The next morning, I wasn’t about to let my alarm clock or anything betray me again. I’d beaten it. I was awake before it could even buzz, staring at the ceiling in the gray stillness of dawn, my mind restless, already preparing for the day ahead.
By 5:00 a.m., I was under the shower, hot water pelting against my skin as if it could wash off not just the fatigue of yesterday’s chaos, but the humiliation that still clung to me like smoke. I rehearsed silently, over and over, how I’d face my supervisor, my department head, Mr. Reynolds and prove to him, to everyone, and most of all to myself, that I wasn’t the unreliable screw-up that the white envelope had branded me as.
Yesterday’s warning letter felt like it had been written in fire, its words seared into my mind. FINAL WARNING. Two wor
