The Right Choice

Chapter 9

“Taylor, you have to believe me,” Jessie spoke into her cellphone in a hushed tone. “He is insane.”

“I know you love to exaggerate, Jessie. But this is ridiculous. He can’t be that bad.”

“I’m not saying that he’s bad. I’m saying he is crazy. Like, should be treated for severe mental imbalance, crazy.”

“Sweetie, you know what you need to do?”

“I do. I should leave as soon as possible. Right?”

“No! That’s not what I meant. What I’m saying is that you need to stop being so judgmental. He is your boss.”

“He threw a spider at me!” Jessie raised her voice, causing an employee who was passing by to look at her in contempt. He frowned at her and in return she gave him a small smile in embarrassment.

“Jessie! It was a fake spider.”

“So what? I thought it was real. It really freaked me out.” Jessie whined.

 “So you are going to throw away this amazing opportunity based on a fake spider?”

“No! I’m doing that based on the fact that it was my new boss who threw it at me. And I’m sure that I can get another job. A job where my boss is not busy pulling pranks on his new employee.” Jessie attempted to explain.

“No way! That’s stupid. I swear, Jessie. If I find out that you have walked away from this, I will murder you.”

“Taylor!”

“Don’t you ‘Taylor’ me! Finally you have taken this step forward and there is no way that you are taking it back. No. Way.”

“Fine! Mom.”

“Oh! I’m glad you reminded me of her. Maybe I should call her and ask her to knock some sense into you. I’m sure she’ll be very excited to do that.”

“Please, not my mother. Anyone, but my mother. Besides, she doesn’t know any of this. And if she finds out, then I will never hear the end of it.”

Jessie was sitting outside Mr. Browning’s office waiting for Neal. The spider prank had scared the day lights out of her. Anything that was creepy crawly reminded her of the horrible experience she had as a child. Her cousin was to blame for it.

When she was younger, every summer her family had a tradition of visiting her uncle. Uncle Bobby as she called him was an amateur entomologist and had a huge collection of bugs, insects and reptiles at home. Her cousin Rachel, who was five years older to her, had a nasty habit of pulling pranks on her every year.

One summer, years ago, she had somehow managed to convince Jessie that the long strands of spaghetti were large worms in reality and were particular delicious with raw spiders. As a six year old, Jessie had believed her and was scared as well as repulsed at that fact that she had eaten live worms almost every Friday for dinner. To make matters worse, they had spaghetti for dinner the very same night.

Jessie had kept staring at her plate in disgust and revolt.

She couldn’t believe that she was being made to eat that. In her revulsion, she had failed to notice the crooked smile that Rachel had on her face. It had been Rachel’s plan to throw a live spider onto Jessie’s plate of spaghetti. Jessie had flung the plate away and screamed bloody murder.

Jessie had been wary of bugs and oddly spaghetti as well ever since. The incident inside Mr. Browning’s office was starkly similar to that and had freaked her out just the same. So, to calm herself down till she was joined by her colleague, she had called Taylor.