EXCERPT FROM AVA ENTERS THE GROUP CHAT
Sending Out the Donner Party
Ava
I should be across the lawn at a party where you couldn’t toss a prosciutto-wrapped melon slice without hitting a pro football player.
But instead, I’m slumped on the floor of an empty giraffe birthing stall, my navy dress hiked indecently up my thighs and my eyes damp behind my glasses.
Here, no one—not even a giraffe—is around to judge my pale legs or my tears.
Five minutes, I told myself when I slipped away from the crowd spilling out over the expansive patio surrounding my boss’s just-as-expansive house. Five minutes to catch my breath.
But I’m not sure there’s any amount of time that would allow me to catch my breath when my heart is the problem. And there’s no similar idiom about catching hearts. Only about hearts breaking. Or aching. Being achy and breaky, if you know your country crossover music.
Now, look—I realize my current problems are so far beyond first world that they’re more like premier-elite-world problems. But this world belongs to my boss, Maxine Knies, and for the past six years, I’ve simply been living in it.
First as her personal assistant, and now as her senior giraffe keeper.
Max is extremely wealthy, and I’ve discovered that once people shift beyond simply very wealthy into the upper stratosphere of filthy rich, they get bored and try unique, expensive hobbies or find rare, expensive things to collect.
In Max’s case, she collects exotic animals.
And one football team.
Normally my work is comfort, so when I escaped the party, it’s only natural that I stealthily made my way across Max’s darkened estate to the giraffe barn.
Tonight, though, I fear this is the worst place I could have chosen.
Maybe because in the stall right next to this one, I know there’s one less giraffe than yesterday.
Or maybe I came here because instead of comfort, I just need a good wallow.
My phone buzzes in my hand and I jolt, dropping it face down on the rubber mats covering the floor.
It’s probably Jessa, my best friend, threatening me with bodily harm if I don’t come back soon.
Not that she needs me; Jessa is an extrovert who can make friends at an exponential rate anywhere.
She’s even managed to bond with my stepsister, which is a mountain I’ve yet to summit even with Jessa’s prodding.
So maybe she and Presley, who is a freshly minted Inferno cheerleader, are keeping each other company.
Jessa is one of Max’s monkey keepers—a job you couldn’t pay me any amount of money to do.
Her contract doesn’t include the clause mine does about attending several Inferno events each season.
She also doesn’t live in an adorable guesthouse on the property or have a standing weekly dinner date with Max.
So, of course, like most normal women, Jessa was thrilled when I asked her to be my moral support plus-one at this preseason party.
“Is touching the players frowned upon?” she asked. “I’ve always been curious to see if I could wrap both hands around one of their biceps.” She held out both hands in a choking gesture, and the look on her face was so gleeful that I wanted to rescind my invitation immediately.
I told Jessa in no uncertain terms that she could not do that unless she wanted to face the ire of our boss. Maxine Knies is not the kind of woman you want to displease.
Speaking of displeasing Max . . . she might be the one texting to summon me back.
Before I can pick up my phone from the floor to check, it buzzes again and then twice more in quick succession. Not Max, then. She would never deign to blow up anyone’s phone.
And my phone is, in fact, blowing up.
Flipping it over, I frown at a series of texts from several numbers I don’t have saved in my phone.
Where’d you go, Fish? the first message reads.
A text from a second number says: FIVE MORE MINUTES!!!! Then we’re sending out a Dahmer party
This escalated quickly comes from a third person before the first responds again.
It’s Donner Party, not Dahmer party, but I think you’re generally confused about both.
I can’t help it. I cackle. On a day when I’ve fought a dozen losing battles against tears, it feels good to laugh.
How is it that you can spell Dahmer if you don’t know who he is
Donner Dahmer WHATEVER!!!!
The same number follows up with: Isn’t at least one of the two a search party???!!!
And now I’m laughing again as the responses flood in.
NO
Absolutely not.
But they DO both have something in common . . .
They both start with D???
Google it. We’ll give you a minute.
Anyone else at all worried this is going to scare him off
The texts keep firing in rapid succession, and I can’t stop grinning—though I really shouldn’t be reading them.
I’ve obviously been dropped into a private group chat where I don’t belong.
