Don’t Block The Light

They say her name, and the room breaks into applause. I clap too—that’s the rule when you’re paid to be second. Priscilla glides to the front, hair catching the lights, heels fluent, and sells my dragons like she hatched them herself. The author leans in. The publicist beams. “Brilliant,” the client breathes, and my coffee‑stained notebook stays shut on my lap. I hold the smile that keeps meetings smooth and credit slippery, feel her perfume hit before her words do, and swallow the urge to say mine. I know this part: keep the pitch in the air while someone else takes the bow.

My mind takes me back to high school while they all laud her pitch. The applause blurs into a gym’s roar. I’m sixteen—sweat, squeaks, cruel lights. Match point. The ball sails long; I dive. Knee slams, pain sparks, my hand finds leather—just enough. I’m still on the floor when the pretty blonde hammers it home. The crowd explodes for her.

The coach gives her the game ball later. She says, "We did it." I nod and swallow the word “we” like it means me.

Back in the conference room, Priscilla smiled her practiced cheerleader-like glow until she was asked about how she came up with the idea. A look of panic showed in her face as her eyes hunted for me; I stared past her shoulder.

“Jamie and I were talking about it. Do you want to tell them what we were thinking?”

We, she said. Bullshit, it was me. Still, I had to be part of the team, not the shining star.

I cleared my throat, glanced at the author and the publisher.

“Dragons are about being chosen—and choosing. Adoption was the key. The idea is to hatch your dragon: a fast, intimate quiz—what scares you, what do you guard, when do you burn. It matches each reader to a dragon from the book. They get a named digital egg and a keeper’s guide. For seven days, the egg warms: short messages in the hero’s and the dragon’s voices—belonging, anger, shame, bravery, love. Art darkens as the shell thins. Day five, a ten‑second whisper. Launch day, the egg cracks in AR: lift your phone, your dragon unfurls across your room, leaves a scorch trail to buy, plus a dragon‑type‑only chapter.

IRL: Indie shops give foil “scale” stickers. Show your hatch, get a scale. Collect three; heat‑ink code unlocks a city map of secret roosts—murals, chalk sigils, window clings—leading to prizes and a midnight Hatch Night projection where a dragon climbs the bookstore. Every hatch funds a school library. Creators hatch early on BookTok and name theirs on camera. Tagline: Claim your fire.

If you prefer, call it omnichannel. I call it a click in the chest when the egg breaks and the feeling of being chosen washes over you. I understand that emotion. We should present it to them. We create the app, users subscribe, and if they gather enough virtual eggs they are rewarded with a discount code for your book. In the meantime, the participating bookstores find themselves bustling with increased foot traffic. Which store would refuse to stock your book?

Priscilla’s smile held; her eyes cut—like I’d let something loose. Heat from the lights on my face; colder heat from her stare.

“I sketched the initial concept,” I’d said. Five thin words. Showing them my old sketchbook the author glanced at me and smiled.

As the publisher looked at the author, Blair, a smile spread across everyone's faces, and they all confirmed the deal. He and I made eye contact, which spoke volumes.

Priscilla glared at me. Someone pulled us together for a photo op with the author. The feeling of being caught doing something wrong rose from the bottom of my stomach. Had I said too much? Should I have given the credit to Priscilla?

The practiced smile slid on; my cheeks burned under it. In my mouth, the taste of pennies—regret already forming the word sorry.

I could feel the apology rise, muscle memory. Give it back. Say we. Say Priscilla. Make yourself smaller; fit better. My tongue touched the word, and I swallowed it hard.

I could see the notebook with coffee rings, the midnight sketches, the spine of it taking shape in my hands. Mine.

Her eyes said too much. My palms pressed together to stop the shake. Maybe it was. Maybe it was finally enough to hear my name, even if only inside my own head.

I trailed the client into the hallway, still hearing the echo of applause like it belonged to someone else’s life. Priscilla slid past me close enough for her perfume to touch my tongue, then her shoulder clipped mine—sharp, deliberate. My cup jerked. Coffee jumped. Heat slapped across my white blouse and bled fast, a brown bloom over my breasts.

“Sorry—” rose to my lips out of habit, like I should apologize for being in the way of her orbit. I bit it back. She didn’t even look over her shoulder. The click of her heels said everything: I’d talked too much. I’d forgotten to stay small. I wasn’t the pretty one.

Dan had seen. He stopped mid-step, eyes dropping to the stain and back to my face. For a second, I felt the world tilt—someone had witnessed the part where she shines, and I had to clean up. Heat crawled up my neck, equal parts coffee and humiliation and something fierce that’s tired of swallowing itself.

