Far From Normal Read online

  BECKY WALLACE

  FAR

  FROM

  NORMAL

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  Copyright Page

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  FOR GAVIN, LAYNIE, AUDREY,

  AND ADY.

  I’ve made up hundreds of fake people, but you four are my greatest creations. Love you always.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  I LOVE CHICAGO. IT’S LITERALLY MY FAVORITE PLACE IN THE world—except in the summer when it’s full of tourists. You can’t go anywhere without running into one of those annoying, slow-walking, selfie-taking fanny-pack wearers. And for the last several summers, I’ve been one of them. Minus the fanny-pack wearing part because even though they’re on trend, my grandma doesn’t leave the house without hers, and I love Grammy, but refuse to dress like her.

  As I stand outside 900 North Michigan Avenue, head tilted back to take in the beautiful gray stone building with its four castle-like towers, I realize that even without the typical attire, I probably still look like a tourist.

  Not today, Chicago. Not today.

  I tug down the hem of the little black dress I misappropriated from my aunt’s closet, make sure no one saw me gawking, and stride into the building’s side entrance with all the purpose I can muster. That’s where the employees who work in the building’s upper levels check in. The security machine issues a happy little beep as I scan my first real work badge and head to the elevators with a slew of other professionals, young and otherwise.

  My wedge heels skid as they hit the metal grating just inside the elevator, but I recover fast. No one says anything to me, which is exactly what I want because that means I’m blending in. I don’t look like a seventeen-year-old who’s interning with her aunt for the summer.

  By the time I reach the twenty-seventh floor, it’s just me and my reflection. Even wavy and oddly tinted in the elevator door, I like what I see. With my hair down and Aunt Emma’s dress on, I look like I belong in Chicago.

  A new Maddie. A better Maddie. A Maddie no one expects to fail.

  The doors open onto a reception area painted the perfect shade of orange. It’s not too bright or too brown, an impeccable backdrop for the giant, stylized V that fills the space like artwork. Velocity Marketing has a cool vibe to match its reputation.

  I bet Aunt Emma chose the design for the office. She’s got the best aesthetic—and the reputation to match. I never would have put a lavender couch and a faux-fur rug into a Lincoln Park penthouse apartment, but she’s got vision.

  Let’s hope it extends to me too.

  Putting on my most confident smile, I approach the desk. “Hi! You must be Patty. I’ve heard great things about you. I’m Maddie McPherson, the new intern.”

  Patty’s super thick, painted-on eyebrows rise. “Oh yes.” She nods a few times, eyes raking over me, before continuing. “I’ve heard all about you too. I’ll call William to take you back to training.”

  What could she have possibly heard? I mean, I had to apply for this internship just like anyone else. Emma surely put in a good word for me, but something about Patty’s tone makes the yogurt I ate for breakfast sour in my stomach.

  “Great,” I say, trying to sound more enthusiastic than nervous. Some kids at my high school wear these plastic WWJD bracelets, but right now, I’m wondering less about what Jesus would do and more what Emma might. I clear my throat and try to engage Patty in conversation: “Is that your dog?” I ask, pointing to the framed photo at the end of her desk.

  “Umm-hmm.” She ignores my effort and her bright pink fingernails continue clicking across the keyboard.

  “He’s really cute. I mean, I’m assuming he’s a he. The spiked collar sorta made me think—”

  “William is on his way,” she says without looking up from her screen.

  Oh Okay. I’ll just stop talking now. I have a bad habit of babbling when I’m nervous. Emma offered to bring me into the office today and introduce me to everyone, but I didn’t think that would give a great first impression. I’m here to prove that I can stand on my own, that I can be successful without having to be babysat by my super-busy, super-talented aunt.

  “Thank you, Patty,” I say, pretending she’s busy and not plain rude.

  A door behind Patty’s desk swings open, startling me. It’s cleverly hidden so you can’t see the seams unless you’re looking, and the V breaks in half to move with it. It’s almost something out of a spy movie. And when a good-looking, dark-haired guy with a stubbly chin and a black button-down shirt walks out, I wonder if I’m about to be inducted into MI6 or the NSA or whatever. The fact that his pants have a silvery sheen, though, kills the whole fantasy for me. They’d look okay onstage or at a ballroom dance competition, but for the office? Nope.

  He holds out his hand. “Hi. I’m William. You must be Coffee.”

  “What? No,” I say with a half laugh. “I’m Maddie.”

  Patty snorts.

  William gives my hand a solid shake before turning back without any explanation or direction. I hesitate for a heartbeat then follow him before the secret door slams shut.

  No top-secret weapons or retina scanners wait for me on the other side. Two banks of cubicles flank a narrow walkway. Polite voices float over the textured half-walls, buzzing with more noise than you would have guessed from the reception area.

  “All of the other interns have already had their training, so you’ll have to jump in with both feet,” William says as he strides toward one of the offices that line the building’s outer wall—no view of the lake from this side. “We have a hierarchy of assignments. I’m sure your aunt gave you the breakdown of how this all works.”

