There were exactly three kinds of text messages I would get from Lexi Samuelson. The first kind contained words like ‘launch’, ‘campaign’, ‘engagement metrics’, and ‘brand synergy’, all of which translated roughly into English as: ‘Randi, I need you to do something’.
The second kind contained screenshots from social media accompanied by seventeen exclamation points and the phrase ‘LOOK AT THIS’. I mean, I was - I guess - the “Director of Social Media”, and in some ways Lexi, head of marketing for this place, was supposed to be kinda sorta my supervisor as far as this stuff went, but it was all more annoying, usually, than anything else.
The third kind, though, would begin with the words: ‘Quick question!’ Those were the dangerous ones. I was currently trying to determine which category today's would belong to when my phone vibrated across my desk with “LEXI S” across the screen
A moment later, another vibration.
I stared at the screen suspiciously. “Fuck off,” I muttered, and took a drink of my stale black coffee. I had a lot of work to do. Kori from Communications wanted my approval on Thanksgiving graphics for a GirlTube thing. Okay, fine. But someone from Facilities wanted clarification on holiday hours. Someone from Security wanted approval on temporary parking restrictions. And why is this all my responsibility?!?
Then another buzz. From Lexi. And another.
Nobody sent three texts in a row unless they had either committed a felony or somehow invented a new problem for me.
I picked up the phone. The preview appeared:
Hey!! Quick question :)
I seeped into messages.
AND LOOK AT THIS!!!
A photo. Of her. At her desk. Wearing some super-casual Far Horizons t-shirt she looked pretty proud of. Also this:
I’m working on something great for our engagement metrics and brand synergy.
Oh crap.
Call me when you have a sec.
I closed my eyes. I groaned. "Oh please can we not?” Somehow Lexi had managed the holy trinity of annoying text messages. My empty office didn’t care. Yeah, I kinda have my own office now.
I set the phone face down. I just knew it was something else she’d want me to do. Five seconds later I picked it back up because, despite every lesson life has ever attempted to teach me, I apparently enjoy suffering.
My office occupied a corner of the administrative wing these days. Somewhere along the line I'd gone from answering phones at a car dealership to having an actual office at this crazy new medical facility, which still felt vaguely fucking fraudulent. There was a window. There was a door that closed. Somebody had even put my name on it.
I remained convinced that this had happened by mistake.
Outside, girls moved through the corridor carrying tablets and cups of tea and expressions suggesting they had meaningful careers. Meanwhile I was sitting at my desk trying to remember whether I'd ordered enough folding chairs for an Elite Girls seminar in Pediatrics that I'd forgotten existed until yesterday. Melissa had wanted me to take care of it.
My phone buzzed again. Another text from Lexi.
It's a good thing!
That was somehow worse. Nobody who says ‘it's a good thing!’ has ever actually brought good news. Wars probably started that way: It's a good thing! We're invading Poland!
Strange. Why was I thinking about World War 2? Was this weird EWCE brain-booster thing actually making me a nerd?
Anyway. I caved. I picked up my phone. I typed:
How much time is this going to cost me?
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Finally:
Hard to estimate.
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
I leaned back in my chair. The ceiling offered no guidance. Lexi could convince people to do things they hadn't planned on doing, so I really didn’t want to call her. And somehow that left me - the former car-dealership assistant scheduler with an on-again/off-again weed habit and a C-plus relationship with authority - as the cranky bitch feeling responsible for more than she should be.
I still wasn't entirely sure how that happened.
Actually, I knew exactly how it happened: My best friend. A new job. A Movement. And whatever the hell this thing with Melissa was becoming now. And every step of the way somebody had looked around and said: ‘Randi can handle it,’ to which I had consistently replied: ‘No I fucking can't.’ And then handled it anyway.
My phone rang: Lexi, of course.
I stared at it for two full rings. Three. Four. With a sigh that came from someplace deep and ancient inside my blackened soul, I answered.
"Before you say a single word," I said, "I want you to know I'm already probably mad at you."
Lexi gasped. Then she laughed. "I haven't even told you what it is yet!"
"That's how much experience I have with you, sweetie."
"Randi."
"Lexi."
A pause. Then her voice brightened even further, which should have been physically impossible. "So. Hypothetically…" she began.
I closed my eyes, because there it was, the opening line. The trumpet blast announcing disaster. "Jesus Christ," I muttered. I knew I should watch my language.
"Hypothetically…” Lexi repeated.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "No."
“You don't even know what I’m asking.”
“No.”
"You're being difficult."
"Yes I am. And what’s with the t-shirt?” I asked, because that was new.
