He hated the thought of going through another interview process. “Does Shelly know?”
“Yes, the announcement will be made on Monday. Next week is Trevor’s last, so I’ll be leaving the week after to start with retention.”
“Wow, this is happening quick.”
“Just another way Open Hands does things. They waste no time. Expect to see the job posted next week, and it will be open to both internal and external candidates.”
“Guess I’ll be redoing my résumé again this weekend.”
“Yes, do that. You’re a pro now at interviewing with Shelly.”
This is the job Nicole has been preparing me for all these years.
*****
The management team wasted no time in making the announcement: Shelly called for a meeting with the department first thing Monday morning.
Trevor announced that this week would be his last, as he planned to finish school and pursue a career in family law. Nicole would manage the retention team in his absence, leaving the onboarding team manager position open.
Once the announcements were made, Nicole pulled the onboarding team into a conference room.
“I’m proud of all of you for building such a fine-tuned machine. Our productivity is at an all-time high, we get more done than the Seattle team, and you should all take a lot of pride in that.”
As the team all chimed in about how they would miss Nicole, Jeremy sat in silence. Even though he looked forward to the opportunity, he also felt stunned and sad that Nicole was leaving. She had always been there, looking out for him.
Now I’m alone.
“Next week, once I’m gone, carry on as usual. Jeremy will be here as always, so make sure to lean on him.”
*****
I don’t fucking believe it.
Jeremy had read the email at least ten times. His pulse throbbed hard in his temples, to the point where he thought his head might actually explode.
“You fucking cunt,” he whispered under his breath, staring across the room at Shelly. The urge to walk over to her and put his hands around her throat was overwhelming.
After everything I’ve done for this place. Unfuckingbelievable.
He reread the email sent from the recruiting team:
Dear Jeremy,
Thank you for your interest in the position of Onboarding Team Manager. At this time we will continue our search in another direction. We are looking for candidates with past managerial experience.
Thank you,
Open Hands Recruiting
Jeremy deleted the email, wanting to not see it anymore. He felt like he might vomit.
So this is it? I get rejected for the training job, and don’t even get a chance to interview for the other position I’m already basically doing. Three and a half years and she can’t even humor me with a first-round interview.
He checked his schedule to find he had two hours before his next call. He called Jamie from his car. His voice broke as he spoke and his hands shook.
“She couldn’t even fucking tell me to my face!” Jeremy gasped for breath. “She had our recruiters send me a generic response!”
“Babe, calm down. It’s going to be okay. You still have school to focus on and you can get out of there once you graduate.” Jamie kept her voice gentle and calm. Jeremy broke into tears.
“I don’t wanna leave here. I love this place.”
“I know. But I don’t think you have a future there as long as Shelly’s around.” She sighed. “Listen, babe, I need to get ready for work. Just try not to worry about what you can’t control, okay? Maybe I can come over tonight?”
“I’d like that. See you later.”
Jeremy sat in his car for a few more minutes, got his breathing under control, and cleared his mind.
Focus on your job. You’re still a top performer. That hasn’t changed.
He returned to the office ready to push the situation to the back of his thoughts.
I’m just gonna do my job. It’s all I can do.
25
August 2015
Jamie poked at her chicken. She’d joined Jeremy for dinner after his long, dramatic day at work. Her eyes drooped, avoiding eye contact with her boyfriend.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jeremy asked. She had seemed off since she arrived. Jeremy had ranted more about his rejection and Jamie had just nodded, not contributing anything to the conversation.
“I’m okay.” Her voice sounded shaky.
“If you say so. How was your day? Couldn’t have been worse than mine.”
“It was fine.”
That’s it? Normally, Jamie talked his ear off. Jeremy felt his heart sink, worrying that something was wrong. I can’t take anything else happening right now. Why can’t she just support me?
They finished dinner, not speaking again until Jamie finally cleared her plate.
“I need to talk to you,” Jamie said quietly.
Oh, fuck. Those words never led to anything good.
“Okay. What’s up?” Jeremy tried to sound calm.
“I’m in a funk,” she said. “I feel like I’ve fallen into the same routine every day. Wake up, go to work, hang out with you. Something just doesn’t feel right, and I think it may be our relationship.”
Jeremy gulped.
“I think we need some time apart. I need to get myself together. I don’t know what I want in life anymore. I know this is the last thing you need to hear today, but I’ve been putting off this conversation for too long. Haven’t you felt it?”
Jeremy’s throat was swollen from holding in tears; he had to force it open to speak. “I mean, sure, we’ve had our ups and downs, but it’s nothing we haven’t been able to work out before.”
“It’s not about that. I just don’t know if I want to be in a relationship. I’m only 23. I need to take a step back. The further our relationship goes, the more likely it becomes we end up together forever. Right now, the concept of forever terrifies me.”
