Ten Girls to Watch by Charity Shumway Read Free Book Online

magenta lipstick. Her black shirt and slacks hung shapelessly on her broad frame. She had the sort of presence that could quiet a whole gym full of unruly seventh graders with one blow of a whistle. Not exactly the woman my teenage self had imagined on the other side of the Charm advice I memorized monthly, but clearly a force. She radiated competence. Meanwhile, the white pencil skirt, green tank, and yellow cardigan I’d come up with that morning, feeling like an ad for a bright young working professional who knew a thing or two about color blocking, suddenly seemed cartoonish.
    XADI led me down a long hallway adorned with photo after photo of old Charm covers—Grace Kelly with red lipstick in 1960; Candice Bergen with a staggeringly tall updo in 1964.
    “Amazing photos!” I said. Nothing like a little winning chitchat to break the ice.
    “Aren’t they?” XADI said, her tone clearly ending that line of conversation. Apparently she didn’t hail from the chitchat school of get-to-know-you.
    As we sped along I imagined that the hallway would soon open on a buzzing newsroom where, in my dream version of the day, I would first be shown into Regina’s office for a friendly tête-à-tête, following which I would be presented with my shiny new desk. Alas, no such thing. XADI led us immediately to an internal office.
    “You’re just here today to fill out paperwork,” she said. “You’ll be starting tomorrow at the archives warehouse.”
    “Archives warehouse?” I said as cheerily as possible.
    “It’s on Fiftieth and Eleventh. The address is in your packet. They’ll be expecting you in the morning. I thought it would be easier for you to work from there. They have all the back issues and the relevant Ten Girls to Watch materials.”
    I nodded as my dream of a shiny new desk shriveled up and disappeared, leaving me feeling embarrassed to have had the vision in the first place.
    “Your first job is to get to know all of the Ten Girls to Watch back issues,” XADI continued. “You’ll start in the fifties and work forward.” At this unnecessary chronological guidance, I felt a pang of worry—had I come across as incompetent? Already? I did my best to look alert and alive.
    “The contest ran in the August issues until 1973,” XADI continued in her stern voice. “Then it moved to September until 1981, and it’s been in March ever since. Just to orient you.”
    I nodded vigorously and jotted notes. The note taking seemed to garner some approval.
    “I’m not actually going through any of the paperwork with you,” she said. “HR takes care of that. They’re expecting you in a few minutes. I just wanted to meet in person since I’ll be your editor for this project.”
    Ah, so here came the get-to-know-you. I cleared my throat and smiled eagerly in preparation. But no. With that, XADI stopped. When she said “meet in person,” apparently that’s all she meant. Just meeting.
    “Well, it’s great to meet you,” I said, trying to build a bridge over the awkwardness.
    “You too. This should be fun,” she said, smiling without showing her teeth. And then she stood up and walked me back to the reception area. “They’re expecting you on ten. Just tell the receptionist your name, and she’ll know what to do. And they’ll be expecting you at the archives tomorrow at nine a.m.”
    So that was Charm Day One. It could have gone better. It could have gone worse.
    Day Two began with the long walk from the subway to the distant fringes of Hell’s Kitchen. When you get that far west the city gets scrubby, the office towers giving way to barbed-wire-protected parking lots and hulking windowless warehouses. I double checked the address, then rang the buzzer at one such warehouse, though this one was on the diminutive side compared to some of its neighbors, more like a sliver of a warehouse, the width of a town house. Somebody somewhere in the building pressed a button that buzzed me in, and I walked into a small