I did'nt recognize the number on the caller ID, but for the sake of my own curiosity, I decided to answer it.

"Hello," I said suspiciously.

"Is this Zadie Ocean?" A droning woman's voice said through the other end.

"Yeah, pretty sure," I groaned. Not another salesperson, please...

"I'm calling in regards to a letter you may have recieved from Bella Magazine," the voice continued. I perked up.

"Oh yeah, I got it yesterday," I replied.

"I'm sorry to inform you Miss Ocean, but we had a technical error in our computer database and your letter was a misprint. I'm apologize for the inconve-"

"Misprint? What?" I stammered.

"You did not recieve an internship, I'm sorry."

"Screw you!" I shouted, then hit the end call button before hurling it back onto the bed. I sat down for a moment, horrified by the phonecall, and slumped back onto the bed. I groaned and rolled over.

Stupid people. Stupid, stupid people.

I lay there for what seemed like days before I got up and took a long shower. When I got back to my room, I had a text from Xander.

What are you up to?

I rolled my eyes. What had gotten into him lately? I was pretty sure it had something to do with alien abduction.

Nothing. Don't try to get me to come into work. It's not happening. I texted back.

No. I just wanted to see if you want to get a veggie burger. He replied. I groaned. I threw up not even twenty minutes ago, but food was starting to beckon to my stomach like the sirens to Odysseus. I decided against it though, because I didn't want to give Xander the impression that I was into him, despite what happened last night.

How could I possibly like Xander? He was my boss, for one. And he was well, Xander. A cranky big-brother figure that bossed me around and said snotty things all the time. But overnight, it's like a switch of personality. I remember him being like this once, vaguely.

Her name was Linda. He made her forty seven mix tapes. Forty seven. He was less rude then. And he bathed a lot more. That was back when I started working at Parallel Records. It didn't pan out much after that. They broke up and he went back to being cantankerous, or maybe he became cantankerous after that.

Maybe he was a nice guy, but after a bad breakup, he kind of went a little insane. It seemed highly likely. It never dawned on me until just now.

No thanks, I texted back. I needed time to blow off steam. Alone.

I put on a pair of jeans and grabbed a semi-clean Billy Joel concert tshirt from the hamper and quickly tied the laces on my Converse. During a last minute thought, I threw on Xander's jacket and quickly mussed my bedhead and redid my makeup quickly in the mirror before running out the door.

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Author guidance for This story

This is based on some stuff I wrote on Ficlets ages ago. I decided to take a whole different direction and adapt it to my ever changing mind. Although, I feel like I sometimes put a little too much of myself into my quirky, misguided heroines. And also, I name each chapter after whatever song happens to be playing on my iTunes playlist. I write a lot of stuff based on what I'm listening to, and besides, it's a story about people who live and breathe music...I like to think each of my stories has a playlist/soundtrack. So far we've got: The Buzzcocks Can T-Rex Roxy Music The Apples in Stereo

updated Jan 17 '09 by NouvelleBardot