But I’m nosier than I realized, because instead of texting to let them know about the mistake, I keep reading.
And since none of them are using names, I label them as Guy #1, Guy #2, and Guy #3.
Not very creative, I know, but it’s less annoying than seeing strings of numbers.
I’m not entirely sure why I think they’re all men, but I’d put money on it, even if their texting habits are different from one another.
Guy #1 writes the longest texts, all with punctuation.
Guy #2 is the most effusive, with all caps and multiple exclamation points.
He also is in for a rude awakening when he looks up the Donner Party.
Rounding out the group is Guy #3, who is the most succinct and uses no punctuation other than what I bet autocorrect automatically added, like apostrophes.
I’m not sure how this happened, and what’s weirder is that the messages are coincidentally similar to my situation. I also disappeared from a party, and I’m sure, at the very least, one person is missing me.
Speak of the devil.
Not wearing Prada, but a white Monique Lhuillier gown, my boss appears in the doorway. I watch Max cross the room in her designer heels like it’s a runway, not the large stall where her giraffes give birth.
I removed my shoes in the hallway outside so my heels wouldn’t catch in the dimpled rubber mats.
But Maxine Knies, my boss, my mentor, the closest thing I’ve had to a mother in years, strides so confidently in her Amina Muaddi stilettos, it’s as though she’s issuing a challenge: Just try to take me down.
You’ll fail, just like everyone else who has made the attempt.
The phone keeps vibrating in my lap, and I resist the urge to turn it over and see if Guy #2 has figured out the whole Dahmer/Donner mix-up.
Max pauses for only a moment before she sighs and descends with more elegant grace than I possess in my whole body to sit down beside me. Right on the ground.
My glasses almost fly off my face as I swivel to stare at her.
The sleek cap of her silver hair, pink diamond studs adorning her earlobes, and white silk gown are all completely out of place in a giraffe birthing stall.
Not to mention her Aminas, which I know cost over twelve hundred dollars—because I picked the shoes up for her three years ago when I was still her personal assistant.
“What are you doing? Your dress—” I start, but Max cuts me off with the wave of her hand.
“It isn’t going to be ruined from sitting on the floor for five minutes. I can’t say the same, however, for my hip alignment.”
I don’t believe that for a second. Max spends at least an hour a day doing yoga and lifts weights four times a week. At fifty-something-she-won’t-admit, she’s in much better shape than I’ve ever been and probably ever will be.
“Though it does give me a good excuse for a massage or a bonus visit to the chiropractor,” she says. I’m about to offer to make the appointments tomorrow when she adds, “I’ll have Stefan arrange it.”
Right. Because it’s no longer my job to manage her calendar or her appointments.
Even three years after switching roles from assistant to senior giraffe keeper, it’s a strange sort of muscle memory, the inherent reflex to involve myself in the details of Max’s life.
My former tasks now fall on Stefan’s narrow shoulders.
He’s a competent assistant, even if he exists in a constant state of anxiety.
When he’s around Max, he gently shakes the same way my stepmother’s tiny purse dog does.
“I can always buy another dress,” Max says, gazing down at the white fabric, stark against the black mats covering the cement floor.
She flicks away some stray pine bedding with a manicured nail.
“Or maybe I’ll change before returning to the party.
I wavered between the green and this one.
The other looked better on me, but white felt more fitting for the occasion. ”
I’m sure it did. Wearing wedding-white while hosting a party for the team she now owns thanks to her messy divorce is a symbolic flex.
Like a designer-silk middle finger to her ex-husband, who will likely fume and rage over seeing the photos online later.
Though I highly doubt Joe will pick up on the significance of her dress color.
He never was smart enough to keep pace with Max.
Which is how he lost the Inferno in the first place.
Joe fought to keep his precious football team in the divorce, like a wailing toddler clutching a toy car in his chubby fingers.
He didn’t mind losing the house and expansive property tucked away like a compound inside the loop.
He was also happy to let Max keep the veritable zoo of exotic (read: expensive) animals she amassed over the years.
But Joe is a seventh-generation Texan, so the football team was nonnegotiable. As the proceedings dragged on and their lawyers’ billable hours ballooned, Joe blustered and raged and dug in his heels to retain this one, most precious asset.