Page 45 of The Do-Over

On the wall behind it, a crooked poster displayed the Hope House Rules:

No drugs.

No alcohol.

No fighting.

No weapons.

No stealing.

No nonsense.

No giving up.

No one greeted me at the front. After fiddling with my purse strap, rereading the sign, and questioning once again how I’d ended up here, I ventured down the main hallway until I came to a closed door marked OFFICE. I hesitated. I could turn and run now. No one would ever know. Except me. I would know. My grip on the laptop bag in my hand tightened. I had no idea what this presentation was even about. Mathias had emailed only an hour ago, and I hadn’t had time to read it.

Old Perci would run. But New Perci would not buckle under the weight of crippling stage fright. Besides, Mathias had said it would just be a few women. It would be like chatting around the lunch table with some girlfriends. I knocked.

“Yeah?” a voice yelled. “Come in.”

A woman was hunched over the desk, phone pressed to her ear as she rattled off something I couldn’t quite hear, but I thought I caught the words “parole” and “arrested.”

“I’m asking you to give her a chance. She’s a hard worker,” the woman said and held up a finger in my direction. I waited.

“Who are you?” she asked the second her call disconnected.

“I’m Perci Mayfield. I’m here for the presentation. Mathias Jorgensen was supposed to give it, but something came up and I’m taking his place. I figured he would have let you know.”

“He did not.” Under the weight of her glare, I shifted on my feet. “Is that a cat on your shirt?”

I tugged on the hem. “The plan was to change before I came, but we were short-handed at work, so I had to stay late and came straight here.”

She muttered something under her breath, which didn’t sound complimentary, and marched toward the hallway. “Come on then. I guess you’ll have to do. I’m Stella Martinez, the director here.”

I trotted behind her down the hallway. We entered a room at the end with a large screen on one side and several rows of chairs facing it. I walked up the center aisle to the table at the front, counting five rows of six chairs. Thirty people. Nope. No way. “Mathias mentioned it would be a small group.”

Her eyebrows rose. “That so? We have…” She thumbed through the papers on a clipboard she carried. “Here is it—twenty-seven signed up. Word got around about it after last time Mathias was here.”

Panic blurred the edges of my vision. I leaned a hand on the table, thought about crawling under it. Twenty-seven? “What is the name of this class again?”

With a frown, she scanned me from head to toe. “‘How to Dress for Success.’”

The dubious expression on her face had merit. Dressing for success wasn’t my field of expertise. A person had to feel comfortable in their own skin for that, and I’d been faking it for years.

But New Perci was comfortable. New Perci didn’t worry about pleasing other people. New Perci would face these twenty-seven women head-on. New Perci would kill this.

New Perci was me, dang it.

Plunking the laptop bag on the table, I smiled with what I hoped was confidence. “So, where should I set up?”

The women began arriving thirty minutes later. Some looked too young to drink, others looked old enough to have watched Jesus turn water into wine.

An older woman with frizzy white hair and a wide smile that showed four missing teeth paused in front of me. Her smile dipped into a frown. “You ain’t the fellow with the glasses.”

“No, sorry. I’m taking over for tonight.”

She cranked her head around. “Suze, he’s not here.”