Spectrum

2

"Did you get those files sent up to Grayson?" Justin asks as he walks by my desk.

"Yes, sir." I reply.

"Great. Next time we have a project like this, you need to manage your time efficiently in order to get things done. A huge part of this job is being able to juggle multiple things at once." He tells me.

"Yes, sir." I say with a tight smile. I roll my eyes as he walks away. All I ever see him doing is fucking around on the internet. He rarely does actual work. I swear I see him on YouTube more than I see him doing any coding work.

Brian walks over to me with a sad smile.

"Didn't get any time to finish it?" He asks knowingly.

"Nope. And to top it all off, I had to go upstairs and talk to Grayson about it." I groan.

"What do you mean?" He asks.

"I had to go upstairs to hand him to app designs, right? Well, he ended up bringing me into his office and asking me why mine wasn't in the pile." I tell him. His eyes go wide.

"What did you say?"

"I told him that I just didn't have time to do it." I say, cringing at the thought of it. I made a complete fool of myself in front of the boss of the entire company. He doesn't think I am capable of creating a simple app design on top of my work.

"And what did he say?" He asks, taking a seat next to me.

"Well, then he asked if it's something that I wanted to do. I told him yes, and then he said that I could leave." I shrugged.

"Is that like good or bad?" He asks with confusion.

"I literally have no idea. It probably isn't good, but let's just hope that it isn't bad." I sigh.

"I'm sure you're good. I mean, it's not like it was mandatory. I'm just surprised he even talked to you if we're being honest." He replies.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean...literally no one talks to him. Well, except for Shane. That's literally the only person he really speaks to. Well, people in HR and stuff too, but that's just about work stuff. I really I have seen him speak to anyone else."

"Really? Why?" I ask.

"Grayson is just...socially awkward, I guess. Who knows. Maybe he thinks he's too good for us or something." Brian jokes.

Mandatory meeting in the conference room in five minutes. We hear over the intercom.

"What's that about?" I ask.

"Who knows. Probably just touching base about the deadline or something." He shrugs as we both get up from our seats and head down the hallway. When we enter the conference room, all of management is either lined up against the wall waiting for everyone or sitting in the front row. I see Grayson and quickly try avoiding all eye contact.

Brian takes a seat next to me in one of the tables to the far left. We purposely stay as far away from Grayson as possible. I feel his eyes burning into me as I'm sitting. When I glance over his direction, I confirm his staring. He doesn't try and look away or pretend like he wasn't staring at me. He directs his gaze to his phone a few moments later. I don't even know why I continued the eye contact, but I think I should have just looked away.

I watch Justin walk in and go to sit with some of the people in our group. He doesn't even try to get all of us to sit next to one another. A few of Brian's friends sit at our table, and only a few ever acknowledge my presence.