The Wildwater Walking Club by Claire Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

I’d set foot on Balancing Act property.
    But if I wasn’t myself, then who was I? The old Noreen certainly wouldn’t have behaved like that in the Balancing Act store. The first rule of negotiation, in this case a simple, if slightly illegal, shoe exchange, is not to volunteer too much information. Bring the shoes up to the register, give the salesperson a confident, non-adversarial smile, and tell her matter-of-factly that you’re making an equal exchange.
    And that guy in the parking lot. I mean, come on. When you’re dealing with an asshole, you keep your mouth shut. You make him do all the talking. You don’t start hemorrhaging apologies all over the place. And what the hell was I doing, hallucinating Michael and throwing a box of sneakers across the parking lot like a love-sick teenager?
    It had taken me a long time to learn to thrive at Balancing Act. I’d spent the first few years under the control of a really tough supervisor. I kept thinking I could please her if I worked just a little bit harder, came up with an even more brilliant idea, flattered her some more. But the more I tried to please her, the more she withheld her approval, and somehow it always ended up feeling like it was my fault.
    She completely controlled me. She said jump; I asked how high. I didn’t make a single decision without wondering what she would think of it. Just the thought of my quarterly employee evaluation was enough to send me into a full-blown anxiety attack.
    And then one day, in the midst of some snowballing departmental crisis, she really let me have it. We were sitting in her office, and there were no witnesses. She took off her reading glasses and placed them in front of her on the desk. She launched into an angry tirade about how she’d created me, how I’d be nothing without her. She belittled my past efforts, ridiculed the project I was working on, minimized everything I’d be likely to bring to the table in the future.
    The odd thing was that as she ranted, I suddenly got it. She was a bully, plain and simple. Because she’d never shoved me into a locker, or held me upside down by my ankles and shaken the change out of my pockets, I just hadn’t been able to see it until then. It was a huge epiphany for me, maybe one of the biggest of my life. In that instant, I stopped trying to please her, and she lost all power over me.
    I think she knew it, too. Bullies need people to control, and when they can’t play the game with you, they find another victim.
    I continued to do my work, but I stopped worrying about whether or not she liked it. Eventually an opportunity presented itself in another department, run by a more nurturing, less abusive boss. I grabbed it and never looked back. In the years since, I’d run into other bullies, and I’d gotten pretty good at defusing them.
    My behavior today felt like major backsliding. Was it possible I’d lost my edge in less than two weeks? Maybe without a job, all your skills just withered up because you no longer had a place to practice them. I looked around the table again, and I felt a total disconnect. It was like I was sitting with perfect strangers, and not only did I not recognize any of them, but I didn’t even recognize myself. Maybe without a job, I didn’t have a self.
    One of the women, Sherry, was pushing her chair back from the table and saying something about having to get going because she was meeting someone for dinner. She stood up, placed some bills on the table, and looked over at me.
    “Nice to see you again, Noreen,” she said. “Call me if you want to hang out sometime.”
    I liked Sherry. She was about my age and had started working at Balancing Act maybe a year or two after I did. We sometimes shared a table in the cafeteria at lunch, and we’d gone to the movies and shopping together a few times over the years. She was a nice person, with a dry wit, and I’d always enjoyed her company.
    “Thanks,” I said. “I will.”
    The minute Sherry