“But then she’s walking along the street near their first meeting. She gets a notification and he’s there, at the restaurant they first met. They reunite, it’s very romantic, and the tagline reads: a splice of life.”

Blade and Drew exchange a glance. Did Blade roll his eyes?

Okay, maybe it’s not the best pitch but I came up with it in the span of an afternoon, shouldn’t that get me something? I thought it wasn’t half bad. And it’s about love. That’s what’s supposed to get me through this, right?

“Jane, it’s fine, but it’s not quite there,” Stacey says.

I let out a breath. I know what’s coming next.

“So, you’re firing me.” I deflate like a popped balloon.

“Don’t think of this as a door closing. It’s a whole bunch of new doors waiting to be opened.”

“Right.” I gather up my papers but then stop. “Wait.” The last thing I want to do is extend this conversation, but I have to know. I force the words out, my voice quavering through it. “What could I have done differently?”

“We want something with more emotional punch. But I’m not sure you have it in you, Jane,” Drew says.

Basically what they’ve already told me.

I leave and head straight out the back into the alley, avoiding Mark, avoiding Alex, avoiding everyone.

There has to be something I can do. Something that can adjust or shift or something. I will find a pitch that works, even if I have to work on it all day every day for a month of Mondays.

I am not giving up. I will change this one thing about this day if it kills me.

Over the next however many Mondays, instead of working on keeping my job like I declared I would, I work on doing anything and everything I can think of to get out of it.

Having a panel of critical people staring at me and judging me and finding me lacking is . . . worse than having a mouth full of bees. I push through it, trying new things a half dozen times, but I need a break.

So I run some experiments.

First, with the closet. The magic closet only works for inanimate objects, and it doesn’t work for everything. When I try to sleep in the closet anyway, I end up back in bed the next morning. Twice.

Most inanimate objects stay in the closet without disappearing, like fabric, papers, toiletries, books. Everything but money. Money and me seem to be the only things the closet spits back out overnight.

The universe wants me to be miserable and poor. There’s my sign.