Chapter 46
Chapter
The next evening, I’m home again, drumming my fingers on the kitchen table, putting off the conversation I don’t want to have.
The company retreat is in a couple days. Greg won’t ever ask me to get more information—he doesn’t want to take advantage of this situation he hates—but the mood in the group chat is tense. Everyone is stressed about the trap, and how little they know about it.
I have to ask Mom for help again. And I can’t think of a good way to spin this that lets me avoid telling her what’s really going on.
ruby.ocampo:
Mom, can you look something up for me?
I need to know if Mark has been saying anything strange in one of the private Slack channels
I cringe after I hit send. And then the messages come popping up, fast and furious.
sampaguita72:
Ruby, tell me the truth
What are you doing?
Are you in trouble?
How can I help you?
You never tell me anything
You have to talk to me so I can help you
Ugh, God, I don’t know how to explain this. Mom is going to peek inside that channel where he’s setting the trap and see some of TKCORP’s most ambitious employees talking about the company retreat and the union. I can’t think of a lie this time—I’ll have to be honest with her.
I start typing: Mom, things at work are…
I pound the delete key on my laptop.
sampaguita72:
I can see you typing! I know you’re there!
I’m sweating now. If I tell her the truth, she’s going to accuse me of exploding my life all for Greg! For that boy who doesn’t have any ambition! Dragging you down and making you just like him! She’ll turn it into another speech about how she was right all along and he’s a bad influence.
But Mom is messaging me again, impatient with the long silence.
sampaguita72:
You know it was hard for me, breaking into corporate life
People didn’t exactly treat me with respect
I sink deeper into my seat at the kitchen table, settling in for the story I’ve heard so many times before.
ruby.ocampo:
I know, Mom
sampaguita72:
I was so terrified all the time. Alone here, scrambling
ruby.ocampo:
I know, I remember
sampaguita72:
Let me finish! You think you know everything
I’m trying to tell you, I was wrong when I said that
I was so tired when I was alive, out of my mind with stress
I wasn’t thinking clearly
I was doing this so you wouldn’t have to
It does make me sad, seeing how you’re living, staying late at the office, running around in circles
I wanted more for you than this
All my muscles are clenched, and I’m willing the tears gathering in the corners of my eyes not to spill out.
ruby.ocampo:
Aren’t you the one who told me it’s good to keep your head down
Aren’t you the one who told me
I stop and flex my fingers, breathe in, breathe out. The barrier between my thoughts and my fingers is becoming dangerously thin.
ruby.ocampo:
Every time I complained about work, I remember you’d tell me
about how you knew you had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously
and you were just glad to be participating
and because you did it, it’s normal
and how grateful i should be
i am grateful!
i know how much worse things could be!
and that i’m the problem and it’s probably my fault i can’t thrive here, okay! i get it!
i don’t know what to DO with it, now that i’ve got it!
I’m dizzy, putting that knot in my chest into words for the first time.
sampaguita72:
Always so dramatic
You make me sound so bad!
So now she’s gaslighting me!
ruby.ocampo:
Every time you’d sigh and say, “i wish you would…” or “why don’t you…” or “why can’t you just…”
you think those things just pass through me? you don’t think every single one gets under my skin?
do you even realize how much power your words have over me?
My head is spinning. I’m going to throw up.
sampaguita72:
It’s your life, Ruby!
I was so afraid all the time, just trying to hold things together for you!
And there it is, right on cue—the guilt creeping back in, like a puddle seeping into a sock. It seems like we always end up back here. But I’m so agitated from this conversation already—a truly unprecedented level of honesty between us—it’s like my fingers barrel ahead on their own.
ruby.ocampo:
Mom, why didn’t you approve of Greg? Why were you so insistent I shouldn’t date him?
Oh God, we’re going there.
sampaguita72 is typing
The words vanish, appear, disappear again. It feels like hours pass, but the clock in the corner of the screen says it’s been minutes.
I can practically hear her sigh.
sampaguita72:
Because Greg is too much like us
He and Wendy, they struggle like we do
And he seemed content with the way things are—no drive to change his situation
She’s wrong about him. I know he has drive, even if it’s not the way she expected.
sampaguita72:
And I didn’t want you to have to struggle
I wanted you to have the best
I thought the path to a good life for us is so narrow
That there are only a few ways to get there, and this job is the surest one
And marrying well can’t hurt
A fresh pang of guilt roils through me.
sampaguita72:
So what are you saying now? You want to quit your job? Break up with this man?
Go ahead! It’s your life
I sigh, hands hovering over the keyboard. I’m exhausted, but right now there’s a task at hand.
ruby.ocampo:
It’s a bit more complicated than that, Mom
And I’ll need your help.
I explain about the union, and the looming layoffs.
I add that Al is involved, playing on her sympathies.
But I can’t bear to tell her the whole truth, up to a certain point—that I’m willingly continuing to date a man I suspect of some kind of corporate fraud.
I’m still editing the way I used to, but it’s the best I can do for now.
Gritting my teeth, I tell her that I have some doubts about what Mark Winterson’s been up to lately, and I really like him, so I’m just trying to rule out his involvement in this scheme.
sampaguita72:
All right then. Was it so hard to tell me?
She has no idea.
But her green light goes off, and several minutes pass before it comes on again. In the haunted DM, a list of every private Slack channel that I don’t have access to appears.
sampaguita72:
Do any of these look like the one?
It’s a long list—TKCORP is a huge company, after all, with tens of thousands of people in our Slack—but my eyes finally settle on a channel called #future-managers.
And Mark Winterson’s voice reverberates in my head: Some of our most ambitious employees. Promised them promotions if they participate.
God, he can be so cringe sometimes. That has to be it.
ruby.ocampo:
Can you see who’s in this one?
sampaguita72:
I’ll take a peek inside
Several minutes later, Mom resurfaces:
sampaguita72:
Oh! Oh!
She sends a few clapping emojis.
sampaguita72:
I think I figured out how to take a screenshot! If I raise my hands like a fake camera and press the shutter, it does something!
A few screenshots appear—of the recent conversations in there, indeed discussing the union and the upcoming corporate retreat, and of the list of members in the group.
ruby.ocampo:
Thank you thank you thank you!
sampaguita72:
Well? Can you tell if he’s involved?
I bite my bottom lip, peeling off a bit of dry skin.
ruby.ocampo:
It doesn’t seem like it? He’s in the group, but he didn’t say anything.
He must have delegated that out to someone else—maybe being careful about his paper trail, like Erickson said.
I don’t have the heart to end the fantasy for her yet. To cut off that hope completely.
And Mom isn’t stupid, but she had a habit, in life, of not looking too closely at stories she wanted to believe.