Chapter 3: A Blown Opportunity

Artemis knew Lacey very well. Through the course of being roommates, she knew Lacey to be one of those people who will just always land on their feet—not through luck—but preparation. It was kind of annoying sometimes, but in a good way. You can’t hate someone who gets accolades when you know the work they put in to get it.

So what she was expecting to hear when Lacey got back from her job interview was this:

“Nailed it! They offered me a position on the spot, I’m going to be rollin in duckets, totes blinged out bitch!” Actually no, she might have said that if she was Lacey.

Perhaps what she was really expecting was this:

“How did it go? Well, you can’t always know. I feel like I did the best I could, there was one thing I think I could have done better. I don’t know. I just hope it’s a good fit and that they liked me. We’ll see.” Of course, two days later, there’d be a letter or a phone call and squealing with glee.

What she did not expect was this:

“Wine. I need wine.”

“Hey there roomie, how’d—” Artemis cut off her thought mid-sentence at the sight of a disheveled and flushed Lacey Dupree. Her hair was in disarray, her hands had black ink marks all over them,

“Holy—is someone throwing a rager and nobody told me?”

Lacey sneered at her for a half step, then stopped placing her hands out with straight serious intention and communicated her talking point as a political leader might, “Artemis, I need you to focus, I have a need, and that is wine, please tell me you have wine.”

She shook her head.

Lacey sighed, then demanded with an edge of annoyance, “Fine, then break out your vodka.”

Artemis got up, and edged over to the door to the dorm conspicuously adding, “I don’t have any of that either—” she closed the door and hissed, “Dub Tee Eff, Lacey, are you trying to get me busted?”

Lacey’s face was stern and angry then suddenly it melted into tears and sobbing.

“Oh honey, no, no, what happened.”

Lacey was jelly kneed and Artemis led her to the couch. She all but crumbled onto Artemis’ shoulder, “I- screw-d it- up,” she let let out between sobs.

“Okay, okay, do you wanna talk about it.” She’d not seen Lacey for a while. She never got like this about guys, hell the last time was the ‘D+’ incident. A while back, one of her project papers was eaten by the hard drive or something and she’d ended up having to turn in an unrevised and incomplete backup draft, and her teacher accused her of lying about it. Lacey just kept sobbing. “Tell you what, I’ll go make a screwdriver and we’ll have a drink, and then we’ll talk, K? Sound good?”

She managed to coax a nod out of her friend.

As it turned out it had been a disaster. Apparently, Lacey explained, she’d gotten there just a minute late, but others were waiting, so they interviewed others instead, so she ended up sitting there waiting. Everyone else who was there and totally more prepared, by the way she’d described it, they’d brought easels, props, Powerpoint presentations and Visio graphs. They were all judging her for having gotten there late. When they came out to get her, she was eating her hair. Apparently that’s a thing.

“I haven’t chewed on my hair since I was like 4, and only when I’m nervous or scared, but there I was just munching away, I must have looked like a total special needs. But that wasn’t the bad part, I mean well, sitting there while everyone was judging me was horrible, but it was worse when I got in the interview. She asked me questions and I had things rehearsed, but I just choked. I forgot everything.”