I pressed my thumb into the cup, breathing through the bitter smell. Dan’s gaze held mine—steady, alert. Not pity. Something was working behind his eyes, a shape of thought he hadn’t spoken yet. He knew it wasn’t an accident. And I could tell, from the way his mouth tightened like he was holding a word between his teeth, he had something on his mind. Something that could turn this moment into more than a stain, if I let it.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the week off.”

I didn’t know what to think. I nodded. I guessed he knew that brown stain would not just go away. Was he allowing me to use my comp time before firing me?

Her gaze lingered long enough to watch the coffee seep into my shirt, the dark stain expanding across my chest. She grinned, a look that said I had it coming. Maybe I did.

I immediately thought, he didn't want me, the odd one out in this office, and I felt self-conscious about the coffee stain on my white blouse. She made sure no clients were close enough to overhear. It wasn't like Priscilla, her perfect image a vibrant splash of color, passing by as if she'd stepped out of an advertisement.

I could feel every imperfect edge of myself under those fluorescents. The flyaway hair I’d smoothed down twice already, the scuffed heel on my sensible shoes, the blouse I bought on sale now wearing its stain like a name tag. I wasn’t the poster girl. I was a smudge on the poster.

His eyes lingered a second too long, and I heard the unspoken memo: clean lines, clean faces, clean stories. I am good at disappearing on cue. I folded my shoulders in, pressing the cup to my chest as if I could hide the brown spreading through the fabric, and told myself to move, to fix it, to be easy—anything but visible.

Before I could turn away, I briefly locked eyes with Blair. They held a different meaning, a secret that only he knew.

Priscilla’s laugh followed me down the hall, bright and hollow, like ice in a glass. I didn’t have to turn to know she was leaning in, voice dipped in honey, the others chiming in with all the right words—brilliant, inspired, visionary—like a chorus that only knows one name.

I pushed the side door with my shoulder and slipped into the parking lot. The metal bar was cold; the air outside was hotter, heavy with exhaust and summer. The door thudded shut behind me, cutting off the performance mid-applause. My blouse was drying stiff where the coffee had hit, the stain a brown, uneven blotch.

Out in the parking lot, my brain did what it always does to keep me from crying—it started writing. I pictured a kids’ book about mean girls and how much they sucked, only I’d say it in a way a seven-year-old could hold without it hurting too much. A girl with black pigtails—me, really—in a too-starched uniform, knees scuffed, shoes a half-size too big. She’d carry hot chocolate instead of coffee, careful as a tightrope walker, and some glossy-haired princess would swing a backpack just wide enough to tip the cup.

The cocoa blooms brown on white. That high, tinkly laugh names you second before anyone votes. Teachers don’t look. The girls shrug. You stare at the stain and think you’re the mess.

In your room, we find a corkboard of second‑place ribbons, chocolate rings on worksheets, and you practicing small. The book gives you what I didn’t have—a voice that doesn’t apologize. You’re not the spill, kid. You’re the one who keeps getting up.

The mean girls? Peacocks with cardboard crowns—noise and shimmer that shine only in borrowed shadow. You learn to steady your cup when they bump you, to wear the stain like a map that says I was here. Don’t shrink to be their wind. You’re the eagle—spread your wings. Hot chocolate in both hands. A genuine smile—not because the room said so, but because you know you don’t have to disappear to matter.

Out here in the sultry parking lot, the only cheering was the rattle of the HVAC and a distant car alarm. I stood on the oil-slicked concrete and let myself breathe, the taste of her perfume finally fading.

Inside, she was winning them. I was just the echo that left the room, so no one had to hear it. I told myself I was getting fresh air. Mostly, I was getting out of their way. I couldn’t help but imagine myself on Monday packing up my stuff into those little brown boxes and stashing it in the back of my car.

I didn’t sleep so much as rehearse losing my job. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Dan’s mouth flatten, heard myself saying too much, watched Priscilla’s smile cut by four a.m. I was sitting at the kitchen table in yesterday’s blouse, scrubbing at the ghost of coffee like it could scrub the night out of my head.

The rest of the week went the same. I circled job offers in the paper while updating my resume.

I was better than this, than office politics, I told myself.

I arrived at the office early, where the silence of the empty halls made me feel hidden. The garage hummed with the scent of rain mixing with the strong smell of oil. My hatchback settled into its familiar, sun-baked spot, and I passed the reserved spaces as usual, averting my eyes until the end of the row.

Her space was empty.

No red sports car gleaming under the soft lights like a trophy. No flash of vanity plates. Just a clean rectangle of concrete with a painted sign above it—Reserved—MVP—staring back like a punchline.

