“I don’t know. Do you want a sandwich?”

The second girl laughs at my abrupt change of topic, but girl one appears miffed. “Those guys who came here to see you last week. Some of us swear that one of them was Tobias Atwater. Was it? I’ll win ten bucks if the answer is yes and it will go straight into your tip jar.”

I don’t have a tip jar, but I keep that to myself. “Yes, that was him. He’s my…friend.”

The second girl throws a handful of paperclips in the air in victory. “I knew it. I knew it.”

That’s when I realize half the office is groaning, while the other half celebrates. My face turns piping hot in a matter of seconds and all I want to do is abandon the sandwich cart and run like hell. The whole humiliating moment reminds me that I am not their equal. I haven’t done the work to reach their level and I’ve been trying to attain it anyway. The easy way. But they’ll never see me as anything but the person who delivers their lunch, unless I do the work.

Do I have it in me? I don’t know. Four years of school?

I can barely keep a job for four months.

That’s why, with my impulses screaming at me to run and never come back, I take a centering breath and remain right where I am, tossing a turkey on wheat to the bespectacled man on my left. Doing my best to keep my composure, I shove my cart to the end of the row and skirt past it, determined to tell Karina what I have to say. Finish up my workday—

And stick. I’m going to stick out this job. Maybe I’ll find it inside of me to start attending classes, too, but I can’t keep quitting and running.

The laughter and high fiving are still ongoing behind me, so I walk faster, faster, my pulse loud in my ears, until I’m pushing into Karina’s icy cold office. I’m so distracted by what’s happening on the floor and searching for a way to divert my own thoughts from the ruckus, that I don’t see Karina waving at me. Not right away.

“Elise—”

“I know you told me not to proceed with the story—and I won’t. I swear. But you need to know what I overheard on Saturday night. A conversation between the deputy mayor and—”

I’m halfway through blurting out what I need to tell her, when I notice she’s frantically waving her hands at me. A split-second before my mouth snaps shut, she’s ending the call, which was on speakerphone, with a punch of a finger.

She stares at her desk for long moments, then shoots to her feet and begins to pace. “Oh fuck, Elise. What did you just do?”

“I…don’t know. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were on the phone. I just…” I shoot a helpless glance back over my shoulder. “Was it important?”