Get Out If You Can

Alison | I'm A Tea Person

"Yeah, I've reached. Think I'll have to...oh, okay, sure. Bye, Mom!"

I tap on the red button and stuff my phone in a pocket of my dress. It's not easy riding a bike with a dress on — but hey, what-fucking-ever. If they ask us to do a round or something, I'll be ready. I walk along with the bike, past an enormous gate that's decorated way too fancily. Trust them Bikers to rent such a place.

I park my bike alongside a black Porsche and latch it to the gate at its side. Porsches, hmm. The people in Callenfield Bikers were richer than I took them for.

When I'm done, I admire Calleja manor with my full attention.

Goddamn it, this place is beyond awesome. I had no idea they'd been able to reconstruct it as good as this. Mom said — yeah, she's been talking more, lately — that somewhere in the middle of everything this manor went through a kind of midlife crisis and broke down. But, judging from what's in front of my eyes, it bounced back. Awesomely.

I exit the parking lot and walk up to the entrance.

There's no one here. I assume it's going to be all self service. I knock on the door, just in case. The sound of my fingers on the hard wood echoes in the room behind the door. Man, this place is really too quiet.

There's no answer, like I guessed. I push the door open and enter.

When the huge doors open, the scene before my eyes is so grand that I've got to bite down on my lip to conceal my surprise.

They shouldn't leave a place like this unlocked like that. They're lucky I'm here for the interview, or whatever it might be, and not to steal anything. Because I'd be lying if I said that nothing in this house was worth stealing.

Those carpets must've been shipped directly from Arabia. I don't think I've ever seen anything of the sort being sold in Callenfield or anywhere I've been. And the chandeliers, my. They drip in ruby-red and emerald-green jewels from the ceiling, almost tempting me to pull off a few shimmering items to sell in a flea market and make a quick buck.

This does not look like an interview headquarters office to me. It looks like a sort of ultra luxurious house.

But they called me here, didn't they? I'm bound to be allotted somewhere to go. I walk towards the largest staircase in the room; a brilliant white-marble work, and look around for some sign of a map or a guide.

There's neither. But there is this very peculiar looking flat board in the corner, so I walk across the room to it and take a good look.

Ha, just as I thought. There's a schedule pasted on the board with names on it, and time slots. I scroll down the list, looking for my name.

I find it somewhere in the middle, typed neatly alongside my track timing for last year's cross country bike race. I look through the timings of the other interviewees, and see that I was way ahead of them. That is definitely nice to know. I've never really done professional biking, nor have I been trained. It's just that — it's like this. Something happened, something I'd never let anyone know about. And after that something, I threw myself into the nearest thing I could find. I wanted to see if I could push myself enough to keep me going. And I think I succeeded. The hard work paid off.

I look through the adjacent column for my time slot. Good, I'm on time. My interview is scheduled for half an hour from now, and till then I'm to stay in some Antebellum tower. It's supposedly at the fourth corner of the room.

I look around again, and I see something that clearly wasn't there before. A sign. Next to a staircase.

I walk over to it and read the inscription. It's my name, and below it, in a small font, is the note : This is your tower.