For a second, I stopped breathing. It was such a small thing, a gap where she should be, but it felt like standing in front of a mirror and not seeing the person who always takes up the center. Late? Sick? Called in early to be crowned all over again? Fired, a wild part of me whispered, and hope flared so fast it scared me.

I pressed my palm to the cool pillar until the heat in my face faded. Don’t be stupid, I told myself. Empty doesn’t mean anything. Titles shift. People are late. I’m the one who gets fired in this story, remember?

Still, as I walked toward the elevator, the garage sounded different. The quiet didn’t echo with her. For the first time since last week, my chest loosened enough to let in a full breath. I slipped inside the elevator before the feeling could notice and run.

Turning the corner, the long hall humming with tired fluorescents, I was already rehearsing how to make myself small. Then I saw it—right there on my desk. A clear glass vase, a single red rose lit up like a stoplight in the gray of morning.

WTF?

For a second, I thought I’d wandered to the wrong workstation. My chair, my mug, my stack of marked-up briefs—and the rose, impossibly bright. There was a folded card leaning against the vase. My name on the front. My name.

I looked over my shoulder, half expecting a camera crew or Priscilla’s laugh. Nothing. Just the copier grinding awake somewhere down the corridor. My fingers shook a little as I opened the note.

“Jamie, it was clear that you were the brainchild behind the campaign for my book after you left. I look forward to working with you, even if your teammates don’t appreciate you, I do. “— Blair Thomas.

I read it twice, then a third time, like the words might vanish if I blinked too hard. The paper felt heavy, expensive, like proof. Heat climbed up my throat, the kind that announces tears before you’ve agreed to them, and I pressed my thumb hard into the edge of the card to steady myself.

Someone saw. Not just anyone—the author. The client everyone was wooing while I slipped out the side door with coffee drying stiff on my blouse. The girl I used to be—the one with the hot chocolate and the scuffed knees—stood up inside me a little.

My first instinct was to hide it. I slid the card half under my keyboard, then pulled it back out, then tucked it into my planner like a secret I wasn’t ready to let the light touch too long. I could already hear the spin if this got around. I could already see Priscilla’s mouth curdle at the edges. But for once, the fear didn’t sweep the table clean. It just sat beside the rose and made room.

I leaned in and breathed the rose in. It smelled like something I couldn’t name—like a door opening. The empty spot in the garage flashed through my mind. The way Dan’s eyes had held mine. The hours I spent rehearsing the way I might be told I was too much.

Maybe I was. Maybe too much is exactly what it takes to finally be seen.

I straightened the vase, smoothed the corner of the note, and sat down. The chair felt different under me, as if it had been mine all along and I was only now letting myself believe it.

By noon, I was sure the rose had been a mistake and the note a fever dream. Then Dan pinged me: “Got a minute?” My stomach did that trapdoor thing. I followed him past the bullpen, past the glass where I usually catch my small reflection, all the way to the executive row. He stopped at the empty office next to his, the one everyone joked was a waiting room for gods.

He unlocked it and held the keycard out to me. “You’ll need this.”

I waited for the after—some neat sentence that would put me back where I belong. Instead, he said, “Blair’s publisher called at eight. They want to scale your concept across their list. We’re building a dedicated group to do author campaigns. I want you to lead it.”

For a second, all I could hear was gym noise from another life. Match point, my knee hitting the floor, the cheer going to someone else. My mouth went dry. “Me?” It came out small and hoarse, like a kid asking if the grown-ups meant it.

“You,” he said, like it was obvious. Like it had always been obvious.

He walked me through the space—where my team would sit, the whiteboard we’d crowd with ideas, and the budget I’d get to sign off on. I nodded like I knew how to carry a room with my name on the door. Inside, the girl with the pigtails stared at the keycard in my hand and didn’t dare blink.

Facilities sent an email an hour later: Parking Reassignment. I took the elevator down just to prove it wasn’t a joke. The MVP spot was no longer an empty rectangle of concrete. Someone had taped a temporary placard over the old sign. My name. Spelled right. I touched the paper like it might smudge off, like names only belong to other people.

Back upstairs, I sat in my new office with the door half open and the rose on the windowsill, the note tucked where I could see it if I needed proof. The publisher liked my idea. We were expanding. I would be the one steering, not just keeping the ball in play while someone else took the bow.

I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt careful, like holding something warm and alive that might choose me back if I didn’t flinch. I let my name be loud in my head for once. I let the chair take my weight. And for the first time, being second wasn’t the ending I was braced for. It was just a story I didn’t have to keep telling.