The Throwaway Year (7 page)

Hmmm.
Maybe Dani was right. Hayden should spend some money on some new outfits. After all, she was going to need running shoes if she was going to do the Zombie Run. Yep… it was time to go shopping.

“Alright, Saturday we’re hitting the mall,” Hayden
finally conceded.

Dani beamed and gave her a side-look as if she had something up her sleeves.

Hayden narrowed her eyes. “I mean it Dani. I’m not meeting that guy until I’m ready.”

“No, that’s fine!
I’m just happy we’re going to hang out this weekend.”

~***~

By the time Hayden made it to Fox Vinyl, the fatigue of a long, difficult week finally hit her. She tried to suppress her yawns but her day began at 5:00 A.M. every single weekday and didn’t end until 11:00 P.M. The only thing that got her going each morning was the fact that her daily workout gave her energy and woke her better than a strong cup of coffee. However, that energy was long gone by now.

When she arrived
in the evenings everyone else on her team would already be present – not counting breaks to the canteen – since they worked a full shift to her part-time hours. The first thing she did as she headed to her desk tonight was to check the board for the number of sales. Brian and Marcus each had two, Abdullah had four, and there was one each for her and Pam. Only two for Brian? He usually led the team in sales.

She looked over at his desk and saw that it was empty.
It appeared that he hadn’t been in all day. Well she hoped that he took the weekend to get some rest and to get over his illness. The last thing she needed was to catch someone’s germs and to end up sick and flat on her back.

Hayden sat down and got her material
s together and then she looked over at Abdullah. He was scanning the phonebook, his finger scrolling down the page and his mouth moving as he read to himself. 
The way I treat people who I seek and expect nothing from is the same way I treat those I hope to gain and learn from…

Taking a deep breath
, she stood and trudged across the aisle to his desk. He looked at her without changing his posture.

“Abdullah, I just wanted to apologize again about yesterday.
And I hope that…”
what do I hope?  I didn’t want to be friends and I am not about to lie about it.
“…we can put that behind us.”

The ensuing silence dragged on.
Okay… 
When he didn’t move she made to turn, but then, he nodded slowly.

“I’m sorry as well.
I should not have yelled at you. I had no right.”

Sh
e was surprised by his apology, but she simply nodded and then returned to her seat with a smile. That had felt good. Pam returned to her desk a few minutes later from her smoke break in the canteen. Hayden couldn’t force herself to speak to that one and decided that the next best thing was to just disregard her.

A little later
, Marcus, or Mr. Doo Wop, asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee after he walked past and saw her mouth wide open in a deep yawn. With embarrassment, she explained that she no longer drank coffee. Equally important was that she wouldn’t dare eat or drink anything that had come from that dirty canteen, but she kept that little tidbit to herself.

“You let me know if you need something to perk you up,” he whispered before walking back to his desk.

Hayden froze. Did he just offer her drugs… or something sexual?  Ugh… he was her daddy’s age! Double ugh, as if she would take unknown drugs from some stranger! She tried to wipe the yuck-look from her face as she returned to her work feeling slightly traumatized.

Four hours moved by quickly and by the end of the evening she had another sale.  Woot
! Woot!  She wasted no time leaving work.  Then after her shower, she fell into bed naked, and was deeply asleep right on top of her neatly made bed.

~***~

For once in a very long time, Hayden found clothes’ shopping was actually enjoyable. When she picked out slacks to try on, she found that they were way too big and she had to send Dani running around the store for smaller and then even smaller sizes.  Then when she stepped out of the dressing room wearing pants that actually hugged her legs and butt and, they looked so good that she was in awe.

She had wanted simple blouses
, but Dani convinced her to find pretty shirts that accentuated a waistline that she hadn’t had in ages.  Now she could see that Dani was right. The prettier blouses, the better fitting clothes… made her feel pretty.

“I told you!”
Dani was standing beside her as she looked in the large mirror that stood at the entrance of the dressing room. Hayden looked at the reflection of her and her best friend standing side-by-side.

She was smaller than Dani, b
ut…  Hayden allowed her eyes to move to Dani’s face and then to her own. Wide brown eyes stared back at her from a golden brown face that could no longer be called round. Neat twirls from her teeny weeny afro haloed her head. She didn’t have a pig face at all…

Her eyes scanned her entire form.
No, she wasn’t thin, but she was far from being the fat girl that she had been in her mind’s eye. So why was it that when she took off her clothes, she still saw nothing but rolls of ugly fat?

Hayden did a slight turn and checked out her side view.
Wow, was that her butt? When had it lifted like that, when it had always been wide and flat before?

Dani was smiling at her in the mirror.
“See? You look good.”

Hayden blushed and looked away and then she headed back to the dressing room to change, but while she did she had a smile on her face.
She glanced down at her body in just panties and a bra. Yeah, that extra roll on each side of her body was gone now… she was down to just one. There was still work to be done, but she really had made great strides.

Hayden spent the weekend sorting through her old clothes and she actually got rid of any sizes that were now too big for her. She would never allow herself to get that big again, and if she did, then she would just have to bear the consequences of having to buy an entirely new wardrobe. Two garbage bags of clothes went into her trunk to be donated to the nearby Good Will.

On Sunday
, she and Todd began their first day of marathon training. He had sent her a text instructing her to meet him at the entrance of Sharon Woods Park. She arrived timely at 9:00 A.M. and parked her car next to Todd’s truck.

