Chapter 23 #2
I checked in at the front office and tried to keep the traumatic memories of my own teenage experiences at bay as I made my way through the halls.
Back then, I’d been a flat-chested, brace-faced teen who hadn’t owned a hair dryer with a diffuser.
Now I’d finally blossomed into a busty, straight-toothed, almost respectable literary agent with good hair and—as of this weekend—an impressive sex life.
Not that I was thinking about Gage again or wondering what he’d been like in high school. Nope, definitely not. But if I were thinking about him, I’d be willing to guess he’d been Mr. Popularity.
It was just after 2 p.m., and I was running a few minutes late.
Not due to any of my usual reasons but because I’d swung by the lodge to discuss Reader Weekend plans with Billie and Hana and had gotten caught up in the contagious excitement.
Things were slowly starting to take shape.
A vague, blobby, mutated shape. I just needed to find a way to get the buy-in of more town businesses.
If Hazel and I could make this launch a success with our own limited resources, maybe victory would taste even sweeter?
I found room 210 at the end of a mural that looked suspiciously like the battle scene from the final Twilight movie and poked my head in the open doorway.
It was kitted out like a computer lab that had a fling with an art studio.
There were a dozen students lounging in chairs, arguing about what appeared to be a logo for a cat litter brand.
Darius spotted me and hopped to his feet. “Guys! Our client is here. Zoey, this is Story Lake’s Graphic Design and Marketing Club. Everyone, this is our town publicist, Zoey Moody,” he said, making the introductions.
“Bro,” a guy in a beanie said from his almost reclined position by the windows. I assumed it was meant as a greeting.
“’Sup?” I returned.
“Hi, Zoey.” Laura’s daughter, Isla, waved from behind a jumbo-sized computer monitor. She was painfully pretty, and judging from the boys in the seats surrounding her, I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
“Can I get you something to drink, Ms. Moody? Coffee? Water?” offered a curly-haired boy with a spindly teenage mustache.
“Call me Zoey please. And a water would be great.”
He blew out a sigh of relief. “Thank God, because I got busted sneaking into the faculty lounge for coffee last week, and they said one more infraction and I was looking at in-school suspension.”
“Why don’t we head over to the conference table?” Darius suggested, pointing toward a corner of the room that did not actually have a table.
The sound of screeching table and chair legs filled the room as the students pushed their furniture into the shape of a long, skinny conference table.
“Have a seat.” Darius proudly gestured to the head of the table, which was currently occupied by an Avril Lavigne 2.0 type.
“Move, Kylie,” Isla hissed.
Kylie rolled her smoky-lined eyes and, cracking her gum in what I could only assume was derision, vacated the chair.
“Here, Ms. Moody. I got this out of the water fountain that the wrestling team doesn’t put their mouths over.”
“Uh, thanks?” I said, taking my seat and my unmouthed water.
“Before we get into your project’s specific needs, we put together a little presentation to show off our talents and some of our previous work,” Darius said, gesturing toward the pull-down screen at the front of the room. “Bodie?”
The kid in the beanie dramatically stabbed a key on his laptop, and the presentation started.
“While we haven’t executed many professional projects yet,” Isla began, “you can see we have diverse experience in signage. These are the signs we designed for Mr. Rose’s retirement last year.”
“He was kind of an ass as a teacher so we didn’t try very hard,” Kylie said, tugging on her nose ring.
“Yeah, don’t judge us on those designs. We were, like, purposely phoning it in. The dude didn’t give A’s because ‘A’s are perfect and no one is perfect,’” Bodie said with a snort.
“I hate that,” I said, thinking of all Hazel’s four-star reviews that should have been fives.
Isla pointed at the screen. “By contrast, here’s the signage for Janitorial Appreciation Week.”
“We love our janitorial staff,” Darius cut in.
“I can tell by the balloon arch,” I said.
The presentation lasted a solid twenty minutes, and at some point, the focused energy I’d enjoyed for most of the day left my body like it had been exorcised.
The urge to yawn was as overwhelming as a smothering lethargy stole over me. I was used to the midafternoon crash that plagued office workers like me with crappy eating habits and little to no physical activity, but this was like being exposed to a carbon monoxide leak.
“So what do you think?” Water Boy asked hopefully.
Crap. They were all looking at me expectantly.
“I think you’ve shown a wide range of talent and execution,” I said.
“That’s what we were going for,” Darius said with enthusiasm. “Now what can we do for you?”
I fought off the exhaustion. “We’re going to talk about how you all feel about books and farm animals and creating some promo material, but first I gotta ask: What’s with the vampires?”
In unison, the students dramatically swept invisible capes over the lower halves of their faces and hissed.
“I’m suddenly feeling unsafe,” I said.
“Sorry. The Fighting Vampires are our mascot,” Darius explained.
“Go, Vampires!” Bodie barked.
“The Twilight series was big here way back in the mid-2000s,” Isla said. “Stephenie Meyer’s second cousin went to school here. The school took a vote.”
“Of course they did,” I said.
Story Lake loved to vote on things. Like high school mascots…or plow truck names. Which was why residents waved to Plowy McFuckYou when it went by in the snow.
“We used to be the Story Lake Stinkweeds, named for the invasive lake weed that was a problem back in the 1970s,” Darius explained.
“The Fighting Vampires is definitely better,” I decided.