Fast-Tracked (17 page)

“Just answer the question for me.”

“I most certainly will not! You need to calm down and remember just who you’re talking to, young lady. I’m still your father and I won’t tell you a thing until you show me some respect and explain just what has you in such a tizzy.” But though he looked angry, there was something else in his eyes:
fear
. He
was
hiding something.

“Alright, you want to know what has me in such a
tizzy?
” I snapped back. “I asked you about what happened at work and you gave me a sugar coated non-answer. Now I find out it involved people’s deaths and possibly my fast-tracker ranking.” I made a disgusted noise and waited for him to tell me I was wrong.

“Who’s telling you all this nonsense?”

“Byron.” I watched my dad’s eyes eyebrows disappear into his hairline.

“Oh god, Alexandria.
Please tell me you didn’t track him down. I know you’re still upset, but to risk
your
ranking over it….”

“No, Dad. It’s nothing that nefarious. Byron’s been assigned garbage duty in the park. I stumbled into him this morning and he wants absolutely nothing to do with me. He hates me for what you did. I think I’m at least owed an explanation of what that was – especially if you did somehow manipulate my ranking.” I swallowed hard to hold back the hot tears I felt building in me.

My dad’s shoulders dropped and his face relaxed. “First let me start by saying I had no direct involvement with your ranking. But I have no idea whether or not others manipulated it to make examples out of me and Mr.
Levenson
.”

I nodded to indicate I had heard what he said. Then he told me everything.

It had all started a few weeks ago. The metal detector on belt eight was on the fritz. So Mr.
Levenson
decided to shut the belt down for the day. On any other day, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But of course, that day the owner Mr. Huntington and several politicians were visiting. Mr.
Felpz
, the plant manager, ordered Mr.
Levenson
to start the belt up. He refused. He thought it was too much of a hazard to run a belt without a metal detector. Mr.
Felpz
disagreed. By the time materials arrived at belt eight they had already gone through two magnets designed to catch any lingering scrap metal.

Mr.
Felpz
and Mr.
Levenson
got into a bit of a heated argument. Mr.
Levenson
felt Mr.
Felpz
had been taking too many risks with health and safety. He had a point; my dad had noticed it too over the last several months. But now was not the time or place to argue about it. My dad thought Mr.
Levenson
was getting himself into serious trouble over a very minor safety risk. If he wanted to make a stand, he should have picked a more serious danger.

So to save Mr.
Levenson
from himself, my dad offered to take responsibility for the belt that day. It was on the edge of the belts he managed anyway. Mr.
Felpz
happily agreed and had belt eight’s supervisor report to my dad.

Everything processed throughout the day as usual. The garbage came down the belt and the workers sorted it like they always did. My dad gave himself a mental pat on the back as all the big wigs walked through. Mr.
Felpz
even called him over to talk to them. It’s not the reason why my father took the extra belt, but it was still an honor. My dad was shaking everyone’s hands when a large boom vibrated through the building.

Everyone ran to see what happened. A hole had been blasted through the ceiling, and several catwalks hung disjointedly. Beneath it, all the workers that had stood on the catwalks just moments ago, sorting the larger items onto their proper belts, now laid scattered and broken.

It took a while to figure out exactly what had happened, but eventually they pieced everything together. Despite my dad’s directions, Mr.
Bittrich
, the belt supervisor, never told his workers that the metal detector was out. He didn’t want to chance them giving him a hard time about it. So, when there was a jam on the belt, no one bothered to check it with a hand-held metal detector. Mr.
Bittrich
was too busy flirting with a girl one belt over to notice when several of the workers climbed up on the belt. They hacked at the mound with the usual metal hooks and a sledge hammer.

It was the perfect storm of bad timing and bad luck. The odds of an old gas container making its way onto the sorting belts was rare, let alone a full size helium tank. But the magnets weren’t strong enough to pull something that large out. No one noticed it sooner, because it was completely covered in a garbage mound. If the sledgehammer had hit anywhere else on the tank canister first, they would have realized there was metal in the mound, but the first part of the tank it made contact with was the nozzle.

The moment the sledgehammer made contact with the nozzle, the tank turned into a rocket. It zoomed out of the mound and knocked the two closest workers to the ground. Then it crashed through the intersection of four catwalks, causing them all to fall apart. Finally it crashed into the ceiling and tore a hole through it.

My dad was furious with himself as well as Mr.
Bittrich
. The owner saw it entirely as Mr.
Bittrich’s
fault. He started to chew him out in front of the entire plant. Before my dad could step in and share his part of the blame, Mr.
Levenson
jumped in and started verbally attacking Mr. Huntington.

“If Charles… Mr.
Levenson
, had just kept his mouth closed after the accident, everything might have been fine. But he felt guilt-ridden over the dead employees, and made it his personal crusade to improve working conditions in the plant.” My father shook his head and let out a long, strained sigh. “I tried to talk sense into Charles, but he blamed me too, and I could hardly argue with that. The dead workers still haunt me. I tried to tell him he needed to think about his family. I tried to tell him there were better ways to cause changes instead of running at everything full steam like an angry bull, but he wouldn’t listen.” My dad looked like he was about to cry. “I’d never seen a man look more broken than Charles did after Byron got his assessment letter.”

I wanted to comfort my dad. I knew he felt guilty over the accident and I knew it pained him to see his longtime friend suffering, but I couldn’t get past my own anger. “So it’s all true? Mr.
Levenson
pissed off the wrong people and to punish him they tampered with Byron’s results?” My dad slowly nodded his head as if its weight was too much for him to lift.