“Cute right?? My tits look great in it, huh?”
“I’m going to guess it has something to do with what you’re about to ask me to do.”
A sigh came through the speaker. Lexi wanted recognition for her patience. Then she launched. "So Thanksgiving is two days away…"
"Yeah, sure." Today was Tuesday. Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday, last time I checked.
“…and we have an incredible opportunity."
There it was: ‘Opportunity’. Corporate for ‘More Work for Randi’.
I rolled my chair backward and kicked my office door shut. “This sounds bad.”
"It's not bad, Randi." She paused. “It's community outreach."
My eyes narrowed. "What kind of ‘community outreach’?"
"The good kind."
I waited. The silence stretched.
Eventually she broke.
“We’re going to be bringing the Far Horizons brand out into the community, to show how much we care.”
I sat up. "What?"
"I’ve reached out to some soup kitchens, women's shelters, community centers, a church food pantry, one veterans' program…”
I stared at the wall. The wall offered no guidance.
“We’re going to be volunteering. Serving food to those in need. To those who have no place to go.”
For real? For real. This sucks. But I could hear it in her voice: it was going to happen. "How many locations are we talking about?"
"A few."
"How many is a few?" I asked.
Another pause.
"Nineteen."
"Nineteen?!?"
"Technically twenty. We’re also going to be doing our own charity event, to raise money for women’s issues.”
I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling was now actively judging me.
"Tell me you haven't already committed us."
Silence.
"Well…" I could practically hear her smile. The woman weaponized optimism. "Anyway, I've already put together a preliminary staffing plan. And I need your help..."
I blinked. A keyboard started clicking somewhere on her end.
“I just need you to get people on board.”
“Me? You want me to tell everyone that they’ll be spending their Thanksgiving holiday serving stuffing and gravy to the smelly homeless of New Corinth rather than being with their families?”
“They like you. They listen to you. You’ll do great!”
Sigh.
“I want most of the administrative staff participating. And the clinical staff. And the research staff.”
I considered hanging up.
“And security?” I asked, thinking of the dozen new towering Amazons that now patrolled our halls. “Did you want me to ask them to-“
“No that’s okay.”
A much shorter pause. I knew she couldn't imagine them ladling mashed potatoes for six hours without freaking out the general populace.
"So security…and Kathe, I’m guessing, are out?”
"Correct."
"And everybody else?" I asked.
"Everybody else…should be in."
The scale of this was beginning to dawn on me. "Lexi?”
"Yeah?"
"We’re talking about…" A pause. Why did I know this number? “…a hundred and twenty-two people."
“But I got us all matching shirts!”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. One hundred twenty-two towering hotties suddenly descending on shelters, food banks, churches, and community centers across New Corinth wearing Far Horizons logos stretched across their huge new tits.
It was like Lexi could hear me imagining it. And could see the news coverage. She laughed.
Meanwhile I was mentally calculating getting rides for everybody, parking permits, food deliveries, volunteer rotations, social media engagement, and the approximate amount of whiskey I would require afterward. Then Lexi said something that made me stop.
"Oh. And Melissa agreed."
I frowned. I hadn’t thought of Melissa in all this. "What do you mean?"
"Melissa loved the idea."
My irritation faltered, a little. "She did?"
"Immediately."
That wasn't surprising. Melissa genuinely liked helping people. Sometimes I think people forgot that. She also liked being the center of attention and…
“I’m guessing she’s going to be at the charity event? Front and center?” I asked.
“Yeah. We’ve already put out a press release. And she wants to drop in at all of the other sites too.”
“Not a surprise.” The girl would want the opportunity to smile for - and shove those big knockers in front of - every camera available. But underneath all of it, I knew, Melissa also honestly wanted people to be okay. So it didn’t surprise me that apparently the moment Lexi had suggested feeding people on Thanksgiving, Missy had said yes. For some reason that made the whole thing harder to dismiss. And started giving me ideas…
…about Melissa. About what happened whenever people thought of her. When they saw her on TV. And especially when they got the chance to see her in person. And then I thought about how many people might show up if they knew exactly where to find her.
The call ended two minutes later, and not because we’d solved anything, but because Lexi had apparently decided that “Randi will figure it out” constituted a people-recruitment-and-management strategy.
I set my phone down and stared out my office window. The administrative wing moved around me in its usual organized chaos. Women crossed the hallway carrying folders and tablets. Somebody laughed near the fancy new break room. A printer somewhere was making sounds that suggested it had finally accepted an early death. Normal Tuesday stuff.
I looked at my calendar, then at my email, then at the flood of new texts that had come through on my phone when I’d been speaking with Lexi. Then I looked at the growing list of things I was supposed to accomplish before Thanksgiving.
