Chapter 7
She picked up her pencil and drew a small half circle over the tear stain, then added a touch of white with a highlight pen. A pearl glowing through a crack.
"I fell into the dust, but I was the light all along."
She wrote that sentence in the blank space on the page.
Then she wiped away her tears, switched off the lamp, lay down on the hard bed, and fell into a heavy sleep.
It was the best night of sleep she had had in three years.
Over the next two weeks, Charlotte sent out thirty-seven resumes.
Top graduate from Northbridge College of Design. National gold medal winner in a college design competition. Three years as a full-time housewife.
The brighter the glow of the first part, the more glaring the blank in the second.
She interviewed with six companies and got rejected by all six.
At the first company, the HR rep glanced at her resume and said, "You haven't worked in three years. Can you even keep up with the current technical standards?"
She said, "I can learn."
The HR rep smiled, and the smile clearly meant next.
At the second company, the interviewer was a man in his forties. He looked through her portfolio and said, "Your work's good, but you're divorced? Then we're not considering you. The company is restructuring right now."
She walked out of that office building and stood on the steps for a while as autumn rain landed on her face, cold and thin.
Third company. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth.
Every result was the same. Either the gap on her resume was too long, or she just wasn't young enough anymore.
After the sixth interview, she walked home without an umbrella while the rain kept coming down harder and harder. When she reached an overpass, she stopped underneath it to get out of the rain.
Her phone buzzed. It was a message from Sophie Grant.
[How did the interview go?]
Charlotte stared at those words, her fingers hovering over the keyboard, unsure what to say.
She thought back to that interview earlier. The interviewer had been a young woman, two years younger than Charlotte, with flawless makeup and fast speech. After reviewing her portfolio, the girl had said something Charlotte still couldn't shake.
"Ms. Nolan, your college work is truly excellent, but that was three years ago. Fashion changes every year. You've been out of the loop for three years, and we can't bring in someone we'd have to train from scratch."
Train from scratch.
She was twenty-eight, competing for the same job as twenty-two-year-old new grads, only to be told she'd need to be trained from scratch.
She didn't reply to Sophie. She slipped her phone into her pocket and kept walking through the rain.
When she got back to the apartment, she changed out of her soaked coat, put on dry clothes, and sat by the window. Outside, the rain came down even harder, blurring the whole city behind the glass.
She lowered her eyes to the design sketches on the desk. In the past two weeks she had drawn a lot. The Metamorphosis series already had six finished pieces. She spread them out one by one, from the head of the bed to the foot, covering the whole thing.
She thought these designs were good. No, not thought. She knew they were good. Every line, every block of color, every detail had grown out of her own heart, with flesh and blood in it.
But what was the point?
Nobody cared about sketches made by a full-time housewife.
She dropped her head onto her folded arms at the desk.
Just then, her phone rang. It was Sophie.
"Charlotte, where are you? I called you a bunch of times and you didn't pick up."
"I'm home." Her voice sounded muffled.
"What's wrong? You don't sound right."
"Nothing. I just got caught in the rain."
Sophie went quiet for two seconds, then said, "Send me your location. I'm coming over right now."
"You don't have to. It's too far..."
"Send it."
Sophie hung up.
Forty minutes later, Sophie showed up at the apartment door carrying two bags. One had hot wonton soup. The other had fruit and milk.
The first thing she did after stepping inside wasn't to put the bags down. She looked around the whole apartment from top to bottom, and her eyes went red instantly.
"You're living here?"
Charlotte took the wontons from her and gave a small smile. "It's fine. It's quiet."
Sophie looked at her, lips moving like she wanted to say something, but in the end she didn't. She opened the wontons and pushed them in front of Charlotte. "Eat first. They won't taste good once they go cold."
Charlotte lowered her head and started eating. The broth was hot, and when she swallowed it, the warmth spread from her throat all the way down to her stomach.
Sophie sat on the edge of the bed watching her eat, then suddenly asked, "You're having a hard time finding a job, aren't you?"
Charlotte's chopsticks paused for a second, but she said nothing.
"I figured," Sophie said. "That's just how you are. You carry everything by yourself. You never talk when you're hurt, never talk when you've been crying, and everything's always 'I'm fine.'"
Charlotte looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes. "Sophie..."
"Don't talk. Just listen." Sophie dug a business card out of her bag and handed it over. "This woman is Olivia Reed. She's a big name in the industry and runs her own studio. I interned there in college. She's a really solid person, no fake crap. I sent her your portfolio, and she wants to meet you."
Charlotte looked down at the card. It read: Reed Atelier, Founder and Creative Director.
"She... saw my work?"
"The few pieces you sent me, yeah. The Metamorphosis series," Sophie said. "She said something. Want to hear it?"
Charlotte nodded.