Page 54 of Nerdelicious
My heart sinks. Either I’m too nerdy even for Comix, or Comix are a bunch of posers hiring the nerd-illiterate Ambers of the world.
Ten minutes later, I hang up and barely remember the entirety of the interview. What did they ask? What did I say? Was it coherent? Who knows?
All I can recall is that Grace came into the kitchen at one point, made faces at me, and then emulated whatever I was saying in a high-pitched, shrieky voice.
What have I done?
“How did it go?” Grace asks when I swing open the door to her room. She’s sitting where she usually is, at her desk, tapping away at the computer.
“Terrible.” I flop backward onto her bed.
“Yeah. It sounded pretty bad.”
I grab some of her pillows and press them on top of my face, groaning into the fabric.
“Those pillows bothering you?” Grace asks without turning around.
“They’re not suffocating me fast enough.”
She snorts. “At least mine don’t have faces on them. Yours are weird.”
She’s referring to theSupernaturalpillowcase Scarlett got me for Christmas. I yank one of the pillows off my face. She’s still got her back to me, but she’s turned her head to the side. At least my mortal demise made her move that much. “You’re too young to truly understand the allure of sleeping with Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki under one’s cheek. But I will teach you, young padawan.”
“Whatever.” Her attention goes back to the computer, lines of indecipherable code scrolling across the screen. Probably something nefarious that she shouldn’t be doing.
I glance around the room. It was Scarlett’s, once upon a time, but Grace has made it her own. It’s not what one might expect from a fourteen-year-old girl. No posters on the walls, only a few pictures of her with Beast and Jude. There’s one of all of us from this past Christmas. The desk is a mess of computer parts, a motherboard, CPU, an extra processing case. More stuff I couldn’t identify if someone paid me.
“So what did you hear? I think I blacked out most of the conversation.”
She turns her head again and scrunches her nose. “You said something about the Spanish Inquisition?”
I groan and cover my face again.
“What were you talking about?”
“They wanted an on-the-spot pitch, and I think I was trying to sell them on a chain of Monty Python–themed restaurants.”
“Who?”
I groan and cover my face again. “Come on, Grace, it’s a British comedy troupe. Their movies are on Netflix!”
“Yeah, sounds great. I also heard you rambling about elderberries.”
I wave a hand in the air. “That’s still Monty Python.”
“Interesting.” But her tone is flat and bored.
I sit up, the pillows tumbling onto the bed around me. “I’m awful at interviewing in person, but on the phone it’s worse. I thought I was being somewhat funny, but you can’t read the room over the phone. Maybe they were smiling, maybe they were making throat slashing motions, I will never know.”
There’s no way they are going to hire you. Delores Umbridge is back.You have little experience and an entirely useless degree.
I mentally flip Delores off and wallow on Grace’s bed some more, listening to her clicking away.
Something nearby beeps and Grace shuffles around. Her chair squeaks. “Beast isn’t coming over until after dinner. He’s doing something for Jude right now, but he’s staying the night because I wanted him to come with me to my appointment in the morning.”
This explains why Beast stays the night and is never here when I wake up in the late mornings or early afternoons after a shift. He wakes up early to go with Grace to her appointments. It’s so sweet but... isn’t he exhausted? He’s continually doing things for her and Jude, putting all their wants ahead of his own—even sleep takes a back seat.
I shake my head.
