Page 6 of Party Favors

“No, I’m going to leave the guitar on top of the amplifier, turn the volume all the way up on both, and let our lovely, considerate neighbors enjoy the high-pitched shriek of feedback for the next twelve hours. Or maybe I’ll put superglue in their locks.”

“Could you not plot out loud?” I asked her. “I’m not married to you, so I would have to testify against you.”

She nodded. “Right. I’ll keep my plans to myself, and that way when you bail me out of jail, you can honestly say you had no knowledge of my successful and hilariously on-point revenge schemes.”

“I will be happy to bail you out.” I paused for a second and then said, “And maybe in return you can do something for me.”

Vella had gone into the kitchen and was opening and closing cabinets, as if she were trying to find something to eat but nothing sounded appealing. “I told you, you have to ask me about your outfitsbeforeyou leave for work if you want me to fix them.”

“Oh, ha ha,” I responded sarcastically. “You’ve already done that joke earlier this week, by the way.”

“It’s one of my greatest hits. When you see Taylor Swift in concert, you want her to play ‘You Belong With Me,’ don’t you?”

“You listen to Taylor—” I cut myself off. That wasn’t the point right now. I had to persuade her to take the job at Elevated, and I knew she wasn’t going to want to because she’d once compared working in an office to being actively and continuously tortured.

“Did you just get home?” she asked suspiciously, breaking me from my train of thought.

“Adrian was still working. If he’s there, I have to be there.” I was trying to sound factual, but even I could hear the defensiveness in my voice.

“Why does he have to work so late when you’re the person who does everything?”

It was the second time in the last couple of hours that someone had said this to me, and I didn’t handle it any better the second time than I had the first. “I don’t do everything. Adrian does stuff.”

“Name one thing.”

“He ...” My mind went blank. Secretly, I had wondered on more than one occasion what he did all day. But surely he wouldn’t keep me there so late if he was just messing around on his computer.

“Does nothing,” she finished for me. “If he was my boss, I would set his hair on fire.”

“Why is it your first instinct to light someone’s hair on fire when they annoy you?”

“Why isn’t it yours?”

Again, we’d gotten off track. “If you want to see what he does, come work with me. The receptionist quit and I told Adrian that you’d take the job temporarily until we find someone new.”

I squared my shoulders, expecting that I’d have to spend the rest of the evening convincing her, but she surprised me by saying, “I’d love to be your receptionist.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yes, really. When do I start?”

“Tomorrow, at a time you’re unused to. It’s called ‘morning.’”

“I feel like my sarcasm is rubbing off on you.” Vella said this approvingly, and looked at me the way I imagined a mother lion would as her cub made its first kill.

Shrugging, I said, “I have to speak to you in your mother tongue. And please remember that you’re going to be the face of Elevated, so you have to get along with people.”

She rolled her eyes at this. “I know how to get along with people, Everly.”

“Knowing and doing are two entirely different skill sets. You have to be nice.”

“I was nice once. It wasn’t for me.” She pulled a frozen dinner out of the freezer and popped it into the microwave.

“Then be less scary,” I suggested.

“I’ll see what I can do. Do you have the show cued up?” she asked.

I nodded. Vella and I had been watching television shows from different eras. We were currently on the 1970s and had been watchingThe New Adventures of Wonder Woman. We’d just started season 2.

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