Jeremy slunk down in his chair. “So when you say we need time apart, you mean like less date nights?”
“No, Jeremy. I mean a full-on breakup. No contact.”
He couldn’t fight the tears anymore.
“I love you,” she said. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” She stretched her hand out to put over Jeremy’s across the table. “But something tells me this is right for both of us.”
“Please don’t leave me. I can’t do this.” Jeremy’s lips quivered as tears fell onto the table. “I have nothing right now. I can’t lose you.”
Jamie’s eyes turned red as she too started crying. He remembered the time he found her on campus after her last breakup. Now she would probably find someone else to comfort her through this one.
“I don’t want to do this,” she managed between gasps for air. “I have to.” She fanned her face with her hands, leaving a streak down both cheeks.
Jeremy jumped out of his chair and went to her. “Jamie, please. We can help each other with our problems. I love you.”
“I know, but I need to handle my problems on my own.” She pressed her lips to his, and they were salty from the tears. “I love you, Jeremy. Don’t forget that. If life brings us back together then we’ll know it’s our destiny. You’re gonna do big things with that big brain of yours, don’t let anything hold you back.”
She turned and walked toward the door. Her scent trailed behind and Jeremy wished he could hold it in his lungs forever.
“I’ll be right here if you change your mind,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to do this.”
She paused, not turning, and said, “I know.” She opened the door, and just like that she was gone.
26
September 2015
“Tell me more,” Dr. Siva said. They were meeting before their usually scheduled time, as Jeremy needed to vent. He had already filled in Dr. Siva on his breakup with Jamie and his being rejected for the training position.
“Not even a week a
fter, Nicole tells me she’s leaving and her job will be open. It immediately gave me all my optimism back. I thought, I can do this job instead. It all seemed like fate at the time.”
“You know fate isn’t a real thing,” Dr. Siva interrupted.
Jeremy just stared at him. “Right. Anyway, then I applied for the manager position, and Shelly rejected me right away. Not even the chance to interview. Can you believe that?”
“What was her reasoning?” Dr. Siva asked.
“That I don’t have any experience as a manager! I’ve been a team lead for two years. Just because the title isn’t ‘manager’ doesn’t mean I’m not managing.”
“Hmm. Well, have you thought about what you’re going to do? Leave? Stay?”
“I plan on staying there until I finish my master’s. Then, I don’t know.”
“Well, I still think you should consider opening your own practice. If you work for yourself you don’t have to deal with corporate politics. When you work for someone else, your job is in constant danger. There’s no such thing as job security. A CEO can wake up in the morning and decide to lay off an entire company, and no one can do a thing about it. You live in a constant state of mercy to others.”
“Never thought of it that way,” Jeremy said. For once he felt like Dr. Siva was talking to him, not at him.
“There’s a lot you can do in this world, and corporate America only stunts your growth as a human being. Now, what I really want to talk to you about: the trial.”
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Siva,” Jeremy said. “I haven’t kept up with the trail. My workload piled up, then all the interview preparation on top of homework took up all my time. Last I heard, the jury was set to make their decision.”
“It’s too bad you missed it—the ending especially. The outcome was as I expected: they found the kid guilty and sentenced him to death. I thought the defense made a strong case for his insanity plea, but the jury didn’t think so.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It’s tragic. The psychologists they had on the stand were as good as it gets. They argued that the defendant suffered from undetected paranoid schizophrenia for years. This kid used to yell at the wind, and now he’s being put to death.”
“I still want to make a difference—I’ve been thinking about what you said. I know there’s something I can do to help with mental illness, I just can’t figure out what.”
“Join me. I’m going to speak with some law offices about working with them on these kinds of cases. If we can make an impact in the courtroom, that’s a chance to make lasting change. I would love to get involved in these type of criminal trials.”
Jeremy mulled it over. The courtroom idea excited him. He had watched plenty of court TV, and the cases never lacked in action.
We need a big trial with national attention, and mental illness needs to be the main focus of the trial.
He went home and thought over what Dr. Siva had said. He lay in his bed with the light on, his mind racing too much to sleep. He felt like he needed to confront himself about some of the thoughts that had popped into his head lately.
“You’re being dramatic,” he whispered.
Not really. You’ve been having violent urges toward Shelly ever since she fucked your future.
And he had. Ever since Shelly had rejected him for the second time, he had felt rage bubbling from his heart to his fingertips and toes. He had never felt this way before.
“It’s rage. Madness,” he whispered.
He would close his eyes and imagine grabbing Shelly by the head and stomping it into the ground. He loved the way it felt.
He had so much going for him, and she wanted to take it all away.
