Pinching my nose, I stand and walk toward the agency doors.
Be likable, Cassandra. Be non-grating. Remember that social hierarchy exists and stop telling people senior to you that their ideas are total shit. Just in time, I remember to force my face into a dimpled smile, even though it feels like pulling toffee with my hands.
“Miss Cassandra Dankworth!” Jack grabs both my hands. “What a pleasure. I cannot wait to get started on this product launch. It’s going to be genre-defining—I can feel it in my bones.”
Smile stiffening, I try to abandon my body like a ghost and count quietly in my head because it just seems easier than screaming STOP BLOODY TOUCHING MY SKIN, YOU ARE HURTING ME and then dealing with the consequences.
One, two, three, four—thank fuck, he’s finally let go.
“Hi, Cassandra.” Gareth smiles, trying to find a better grip on a massive cardboard box. “Nice to see you.”
“Nice to see you too,” I lie, glancing at what’s in his hands as if I’m Pandora and all of mankind’s eternal doom is about to be released. “Follow me to the...meeting room, please.”
I refuse to call the Ideas Brewery by its official title: frankly, it’s an offense to both ideas and breweries everywhere. Barry had a “heavy hand” in its creation, and it’s essentially a torture chamber built by toddlers. There are flashing neon signs, swings and bouncy balls instead of chairs, bright jars of jelly beans, gold ladders that go nowhere, an inexplicable fake fountain that gurgles in a strangely non-regular pattern, plastic green grass instead of a carpet and a neon climbing wall that nobody has climbed in the entire time I’ve been here because we’re not geckos.
The room is also positioned very strategically so that Barry can see straight inside it without physically moving from his desk. As we enter a hellscape Hades would be proud of, I’m trying very hard not to notice him sending me a message with his eyes. I have no idea what it is, but if it was that important, I’ll assume he’d have communicated it by email.
“Very cool.” Jack nods appreciatively, gazing round while grabbing three jelly beans and shoving them in his mouth. “I will say your boss certainly knows how to make work feel like play.”
“Yes,” I agree flatly. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of people in here who pick their nose and then fiddle with the confectionery. It’s an absolute caper.”
Jack stops chewing and spits a jelly bean onto the table.
I probably shouldn’t have said that.
“Right,” Gareth says, putting the box down. “Cassandra, am I correct in thinking we’ll have a larger team? It won’t be just you?”
“Correct,” I confirm, perching delicately on a red ball. I chose a swing last time and nearly face-planted a cactus. “I’ll be putting the team together this week.”
I’ll choose Anya with the lip piercing and Miyuki with the waist-length pink hair, they’ll spend their entire time flirting in the kitchen and it’ll be an unprecedented disaster that seals my fate as a future waitress.
“This is my passion project,” Jack explains again proudly, choosing a blue ball with the confidence of a child who knows exactly what toy he likes and has zero intention of sharing it. “Bit of background on me—spent years building a portfolio in the finance sector, a bit of property too, up north, nice and cheap, and now I’m ready to try something creative. Something with a bit of flair.”
I nod. Be likable, Cassandra. Be a People Person. Don’t just ignore him and open your file like you did last time.
“That is a very interesting origin story,” I say formally. “Thank you so much for sharing it with me.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I’m warily watching Gareth start opening the box, and here’s an interesting fact: the legendary Pandora’s box was never actually a box. It was a mistranslated enormous clay jar, a punishment from Zeus because Prometheus gifted humans fire and thus a calculated way to destroy us all.
Something tells me this one has the power to do it all over again.
“SharkSkin is going to be industry-changing,” Jack continues expansively, holding his palms upward as if he’s presenting the ceiling for analysis. “A brand-new way of looking at men’s skin care. This is about self-love. There’s all this constant chat about women loving themselves, but who says men can’t love themselves too? Don’t real men deserve to look after our skin as well?”
I physically feel my face drop, so I consciously tug it back into a sweet smile and watch as Gareth dutifully starts pulling items out of the box. Greed. Envy. Illness. Pain. Disease. Misery. Death.
Only joking. It’s a few branded jars of face cream.
“Sure,” I say as my throat starts tightening. “Although men have demonstrably been using skin care for thousands and thousands of years already, in multiple ancient cultures all over the world.” I cough. Unlikable. Grating. “But I see what you mean. What a fascinating question to explore further with the public.”
“So these are the prototypes,” Gareth says, laying them all out on the table. “Ready to hit the stores in a couple of weeks. As you can see, they all have a shark on them.” He lifts one eyebrow. “Lots and lots and lots of sharks.”
I stare at the packaging in horror. I’m not sure why, but I think I’d been desperately hanging on to some futile hope that by traveling through time, I might have somehow ended up in a thread of the universe where SharkSkin wasn’t yellow and blue stripes with orange lids and a leaping shark drawn jumping across the front, flecks of blood spinning out of its mouth. I don’t know who the designer is, but they’ve clearly never been to either an optician or an aquarium.
“Sharks are the ultimate masculine animals,” Jack asserts and pushes one toward me. “This is the day moisturizer, Cassandra, which will be our lead launch. Go ahead and smell it.”
“No, thank you,” I say politely.
“Go on.” He nudges it closer. “Smell it.”
I push it away. “I don’t really need to.”
“Smell the cream, Cassandra,” Jack says in a much sharper voice. “I don’t want a PR who isn’t fully invested. It’s algae-based, you know. Lots of antioxidants. I think you’ll be impressed.”
Holding my breath—there’s no getting around it—I pick up a jar and slowly untwist the lid. I’ve had a problem with scent since I was a baby. Anything too rich, too powerful, too meaty, immediately sets off a vicious gag reflex. (“Cassandra must stop being so dramatic at lunchtime.”) I have to pull my jumper over my nose and mouth every time I walk past a butcher’s shop or I vomit on the curb outside the roast-beef-sandwich queue.
But this is my job. My future. My destiny.
Come on, Cassandra. You can do this.
You have been granted the gift of both hindsight and prophecy, and all you need to do in return is...not what you did four months ago. Literally anything other than what you did four months ago is fine. Bending down, I inhale cautiously. It’s a surreal yet extremely potent combination of mold and petrol and mint and a faint whiff of inexplicable pork sausage, and I immediately start gagging.
My mouth fills with water, my throat closes.
No no no no no—
“Fuck me,” I say as my words tumble out in a rush, a punishment from the gods. “That is absolutely disgusting.”
13
Yeah, I did it again.
Now and then, time likes to replicate situations exactly.
“Excuse me?” Jack snarls as I put a hand over my mouth and try to push the words back in. “What did you just say?”
I can feel my brain scrabbling urgently at the inside of my head like a trapped gerbil, attempting to find a way out, but there isn’t one. I know, because I’ve spent the last four months trying.
“Sorry,” I sigh, closing my eyes.
Let’s try that again.
“Sharks are the ultimate masculine animals,” Jack says, pushing one toward me. “This is the day moisturizer, Cassandra, which will be our lead launch. Go ahead and smell it.”
“I said no,” I say, screwing the lid back on.
“Excuse—”
“And the fact that you think masculinity is epitomized by cold-blooded predators says a lot about modern society, don’t you think?”
Sorry, but it needed to be said.
Undo.
“Go ahead and smell it,” Jack says, and I snap on my prettiest Lego smile and pick up the moisturizer.
“Gosh,” I say, holding my breath. “That’s powerful stuff.”
“Yes.” Jack nods, finally satisfied. “I wanted something instantly identifiable. That’s SharkSkin, I want people to say.”
“Oh, they will,” I confirm.