Fiction
The Exchange
If an escape route opened up in your backyard, would you take it?
I promised myself I wouldn’t do it. I even blocked the door with an armchair, just to make sure. Why did I need a back door, anyway? It wasn’t like I had a backyard. My patio was crammed in so close to the neighbors’, their dog could pee on my flowers without even leaving his territory.
Besides, I was too busy to worry about a stupid door. The product launch deadline had been moved up two weeks, and everyone at work was in an uproar. The higher-ups were hounding me about getting the code pushed out — apparently we were losing business to our competitors. Meanwhile the developers were telling me how it was physically impossible to meet the new deadline, and how they weren’t interested in my opinion because I was just a pantsuit who’d never written a line of Python. Just another week of corporate success.
Today was an in-person workday, which was a mixed blessing. On the plus side, I didn’t have to sit in my home “office” in the living room, staring at the same four eggshell-hued walls, with that back door constantly in my line of sight. On the downside, well, I had to go to work.
Tom, the marketing intern, pounced on me the moment I walked through the door. He claims to be twenty-two, but I don’t…
