Chapter 1
It was a Wednesday when Andrew called her into his office. And she knew the expression on his face. It was nothing good.
“Georgie, you know you’ve done some great work for us the last couple months, but your background check finally came back from the agency, and it failed.” At least he had the decency to look a bit upset about it. When she applied for this job, HR said that having a nonviolent criminal offense was not a barrier to an unskilled entry level position. It seems that QNB Group had changed their mind. Andrew smiled gently, “you know that sort of thing I would be willing to have another look at, but the orders came from above me. The top, you understand? I can’t contest that more than I already have.”
She was being fired. She knew very well why that was. Even if it wasn’t her background check, it would be something else. Ann Mei was C-suite here after all. It was karma, the past coming back to spite her. Georgie nodded, feeling the pressure behind her eyes. Her benefits were due to kick in next week. Her medication needed to be refilled, and she hadn’t seen her psychologist in three months, since she was laid off from the nonprofit. What the hell was she going to do?
Just last week, she had drained her bank account to pay her roommates back the rent that she owed. They had been kind enough to let her skip two rent payments, and she had wanted to pay them back as well as cover this month’s rent. She wouldn’t be getting any severance from her time at QNB Group, and she just exhausted EI.
Andrew was looking at her, a sympathetic look on his face. “Look, I’m really sorry, kid. I’ll see if I can find somewhere to refer you,” he added. That was kind of him, but Georgie knew the truth. Ann Mei had certainly already made calls, now that her background check had come back, everyone must’ve figured out who she really was. A bitter, scheming woman with a criminal record and a failed company.
Slowly packing up the things from her desk, Georgie couldn’t ignore the feeling of hot tears running down her face. She should’ve expected this. Hell, she had done this herself. Slowly, collecting her things, she left the heavy ThinkPad on the desk, and walked as quickly as she could to the elevator bay, keeping her head down.
Hearing the ding of the elevator, she got on quickly and rubbed at her eyes, only for two other people to rush on behind her. Looking up, she made eye contact with Ann Mei and her EA, before slamming the open door button and getting off. Georgie could feel their eyes on her, but didn’t care at the moment. Like hell she was going to stand in an elevator and play nice with the woman that got her fired.
It was raining out, of course, and of course Georgie didn’t have an umbrella. Rain soaked her socks as she stood waiting for the bus. It was late again. It was times like these that had her wondering why she even bothered staying alive. It seems like life hadn’t had enough fun kicking the shit out of her yet.
Finally making it home to her small apartment, she ate some crackers and cheese on the floor of her room. Wet and cold, she wondered what she was gonna do next. Find another job only to get fired due to her record? Or nothing at all? How many more times was she going to cancel plans, to ignore texts? And how much longer was she going to be a shit friend?
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there for. She needed to take her meds, at least while she still can before she had to find new ones. Latuda still had a patent, And there is no way she can afford it without insurance. But she had reacted badly to the other meds…
The hopelessness crept up on her quickly. It seems like nothing she could ever do would pull her out of the hole she put herself into. She used to have everything, literally everything she could want. And yet here she was, sitting damp on the floor of a cheap basement apartment. Pressing her cold fingers to her neck, she felt the bump of her pendant through her shirt, the last memory of the girl she used to be.
14 years ago, her life had been very different…
Back then, she was a mere freshman at Saint Hilda’s, and spent her weekends partying with her friends and at ballet practice. She had gotten a Tiffany and Co necklace as a present from her brother for her 15th birthday, and was proudly showing it to her friends in her class.
“It’s beautiful Gianna!” Hayden gushed, running the pad of her thumb over the engraved return to Tiffany. Gianna smiled big, “Jere is a ridiculously good gift giver for a guy. I mean what better big brother could a girl ask for?” Madeline shoved her lightly, amused; “whoever ends up being his girlfriend is going to be so lucky.”
Gianna raised a brow at that. “No dating my brother y’all! That’s just gross” she sniffed. “Plus he’s also super annoying to live with, which you wouldn’t know. He still runs into my room to fart even though he’s 19 years old!” She whined. Jeremy had moved away to college last year, and although they both bickered constantly, they still loved each other. But MIT was a long way from Toronto, and Gianna still didn’t see him as much as she had hoped. They were really close. It’s why she liked the necklace so much. The small plane engraved on the back was a reminder that Jeremy was just a flight away.
But today, Jeremy was gone. So were her mother and father. Her old friends all up and left, after watching the train wreck she had become. She couldn’t get any references either, with her bachelors & MBA and only work experience tied to Angelis investments. Combined with a criminal record, she had to start from scratch. The only thing she still had was the necklace.
The next two months were a desperate slog of trying to find work, any work. She ended up finding two positions, one as an evening janitor for a local school, and the other as a maid in a frankly sketchy company, who paid her under the table in cash.
It was wake up, bus, work. Eat a half expired sandwich from a convenience store. Get on the bus again. Work. Come home. Sleep. Repeat. Georgie had stopped taking her meds, trying to ration them out until she could cobble together enough money to to refill her prescription. But the withdrawal symptoms left her exhausted, with weird facial tics, extreme nausea, and chills. But she woke up and dragged herself to work. Over and over and over again. She didn’t care how disgusting she looked to other people anymore. It was about survival.
The candle was burning at both ends. She had promised herself she would never live like this again. But as the weeks passed, the hope of things getting better began to slip away. It was getting harder to sleep, with the hallucinations keeping her up at night. Voices whispering at her, laughing at her.
One evening, she just couldn’t take it anymore. She ravaged her drawers for any medication she could find, blend it all together into a soup, and drank it. She heard her phone ringing.
She didn’t pick up.