“I need you to promise me you won’t do anything rash. I spoke to Charles; both he and Byron agree that, for now, it’s best to do nothing. Once Camille is safely assessed and placed, then Byron will try to appeal. Camille knows nothing on this part, so I need you to promise you’ll respect Byron’s wishes and do nothing and say nothing to her.” My dad sat back, crossed his arms and waited for my agreement.

After a few moments, I said, “Alright. I promise.” I threw my hands up in the air in frustration. “I just wish you would have told me all this the first time I asked.” Already my anger was dissipating. I could practically feel my face crumble, which meant tears would soon follow.

“I know, but you were dealing with so much already and I didn’t want to burden you with more – especially when there’s nothing to be done about it. My only comfort in all of this
is knowing
that as a fast-tracker nothing like this will ever happen to you or your children.” Then my dad’s face crumpled too, and I knew he was holding back tears of his own.

We said our goodbyes and tapped off before our tears started to fall.

Chapter 11

Being a newbie, my classes started at eight o’clock with Mrs.
Glabough
until she deemed us caught up in basic fast-tracker knowledge. The first topic of today was traversing the social gap between new and established fast-trackers. I stifled a giggle as Mrs.
Glabough
reviewed some of the simple ways to start a conversation and the taboos that should definitely be avoided. I had committed several already.

Then the lesson shifted focus onto our career decisions. Mrs.
Glabough
explained that technically as fast-trackers any career was available to us. But that was only technically: in reality, without being established, certain careers would be out of our grasp. The two examples she used were a business owner and a politician.

Mrs.
Glabough
went around the room asking everyone what their current ambition was. I found the other girls’ answers uninspiring or unrealistic.
Haddie
and Trisha both wanted to be stay-at-home moms but when Mrs.
Glabough
asked them how they expected to get an established fast-tracker to propose to them when they brought no inheritance or income to the
table,
they were both at a loss for words.

Nola had always wanted to be a botanist and was sticking with that choice. Myra just wanted to own a big house and have a lot of servants and didn’t care what job she needed to get it.

Vera was the only one who seemed to have any planning behind her choice. She wanted to be a campaign manager. While she knew it wasn’t the highest career choice available to her, she knew it would give her an instant in with the other fast-trackers and it was her best bet for meeting an eligible established fast-tracker to marry.

When Mrs.
Glabough
finally got to me I was still searching for the right words to tell her my choices. “Well…”

My slight hesitation was enough for her. “Oh,
Zandria
, please don’t tell me business owner or politician,” she warned.

“Okay, I won’t. I’d like to be trained as a CEO. That way if the first step in my career path doesn’t pan out I have a solid back-up plan.” I looked up at her hoping she’d understand that I had put both time and thought into my decision.

Mrs.
Glabough
gave a hearty laugh and said, “Well, it seems Miss
Zandria
has beaten us to the next part of my lesson. If you’re going to overstretch yourself in your ambitions, always have a back-up option available to you.”

Mrs.
Glabough
then asked us all to write out a detailed plan on how we expected to achieve our career goals. Everyone else started furiously writing crazy ideas down in a brainstorming list like she suggested. But I decided to approach Mrs.
Glabough
instead.

Looking up from the book she was reading, she said, “Please don’t tell me after that you need help with ideas for becoming a politician.”

I gave her a small laugh. “No, I had a question about the timeframes of our training.” Mrs.
Glabough
raised a curious eyebrow. “For me to own my own successful business, timing is crucial.” She gave a short nod of agreement. “I was wondering if there are any rules preventing me from claiming my business now, if I happened to find the right one. I also wanted to know how the early claim would affect my training schedule.” I pressed my lips together as I nervously waited for her answer.

She took a few minutes to think it through. Obviously these weren’t the types of questions she usually had to answer. “No, there’s nothing preventing you from claiming now. You could still continue your training, but I would suggest finding a mentor to help you with the business until you have the knowledge you need to grow it and to make sure the old owner-turned-CEO doesn’t fleece the business for all it’s worth just to spite you.”

“True. Bitterness over losing a company could cause a person to throw reason out the window,” I agreed.

She started laughing, but then she said, “I’m starting to doubt if I have any lessons to teach that you actually need. Get out of my sight and go research some businesses or something.”

I left the room. As I did, I spied the other girls shooting loathing looks my way.

I headed down to the library and began researching all the night club licenses I could find. As much as I liked dancing, besides the rare school dance, I never had the opportunity to. A place like Club Night, minus the alcohol, would have been ideal.

My initial search left me hopeful. The majority of the nightclub licenses I found were for clubs located in the hearts of the largest cities. I wasn’t finding anything for dance clubs located in the suburbs, and I definitely hadn’t found a single one without an alcohol license which I assumed meant, outside of fast-tracker areas, none of them catered to teenage crowds.

Next I looked up the business license information on Club Night. As I hoped, it was a single building business owned by a blue level man named
Mico
Leighton. I pulled up his income credit statements for the last five years. The business was profiting, but the owner wasn’t making nearly as much money as he could as a CEO.

I had just clicked off the screen when Avery entered the library and declared, “There you are. You know I’m going to start taking it personally if you continue to ignore me when I call.” He tilted his head and gave me a sad pouty lip.

I pulled out my tablet and realized I still had it silenced from class. Fortunately the two calls from Avery were the only ones I missed. “Oops. Sorry,” I said as I switched it from silent to vibrate.