Nia Rivera
You know, you guys are quite clever. We assumed it was Amanda who drew on the tree, but Coupe is so right: IT could have definitely left the marking! I could not wait to get to my shift at the center, I was itching to get my hands on the some personnel info.
It was already getting hot when I got there that morning, and I was so smug that I’d been able to wriggle myself into office duty instead of yard work. Hot and sweaty, not my thing. But as soon as I got my computer booted up, I realized I wasn’t exactly getting off easy. There was a price to pay for my cushy job of mindlessly typing supply lists and field trip request forms.
Barbara, the woman we met the first day, likes to talk. I mean, she likes to talk a lot.
“You remind me so much of my niece who lives in Ohio. You studious types with those granny glasses. My niece sometimes reads a dozen books a month! A dozen!”
I pushed my glasses up on my nose and did my best to look the part, so that maybe she would not notice if I seemed distracted and not terribly social. I need NOT have worried because Barbara was nattering on about her family, so I was free to navigate the ancient computer system. Where was Cornelia when you really needed her? Following the wisdom of stef_stone, trumpetgirl, and BlueRoseGrey, I looked for a database that might contain an alphabetical list of kids and volunteers, but nothing about their computer filing system made any sense to me. I was stuck.
Finally I gave up being subtle. “Barbara, I was wondering. Do we have a master list that shows which volunteers are paired with which kids? It might be helpful for me to get familiar with names.”
I wasn’t sure if this request was going to be too obvious, but luckily for me, Barbara is the overly helpful kind. “Okie-dokie smokey, I'm happy to show you,” she said, "I have an Excel spreadsheet that shows you who is matched with who and gives us their schedule. I will scoot into the other room and pull it from the file, shall I?”
Whoa, that worked better than I anticipated. While I waited for her to come back, I quickly rifled through the desk. It seemed like the main reception desk, and a good detective would not overlook anything. Not much out of the ordinary: manilla folders, countless bent paperclips, rusted pennies, a stack of those flyers from Kyle, an overflowing inbox of mail, a Simpsons mug full of leaking Uniball pens and an oddly matching collection of I LOVE SANTA MONICA pencils. Nothing useful.
Barbara was back with the list, so I thanked her and waited until she went back to her desk to start scanning for names. My heart beat wildly in my chest. First I looked at the volunteers. Taylor, Jacob. Thompson, Stella. Treybig, Nan. No volunteers with the initials IT. Okay. Next I scanned the kid column. Taft, Rachel. Teague, Micky. Thick, Kurt. Torres, Alma. Nobody with the initials IT.
And just to say that I had, I also did a search for Amanda’s name, but that, too, turned up nothing. As I expected.
“You should definitely make it a point to come back later in the week,” Barbara was saying. I realized she’d been talking all this time, but I hadn’t been listening. “So you can be in the commercial.”
“Commercial?” That piqued my interest. I’d never had dreams of movie stardom, but seeing a commercial filmed live sounded definitely interesting.
Barbara’s face was even cheerier than usual. “We’re trying to get some corporate sponsors so we can make some improvements around here. So we’re doing a commercial. I think one of your friends is shooting it, right?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, her eyes went wide and her hands shot to her face, covering her mouth. “Oops,” she exclaimed. “You didn’t hear that from me. I think that was supposed to be a secret!”
Her enthusiasm was infectious. A friend of mine? Working in secret? To benefit others? That had Amanda written all over it!
ICUPEEKING
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