A new spreadsheet was in order. At some point I’d gotten pretty good at Excel.
The first few minutes were straightforward enough. Twenty locations, including the charity event, which would be at a big community center in one of the suburbs. Transportation. Food deliveries. Signage. Media requests. The usual nightmare. Some of it Lexi would be handling. I just needed to get the people. More then a hundred of them. Two days before Thanksgiving?? But, funny thing is, I thought, as I started dragging names into columns, automatically sorting people according to who worked well together, who would inevitably be late, and who needed to be kept at least fifty feet away from certain other employees if I wanted the day to remain peaceful…
…I found myself staring at Melissa’s name.
People, especially around here, did things if Melissa wanted them to.
I leaned back in my chair. Outside my office, the building buzzed with its usual energy. Inside, my spreadsheet glowed on the monitor, one name in there standing out among the rest.
Melissa fucking Monroe.
The only name that actually mattered. I thought about the press release. Then the television interviews that she’d done. Her social media accounts. Then increasingly bizarre collection of women here who seemed to reorganize their entire lives after spending enough time around her, growing tits the size of watermelons and - I flexed my jaw - these weird powers. And, then, finally, I thought about the people who would gather here in the parking lot on the weekends, just to hear me talk about her and possibly catch a glimpse.
The thing was, none of that felt strange anymore, and I know that maybe it fucking should have. Three months ago it definitely would have. Now it just felt normal.
I sat there for another minute, staring at the spreadsheet. Then I sighed, cracked my knuckles, and started changing numbers.
The community center Lexi had picked was perfectly fine. I looked it up. Nice enough facility, if a little white-bread boring. Good parking. Reasonable kitchen capacity. According to her notes that she’d just emailed me, Lexi was expecting somewhere between two and three hundred attendees throughout the day, which sounded impressive enough…until I remembered that Melissa was going to be there.
I highlighted the attendance estimate.
Then doubled it.
The number sat there on the screen. Six hundred. That felt closer. Not right, or exact. Just closer to what we wanted. What she wanted.
I frowned and pulled up the community center’s floorplan. There was a second banquet room adjacent to the main hall. It wasn’t part of the original reservation package, but I added a note to call them anyway. If we didn’t need it, great. If we did, I’d rather have it than explain to three hundred extra people why they were standing outside in the cold.
My fingers moved across the keyboard almost automatically.
I’d ask for additional volunteers, from the community. Maybe some of the monkeys from downstairs. We could get a bus. Buses.
I could tell Lexi we’d need additional food service stations, extra tables. Overflow parking, maybe a shuttle route from the church parking lot a half mile away. By the time I stopped imagining it, the event barely resembled Lexi’s original proposal.
It looked larger.
I leaned back again and studied my revised numbers. They made sense to me. We’d had at least fifty people show up here this past weekend, to bask in Melissa, or at least hear what I had to say about her. We all got a buzz from that, and their gifts - Melissa certainly did. What would it be like to have a crowd more than ten times the size?
Lexi was planning a community outreach day, basically a public-relations and marketing event. Why did I feel like I was planning something else?
Outside my office window, the afternoon crowd flowed through the administrative wing. A pair of interns from a local high school hurried past carrying boxes. Nicole from accounting was arguing amiably with a Coronado nurse about holiday scheduling. Life at Far Horizons.
My eyes drifted back to the spreadsheet. Then to Melissa’s name. Then back to the attendance estimate.
I knew what Lexi saw when she looked at this event: brand awareness, community engagement, positive media coverage. All the marketing buzzwords she loved collecting and handing out like fucking Pokémon cards. And she wasn’t wrong: those things would happen. We’d get more patients, more business, more word of mouth. We’d expand…
But that wasn’t only what I was seeing. I was seeing Melissa standing in a crowded room, smiling at people. Yeah, sure, I was seeing the guys standing at a distance, all but drooling, snapping pictures of her for their wank sessions later. Fine, let them: more Squirt for us. More expansion, more growth, and we all fucking love it, taking it from them. But I was also seeing mothers bringing their daughters over to meet her. I was seeing local volunteers from the Ladies’ Auxiliary staying longer than they intended because they wanted another conversation with her. I was seeing coiffed news reporters showing up for a charity story and leaving with something else entirely.
The thought settled into place so naturally that I almost missed it. People weren’t going to come because Far Horizons was hosting a Thanksgiving event. People were going to come because Melissa Monroe would be there…
…and they wanted her to touch their lives.
I stared at the screen for a long moment, and started up an email to the entire staff...
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