  I’m not sure exactly what “all” he’s talking about, but if he means that I will do a ton of grunt work in return for a sparkling letter of recommendation and a tiny stipend at the end of the summer, then sure. I guess I know how it works.

  I wish for the millionth time that my mom would have let me skip the last few days of school so I could have started on Monday like everyone else. But since she wasn’t super supportive of me spending the summer in Chicago, I had to make some concessions.

  A girl leans out of the cubicle closest to William’s office, eyes wide behind glasses with enormous frames.

  He points to her. “For the first couple of days, you’ll shadow Intern. Then, if we discover something you’re good at, we’ll find an assignment for you.” He turns to face me once he crosses the threshold of his office, blocking me from following. “And now, I need coffee. Two sugars and a dash of hazelnut creamer.”

  And then he shuts his door in my face.

  I stand there staring at the brown wood, mouth half-open. What the actual hell?

  I’m pretty sure I didn’t say that out loud, but the girl with the huge glasses answers me like I had.

  “They burn through a lot of interns around here. He doesn’t bother learning anyone’s names until they’ve stuck around for more than a few weeks.” She’s wearing one of those chunky cardigans that looks like it was hand-knitted and has her bl
ond hair piled in a messy bun right on top of her head. She’s pretty in that effortlessly nerdy way. “He’s actually a good guy once you get to know him.”

  Doubtful. “Okay …” I hesitate, shifting my weight from one wedge to the other. Remember: What would Emma do? I ask myself. Be decisive. Act! “Is there a break room or something around here?” I ask, looking down the hallway that seems to consist of nothing but gray cubicles.

  “The kitchen’s just around the corner. You’ll smell it before you see it. I’ll run you through the basics when you come back.” Her desk phone rings, but she pauses and says, “I’m Katie, by the way.”

  “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Maddie,” I whisper as she picks up the phone. She points toward the kitchen and gives me an encouraging grin.

  After the third or fourth bank of cubicles, the hall makes a sharp turn, and the fragrance of burnt coffee and copy machine toner reaches my nose. The kitchen is a gray tunnel so narrow that I could touch both walls at once, and I do, just ’cause I can. A basket of fruit and packaged treats sit on a sideboard at the back of the room next to a water cooler.

  As the coffee brews, I tap my fingers on the white countertop and consider my options. I need to give William a reason to remember my name. A positive reason.

  There’s a forgotten pen on the counter, and I use it to give myself a quick tattoo. In big, block letters, I write WWED on the inside of my left wrist.

  In this case, I can guess the answer.

  I put William’s coffee in the only cup with a matching saucer, peel open a chocolate-dipped biscotti, and lay it at an angle behind the mug. Nothing too fancy, given the scant selection in the kitchen, but it looks better than a Styrofoam cup with coffee sloshing over the side.

  William’s office door is open when I get back, so I set my offering on his desk and smile.

  He looks at the cup, then up at me, bushy eyebrows peaked. “Did you need something?”

  I think a “thank you” might be in order. “No. I was just … do you need anything else?”

  “I’ll let you know when I do. Go see Intern. She has assignments for you First Years.”

  There’s no questioning the derision in his tone. Being a “First Year” must not being a good thing.

  “Yes. Thank you. Okay. Bye.” I grimace as I walk out of the office, shutting the door after me. Did I thank him and tell him goodbye? Speak sentences, Mads. Or say nothing at all.

  Intern—I mean, Katie—is leaning out of her cubicle, chair tilted back as far as it can possibly go without tipping over, and has a giant phone pinched between her shoulder and ear. “Ignore him.” She pushes a couple of buttons on the phone before she hangs up. We play a quick round of get to know you. Katie’s almost eighteen but will be a senior in the fall, too. Her parents held her back before kindergarten because her birthday is late, and she was really small for her age.

  I don’t mean to notice, but she’s still pretty teeny.

  “Your desk will be between mine and Arman’s. He’s an adorable cupcake of a second-year intern. You’ll love him.” She ushers me into a cubicle that is identical to hers, complete with a rolling chair, an L-shaped desk, and a blank calendar. “We’ll check out a laptop and get you all logged into the system.” She points to the cubicle directly across from mine. “That’s where Mara sits; she’s a third-year, shiny black hair, thinks she’s in charge. Javi is another second-year, worshipper of Mara, spends more time in her cube than in his own. They’re all doing Big Important Things, but I’ll try to introduce you at the end of the day. If you’re lucky, you’ll only have to associate with them in small doses.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  Katie gives me a dramatic eye roll. “Feel free to make your own judgments.” She tugs a paper box out from under her desk and offers it to me, before pulling out a second box for herself. Both are filled to the brim with tabloids from all over the world.

  “We’ll spend half our time combing through gossip magazines and news articles looking for dirt on Velocity’s clients. Sometimes it’s boring stuff—like stories in trade magazines—but other times,” she pauses to point at a shirtless actor on the cover of one magazine, “other times, it’s stuff like this.”