“I have no future at Open Hands,” he barked. His voice echoed in the empty room and he felt relieved to admit what he had refused to believe.
“My only option is psychology.” He forced his voice back to its normal tone. “I can figure out the mental illness epidemic. Sometimes you just need to listen to the world.”
He leaned over and pulled a composition notebook and pen from the top drawer of his nightstand, and sat up in bed with the notebook in his lap.
He thumbed through the blank pages, feeling a wave of motivation.
I’m doing it. I’m going undercover.
He opened the notebook and started writing:
He flipped the page and continued.
Jeremy snapped his notebook shut after writing this last line. He had never questioned his faith before, and felt immediately guilty.
“What am I doing?” he asked the empty room, lying back on his pillow.
You’re going to save innocent people. No matter what it takes. You’ll expose the flaws within the system.
*****
He spent his weekend in a daze. A dreamlike feeling consumed him that he couldn’t shake. He left his notebook in the nightstand drawer, refusing to touch it again.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the thought of killing Shelly. Am I losing it, or is this normal?
People joked about killing their boss all the time. There was even a movie called Horrible Bosses, about three workers each planning to kill their bosses. But he had to remind himself: people don’t actually murder their manager.
And that’s exactly why I could, and get off on the insanity plea.
On Saturday he opened a search engine and typed in “Legal insanity,” but closed his computer before initiating the search. “Can’t have a trail online.” If he truly planned to see his experiment through to the courts, he’d have to avoid using his home internet. The campus library prompted a specific student login, so that wouldn’t work either.
“The Denver Public Library.” He had a card, and knew they only required him to swipe his way into the computer lab. The computers were logged in to a general account and nothing was tracked by user.
He threw a hoodie and sweatpants over his pajamas, rushed to his car, and drove to the library.
The computer lab was an enclosed room tucked in the back of the library. Four rows of computers all faced the same direction. Jeremy took a seat in the back row so no one could see his screen. The teenage boy next to him was wearing headphones and bobbing his head, clearly not interested in anything Jeremy was doing.
He opened the search engine and typed “Colorado Insanity” and the autofill suggested “Colorado Insanity Defense Statute,” which he clicked on. He clicked the first link available and the webpage provided him with a good start:
The test for insanity in Colorado was that “a person who suffered from a condition of mind caused by mental disease or defect that prevented the person from forming a culpable mental state that is an essential element of a crime charged.”
He kept reading. Once a defendant enters the plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, he learned, it then becomes the prosecution’s burden to prove the sanity of the defendant.
One fact led to another over the course of the afternoon, and Jeremy left the library that evening with a sense of a plan. The biggest obstacle would be not letting even a trace of premeditation remain. It would require private and careful planning to ensure there was no trace of motive or intent. But he could pull it off.
He was all in on his experiment.
The plan would be to prove that mental illness was a valid reason for someone to commit a crime. Mentally ill people should not be held to the same standards as healthy minded individuals. There were real disorders that went untreated every day, and sometimes a person was no longer in control.
Was there an actual experiment he could carry out to prove the effects of mental health and try to change the perception?
Yes.
He could make sure the pieces were in place to show his insanity in the eyes of a jury. And then he could commit a heinous crime.
The crime to commit?
Kill Shelly.
*****
The thought consumed him, excited him. He constantly had to remind himself not to rush.
More research needed to be done, and details had to be planned out to perfection.
In studying court cases where the insanity defense had worked, Jeremy noted that, for the most part, the defendants had an instance where they snapped. There were also cases like Ed Gein, who displayed a lifetime of mental instability—obviously anyone cutting flesh off humans to make lampshades had a few screws loose.
Jeremy took to his notebook to compose his plan.
27
September 2015
Shelly hadn’t spoken to Jeremy for more than five seconds since she turned him down for the interview. Apparently she realized what an awkward situation she had created.
Things had at least settled down for the team. They remained productive and continued to lean on Jeremy for support as they all watched the interview process take place.
Jeremy did his part to execute his first step, greeting Shelly every time she passed by, often getting a smile from her. Within a few days, she started engaging with him again.
After an interview with a candidate, she walked by Jeremy’s desk, shaking her head, and said, “Oh, people these days. Sometimes all you can do is shake your head. Right, Jeremy?”
“That’s right,” he said, grinning back. “Rough interview?”
“Brutal,” she said, and kept waking to her desk.
You should’ve interviewed me, dumb cunt.
Jeremy slugged his way through the workdays, anxious to get to the library when the day ended. He could get an extra hour of library time during his lunch break, but decided against it as part of his second task:
Leaving the office every day for lunch would be against the norm for someone who brought their lunch four out of five days—just the kind of detail that could prove premeditation in a trial.
Insanity (Insanity Series, Book 1) Page 13