He started to doubt any of it existed. Maybe Sophie had made it up, or the person who had mentioned it to her had. Maybe it was speculation, without any research behind it. After a week of searching, he decided that had to be the case. Which was why he was shocked to find the very thing he’d been looking for.
He had brought a handout over to the copier/printer outside his supervisor’s office to photocopy. People were always forgetting their originals in the feeder, walking away with the copies but not the original, or else printing something to one machine thinking they’d printed to another, and then sending the job again when it didn’t turn up instead of searching the other machines. David had done it himself. He’d found all kinds of things that way: a pay statement showing him how much more his boss made than he did, flight confirmation numbers, receipts for items that were definitely not company purchases.
He glanced at the name on top: Nina Flaherty, his supervisor. Normally if he came across something abandoned in the printer, he’d bring it to the person whose name was on top, or leave it where it was, or toss it in the shredder, under the assumption that whoever had left it, likely Nina, would print it again if it was needed. She printed everything; everyone complained behind her back how wasteful it was. He would have done what he usually did this time, if the e-mail’s subject hadn’t read “Can we spin this?” He didn’t try to read the rest while standing there out in the open. He made his copies, then casually gathered the printed e-mail beneath his own original, put both at the bottom of his copy stack, and carried everything back to his desk.
His own copies were of a handout he was supposed to bring to a hospital the next day. Students mostly used their phones to access the info and play his quizzes, but there were still older nurses at the hospitals who preferred the paper version. They were the ones he was there to recruit, and this small concession pleased them. The next day’s training was early enough that he had planned to leave with all his materials, rather than come in early the next morning. That made it easy to walk out with the e-mail buried in his box.
He often waited until everyone was gone for the day to head home, to avoid the five p.m. lobby scrum and the anxiety it instilled, but this time he thought it made sense to walk out at the same time as others.
“Not staying late?” Tash asked when they and David stood from their desks at the same time. “People will think you’re slacking off, Poster Boy.”
“Nah. Early training tomorrow.” David tossed a few more random brochures into the box, to further bury the e-mail.
“Can I carry something for you?”
“No! I mean, I’ve got it. You can hit the elevator buttons.”
The elevator was already packed, and Tash held the door while David attempted to maneuver in without hitting anyone with his box or messenger bag.
As he turned, someone said “Hold for me?” Tash stuck a foot in the closing door, and Nina squeezed herself into the remaining space. “Thanks!” Then “David! You’re leaving on time for once!”
Tash said, “He’ll be back to overachieving tomorrow, I’m sure.”
David forced a smile. “I had no idea people cared when I left.”
“Nah, I’m glad to see it,” said Nina. “Work-life balance is important. You’ve been looking stressed lately.”
David tried to exude unstressed. It felt like everyone in the elevator was looking into the open box he carried. Surely his boss had already spotted her name on the e-mail buried deep in his stack.
He tolerated being squeezed in, but he wished the elevator weren’t stopping on every single floor. The box got heavier. He was the tallest person in the elevator, a good vantage. Someone smelled like coconut deodorant covering sweat, and somebody sniffled like they were holding back a sneeze, and someone had earbuds in that spilled snippets of a self-improvement podcast into the compartment. This was why he didn’t leave with everyone else.
They finally reached the ground floor. The guards had no reason to give him a second look; he left with boxes several times a week. Even if they stopped him, he could always say he’d grabbed it by accident. Still, he felt a terrified thrill walking it out under their noses.
Why risk this? He didn’t know for sure that it would prove to be anything, but that title had intrigued him. How funny if this was how he found something; total dumb luck after all his attempts at subterfuge had uncovered nothing.
Ordinarily he’d leave the next day’s materials in the car under the assumption that nobody wanted to steal flyers, but this time he hauled the box into his room. He gave himself a paper cut digging the e-mail out from under the other papers.
He tried not to hope. Didn’t know what to hope for in any case, aside from answers to a question everyone seemed determined to avoid. “Can we spin this?” It could be anything.
The e-mail was to all the department heads, including his supervisor. “Can we spin this?” was followed in the first line by “or bury it?” The attachment line referenced a document he didn’t have, titled Neuroplasticity in Early Adopters.
Before he could change his mind, he slipped it under his sister’s door.
CHAPTER FIFTY
SOPHIE
The first thing Sophie noticed about the paper under her