  The headline reads, “I’ve Made a Lot of Bad Choices,” but eating carbs must not have been among them. Dude’s got abs for days.

  I follow Katie to what she calls the Ugly Conference Room. It’s got a big glass-topped table, some rolling chairs, a whiteboard, and a narrow window overlooking the parking garage.

  She places folders labeled Bad, Good, and Neutral at the table’s center with a stack of sticky tabs and a handful of highlighters. “Let me explain what we’re doing, then you can tell me all about you while we work.”

  We’ve been tasked with digging for stories on some baseball player from Texas who may or may not have thrown a garbage can lid through a restaurant window after he caught his British actress girlfriend kissing her costar.

  He totally did it, by the way.

  Any mention of the athlete is sorted into one of the files for an executive to review later.

  “Major corporations, professional sports teams, and agents hire Velocity to help keep their ‘assets viable’—those are William’s words, not mine. There’s a lot of brand management and event planning stuff.” She plucks the top off a highlighter, running it over the baseball player’s name. “The image cleanup branch is handled mostly by your aunt. If she can make athletes look like decent humans, or at least not caught up in a scandal, they’re more likely to end up on commercials and billboards and endorsing products.”

  “Which means more money for everyone.”

  Katie has a giant, sparkly smile with movie-star-white teeth. “Exactly.” She kicks back in her chair, feet on the table, magazine in her lap. “Tell me about you and why you’re stuck here for the summer.”

  I give Katie the basic rundown of my life—this is my first time away from home, I actually want to work for Velocity when I graduate from college, I love contemporary dance and cake—and she tells me all about training for a triathlon, growing up in the city, and more of the backstory on the three other interns. Each of them is assigned to report directly to one of the executives. They each have “real” assignments, while we’re stuck with the leftovers.

  “If we don’t do anything important, how are we supposed to use this for college applications?” I need to do something impressive so that William can write me a glowing letter of recommendation that will help me get early admission to the University of North Carolina—the starting point for the rest of my life.

  She shrugs. “What I gathered from Mara, assignments develop throughout the summer. She says you have to jump on any opportunity that is tossed your way.”

  I can do that. I’ll find something to pounce on.

  Something about Katie’s tone, and the fact that her feet are on the table, makes me think that this internship might not mean as much to her as it does to me. Which I guess is good. If Katie’s not a pouncer, then I’ll be more likely to score a noteworthy project.

  Katie keeps up running commentary as she flips through the magazines, pausing every now and then to show me some dress or gasp at some new celebrity coupling.

  “Living your life like this must suck,” she says, as she flashes me an article titled “Cellulite before Twenty-Five!” “Of course, you can also afford to have any fat sucked out. So maybe it’s not so bad.”

  I grimace and nod at her, running my highlighter over the phrase “steroid-fueled rage,” then add the magazine to the negative folder. Things are not looking good for pretty-boy baseball player, and I’ve only got three hours of experience.

  The door to the conference room pops open, and Aunt Emma leads in her giant boxer, Watford. Apparently, everyone dresses casually and can bring their pets on Fridays—one of the perks of working for Velocity and a cool idea unless you’re allergic to dander. The dog drops on the floor at my feet, belly up, expecting me to scratch him. I do be
cause even though he’s slobbery, he’s sort of irresistible.

  “How’s it coming in here?” Emma adjusts the big bag over her shoulder. Her dark hair is twisted into a fancy knot at the back of her neck. “Anything unexpected?”

  I pass her the magazine I’d just marked, and she frowns.

  “Has he been accused of using steroids before?” I ask, clicking the highlighter over and over until I realize how nervous it makes me seem. I know there’s no grade on how well I’ve marked a tabloid passage, but delivering coffee and reading garbage magazines isn’t going to give me a chance to shine.

  “All of the successful baseball players have been, but we definitely don’t need the speculation.” She sticks the tabloid in her purse instead of the file. “In addition to this snafu, I have some bad news.”

  I exchange a quick look with Katie, who somehow managed to get her feet off the table and folded under her chair without me even noticing.

  “I have to fly to London for an emergency meeting. I hate to leave you alone your first weekend in the city.” Emma makes this teeth-gritting expression that’s funnier than it is apologetic. “But I also really need you to watch Watford. There’s no room in the dog resort, and even if there was, I don’t have time to take him.”

  Watford rolls his body onto my feet with a huff. He’s enormous, way bigger than any boxer I’ve ever seen, and scary looking. Between the giant dog and her fancy apartment building, I’ll be perfectly safe. And honestly, it’s kind of exciting. I’ve never been left alone anywhere.

  “We’ll be fine.” I wave off her worries.

  “Is your mom going to be mad?”

  Yes. Absolutely. But I don’t say that. “Nah. She leaves me in charge of Cube all the time.” Which is true, but she’d never let me babysit my little brother overnight. What my mom doesn’t know isn’t going to freak her out. Like that I’m getting paid to read tabloids and that I’m wearing a dress that shows more leg than she’d ever be okay with.