First Chapter

Boy Meets Girl

The New York Journal

New York City's Leading Photo-Newspaper

Kathleen A. Mackenzie
Personnel Representative
Human Resources
The New York Journal
216 W. 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
212-555-6891

Ida D. Lopez
Craft Food Services
The New York Journal
216 W. 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

Dear Mrs. Lopez:

Last week, we met to address your continuing job-performance problems related to the giving out of dissemination of serving of items from the dessert cart you operate in the newspaper's senior staff dining room. These problems have persisted despite repeated counseling sessions with me my boss Amy Jenkins supervisors as well as staff training programs. Specifically, your refusal to give disseminate serve dessert to certain members of the senior staff has resulted in several written complaints from administrators at this establishment paper company.

Mrs. Lopez, your refusal to serve dessert to certain members of the paper's staff is disruptive to food service operations, and the explanations that you have provided for your behavior are not satisfactory wholly believable inexplicable acceptable. This letter is being issued as a written warning with the expectation that there will be an immediate and sustained improvement in your work attitude food service dissemination job performance. Failure to comply will result in further disciplinary action.

On a more personal note, Mrs. Lopez, please stop refusing to give senior staff members dessert, even if you feel, as you explained to me last week, that they don't "deserve it." Which members of the paper's staff do or do not deserve dessert is not your decision to make! And I would hate to see you asked to leave the food craft services department over something so silly! I would really miss you -- and your chocolate chip cookies!

Damn it.

From the Desk of
Kate Mackenzie

To do:

1. Laundry!!!!!!!!!
2. Finish disciplinary warning letter to Ida Lopez.
3. Pick up prescriptions -- Allegra, Imitrex, Levlen.
4. Get new Almay pressed powder compact.
5. Find new apartment.
6. Find new boyfriend.
7. Get better job.
8. Get married.
9. Have successful career.
10. Have children/grandchildren/big retirement party.
11. Die in sleep at age 100.
12. Pick up dry cleaning!!!!!!!!!

Kathleen A. Mackenzie
Personnel Representative, L–Z
Human Resources
The New York Journal
216 W. 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
212-555-6891
kathleen.mackenzie@thenyjournal.com

Sleaterkinneyfan: What are you doing?

Katydid: WORKING. Stop IM-ing me, you know the T.O.D. doesn't like it when we IM during office hours.

Sleaterkinneyfan: The T.O.D. can bite me. And you are not working. I can see your desk from here. You're making another one of those To Do lists, aren't you?

Katydid: It may look like I'm making a To Do list, but really I am reflecting on the series of failures and bad judgment calls that have made up my life.

Sleaterkinneyfan: Oh my God, you are twenty-five years old. You have not even had a life yet.

Katydid: Then why am I in such mental and emotional anguish?

Sleaterkinneyfan: Because you stayed up too late last night watching Charmed reruns. Don't try to deny it, I heard you salivating over Cole.

Katydid: Oh my God, I'm so sorry!!!!!!!! Did I keep you and Craig awake?

Sleaterkinneyfan: Please. Craig would sleep through a nuclear blast. And I only heard you because I got up to use the bathroom. These hormones make me have to go every five minutes.

Katydid: I am so, so sorry. I swear I will be off your couch and out of your place just as soon as I get a line on a studio I can afford. Paula's taking me to look at one tomorrow night in Hoboken. $1100/month, third-floor walk-up.

Sleaterkinneyfan: Would you stop? I told you, we like having you stay with us.

Katydid: Jen, you and Craig are trying to have a BABY. You do not need an old college roommate sacking out on your living room couch while you are trying to procreate. You did enough just getting me this job in the first place.

Sleaterkinneyfan: You more than earn your keep with all the cleaning you do. Don't think I haven't noticed. Craig even pointed out this morning that you had dusted the top of the refrigerator. Obsessive much, by the way? Who even looks at the top of the refrigerator?

Katydid: Well, Craig, OBVIOUSLY.

Sleaterkinneyfan: Whatever. You can't afford $1100/month on your salary. I know how much you make, remember?

Katydid: It's the cheapest place Paula's found me so far. That isn't on the same block as a methadone clinic.

Sleaterkinneyfan: I don't understand why YOU are the one who had to move out. Why didn't you kick HIM out?

Katydid: I can't stay in that apartment. Not with the memories of all the happy times Dale and I shared.

Sleaterkinneyfan: Oh, you mean like all those times you came home from work to find that, like, one of his bandmates had mistaken the closet for the bathroom and peed on your suede boots?

Katydid: WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BRING THAT UP AT WORK? You know it always makes me want to cry. I really loved those boots. They were perfect Coach knockoffs.

Sleaterkinneyfan: You should have thrown his stuff out onto the fire escape and changed the locks. "I don't know if I can marry you after all, I have to take things one day at a time." I mean, what kind of thing is that for a guy to say?????

Katydid: Um, the kind of thing an ex-pothead who is about to land a million-dollar recording contract would say to the girl he has dated since high school. I mean, come on, Jen. Dale can get anyone now. Why would he stay with his girlfriend from high school?

Boy Meets Girl. Copyright © by Meg Cabot. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.