Alaska Heart Read Free Page B

Denali? Would I be a Snow White there too?
    At work, Meg swung by my cube. The bright yellow dress she wore nearly blinded me.
    “You ready to swap?” She tapped the file folder she held.
    “Sure.” I dug out my proposal and handed it to her. She smelled it, turned it around, pretended to weigh it in her hands.
    “Feels like a winner,” she announced as she walked out.
    “Yours too,” I called.
    She snickered.
    Over lunch, Meg slid my proposal toward me. “I love this, Alanna. It could be a commercial for visiting Denali. Where did you get all your info?”
    “I have my sources.” I took an enormous bite of my tuna sandwich to avoid speaking any more about the subject. I pointed to Meg’s proposal and finished chewing. “This sounds like impressive shit.”
    “It is,” she said, “but the scientist I talked to about the program operated on a level way over my head. I spent most of the night trying to wrap my underdeveloped brain around the information.”
    “I’ll bet you could charm him down to your level.”
    Meg fluttered her eyelashes, a small upward curl at the corner of her mouth. “Thanks. I think.”
    I gestured to the folders. “Nothing left to do now but drop these puppies onto Evelynne’s desk.”
    “Yep.” Meg stared at her file folder.
    “No gamble, no gain.”
    “Yep.”
    “Okay then.”
    “Okay.”
    We sat in silence for a long moment, staring at our proposals and fiddling with things on our lunch trays. Finally, we had to end our lunch and get back to work. Upstairs at my cube, Meg gathered up our proposals.
    “I’ll run these over to Becky, and the rest is up to Fate.”
    Accepting my brief nod as agreement, Meg turned on her calf-high, brown leather boots and tap-tapped down to Evelynne’s secretary. I peeked from my cube as Meg and Becky conversed. The proposals changed hands, and Becky hugged the file folders to her chest. Too late to turn back now. All I could do was hope I’d win and have a shot at the promotion of a lifetime.
    For the record, I’d never won anything.

Chapter Three
    I hardly slept the night after I’d handed in my proposal. I kept thinking of things I should have included, different angles, different hooks. The more I dwelled on the proposal, the more I convinced myself I didn’t have a shot in hell at the promotion. Six years at Gaia was nothing. Other writers had put in more time. Their work was edgier, new wave. I wrote about the beauty of nature. I was all poems and pretty pictures. In fact, I should just go ahead and use Snow White as my pen name.
    Of course, I was blowing this way out of proportion. My stories did have hard-core facts and were always well researched. Solid writing accompanied the poetry and pretty pictures. Still, the chances of Evelynne picking me were slim. Better to be realistic and prepare for disappointment. Took the sting out. Sometimes.
    So when a green sticky note that read, “We need to chat,” adorned my computer screen about a week later, I had trouble swallowing. Meg found me in the beginning stages of an anxiety attack.
    “Why is your face so white?” she asked.
    I flapped the sticky note at Meg. She walked deeper into my cube and plucked it from my fingers.
    “Is this about your proposal?” Her eyebrows angled up as she waved the note at me.
    “I don’t know.”
    “It can only be about your proposal.” She grabbed my hand, shocking me out of my panic. “C’mon, kid. Go see her. Right now.”
    Meg pulled on my arm, rather roughly, until I stumbled out from behind my desk.
    “Meg, I—”
    “Hush,” she interrupted. “Move.” She pointed toward Evelynne’s office. “And I want to hear everything as soon as you get out of there.”
    Meg nudged me forward until my own legs took over the duty of carrying me along. Suddenly the hallway leading to Becky’s desk just outside Evelynne’s office seemed infinitely long. My feet kept moving, but I wasn’t getting any closer.
    When I finally found myself