He got out of his truck and was about to greet her when he took a double take.
She was wearing shorts. Shorts! She had on a t-shirt that hugged her body instead of her normally oversized ones that fell over her butt. Her new $60 sneakers donned her feet.

“Hi Hayden.
So
… you’re looking good.” He was wearing a cheesy grin. “You finally figured it out.”

She rolled her eye.
“Thank you.” She tried not to blush and wondered if people would think that they were a couple…

Sharon Woods had a great jogging trail that Todd liked.
Hayden had been to the park many times, but had never ventured onto the trail. It wove through the forest on dirt paths across a wooden bridge and alongside a rocky creek. She had no idea that there was so much beauty in this park.  Todd didn’t make her run or jog but he did insist that she maintain a fast walk. Other joggers passed them, and she saw people who were there just to walk and enjoy the scenery or to toss rocks into the creek.

“This place is so beautiful.
I can’t believe I’ve never been to this part of the park before.”

“Kia and I brought the boys here yesterday.”
He pointed ahead to a signpost that described the dinosaurs that had roamed the area. “Kevin, who is ten, did a hurdle over that post.”

“Are you serious?
That thing’s over four feet high.”

“I think he’s going to be a runner.”
Todd smiled. “He wants to do the Zombie run with me.”

“Then
you should bring him along to train with us,” she offered. School was out and she liked the stories that he told about Kia and the boys. His wife seemed really down to earth and the boys obviously loved Todd just like he loved them.

He squinted at her.
“You sure you wouldn’t mind? You do pay me to focus my training on you.”

“Well
, I’m hoping that he’ll run slower than me.”

Todd chuckled.
“So, I’ll do this; when we’re out of the gym there is no charge for the training.”

“But-”

“Since I have to train too, and if Kevin is coming along, then we should just consider it a training partnership.”

“Hell yeah
! You got a deal!” A dollar saved, was a dollar earned!

When they
finally returned to their cars, Hayden was tired.  If she was this tired from just an hour of fast walking, how was she going to handle an hour of running? Todd stated that he would see her at the gym Tuesday and instructed her to begin walking the treadmill again.

“I want your pace as fast as we were walking today, okay?”

“Got it.”

“No running yet.
I’m going to start you on intervals of thirty-seconds. Walk for three minutes and then fast run for thirty seconds.” She nodded, hoping that she wouldn’t look totally stupid when she fell off the treadmill, which was sure to happen. 
YouTube, here I come…

Yet b
y Monday, Hayden felt in high spirits. She was actually looking forward to her second job as she began looking at her sales as a test of her abilities and not just getting to the money. Marcus winked at her as she took her seat and Hayden gave him a quick wave and then averted her eyes in case he tried to flirt or offer her drugs again.

Brian had returned
, but he didn’t look much better. He wore a somber expression and seemed distracted. He didn’t even stare today. However, he did say hello when he passed her desk on the way to the canteen for his break. He even congratulated her on her new sales.

Mr. Fox came out of his office to tell her how
well she was performing and Pam nearly broke her neck to agree that she was doing extremely well—somehow syphoning the credit onto herself.

“
I had some very good help,” Hayden responded simply.

“Well
, you keep it up. Next week we’re going to have a monthly bonus. It’s a thousand dollars. Top seller wins.”

Now that was some good motivation. Not that she thought she could
outsell all of the experienced Telemarketers, but it would be nice to outsell some of them.

Mr. Fox headed back to his office and looked at Brian’s desk.
“Where is he?” his voice was suddenly very nasty.

Hayden looked at him in surprise and Pam quickly answered.
  “He’s taking a smoke.”

Mr. Fox grunted in displeasure and then returned to his office.

Brian was only gone ten minutes and when he returned Pam spoke to him in her fake saccharin voice.  “Brine, he was looking for you.”

Hayden noticed the look that crossed his face.
Was Brian afraid of Mr. Fox? He nodded and then quickly returned to work.

At the end of the evening
, Hayden was happy to see that she had twice as many sales as Pam—who seemed to take it as a personal attack every time Hayden got up to write her initials on the board. One sale a day might not get Hayden a thousand bucks, but in a four-hour shift, it wasn’t too shabby.  At the end of the shift, she didn’t immediately dart out the door like she normally did either.

She made sure that her order forms were correct for the printers because she had seen how Pam spent so much time talking to customers about mistakes on the layout.
As she was heading out the door, she heard a loud noise from Mr. Fox’s office; as if someone had thrown or slammed something, and then his muffled voice cursing up a blue streak. At first she thought that he might have fallen until she understood that his words were directed at someone.

She could only make out a few of them but she clearly heard the repeated use of the word
fuck
as in, “fuck-up,” “where the fuck,” and “who the fuck.”

Marcus was walking out the door whistling and doing a pimp walk.
He didn’t even seem to notice or care that Mr. Fox was going off on someone. She lagged behind until the office door swung open and Brian came walking out. Mr. Fox was still yelling at him.

“You don’t have that many more chances here!
Do you hear me?”

Brian looked over his shoulder back into the office.
“I was sick!”

“Well that’s your fault
, not mine!”

Brian walked away, his face an angry mask.
  Hayden hurried out the door. Damn, she was never going to call in sick…