but it always bounced back into a riotof wild curls. Not even an anti-frizz conditioner helped it to settle.

In the end, I gave up and wore it in a ponytail or a messy bun. If it was going to look messy, I might as well try to convince people it was deliberate.

By some miracle, the elevator stopped at the third floor. The door actually opened. I even clicked out into the corridor without tripping and falling on my face. Things were looking up. For now.

I looked both ways with a frown. Ursula had said to turn left, hadn't she? I nodded to myself, before going that way, then taking a right.

A long corridor, lined with doorways led to ordinary offices. On the western side, they showed sweeping views of the city of Lowball Bay. To the east, the offices had views of the sparkling ocean.

I hurried down the corridor toward the sound of voices. They sounded relaxed, friendly. Chatty banter and the occasional laugh.

“Shut up, Nate,” called out a cheerful voice. “You know it's not…"

I couldn't make out the rest of what he said, he'd lowered his voice.

“Whatever,” someone else replied. “They won't keep us waiting much longer. They know how important we are.”

That was met with a chorus of laughter.

“If you say so, Nate,” a rumbly male voice said.

“What did you say their name was, Coach?” I thought that might have been Nate. “Andrew Welling. How bad can he be?”

I winced.

This wasn't the first time people got confused. I preferred to go by Andi, rather than Andrea, for a whole bunch of reasons.

Firstly, imagine an angry mother shouting out, “Andreaaa,” in a shrill voice. That explains at least half of it. The rest of it— I liked Andi. It was a no-nonsense name that suited me, a no-nonsense person.

Okay, that was the image I tried to portray to the world. My hair, and tendency to step on things I shouldn't, told a different story. Expectations versus reality weren't always kind.

I stopped in the doorway that led to the huge meeting room.

Being right at the back of the building, the view out the windows showed the city and a stretch of glittering waves. The arena was on prime real estate.

I'd wondered if my father wanted to tear it down and build apartments on the land, but I suspected he would have had a fight on his handsif he tried.

Regardless of their performance, the city loved its team and its arena. Besides which, the arena was good for the local economy. Even my father couldn't argue with that, in spite of the impact on his bottom line. He was a businessman before he was anything else, and good will went a long way to getting things done quickly and to his advantage.

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