Slipperless by Sloan Storm Page A

whole situation was bizarre, and as the seconds ticked by, I grew more and more uneasy.
    I felt trapped. It was as if no matter what I tried to say in my defense, they wouldn’t believe me. Or even worse, they would accuse me of cheating to win, which is what they were already doing in so many words.
    Never mind the fact that since the competition started, I’d worked late every single day. No one else put in the hours I did, despite the difficult situation I had at home with my grandmother. I couldn’t believe how shallow they were acting. Even so, I swallowed hard and tried to diffuse the situation.
    “I’m sorry.” I mumbled at last. “I don't know what you want me to say. I promise I’m not doing anything sneaky. I haven’t even talked to Gabe since that day. Why are you guys acting like this?”
    As I finished speaking, they both looked at me in silence for a moment before glancing at each other and… bursting out in laughter.
    I frowned.
    Thinning my lips in disgust, I said, “That was really mean. Why did you do that?”
    “Oh relax, Fiona.” Amanda chided. “We were just having fun with you.”
    “Yeah,” Melissa added. “Don’t take everything so seriously. We don't care if you sleep with Gabe.”
    “I am not sleeping with Gabe!” I exclaimed, slamming my palms flat on my workstation.
    No sooner had I done that, than a couple of the other lab workers looked up at me from across the room. Horrified, heat flushed to my neck and chest as Amanda and Melissa cackled like hens.
    They did their best to offer me a half-hearted apology, but as far as I was concerned, nothing about their teasing was funny. Not one bit. A few moments later, they walked back towards their respective workstations.
    Glancing up between strands of my hair, I kept my eyes trained on them. They may have said they were joking but something about the innuendo seemed anything but light-hearted.
    I took an uneasy seat at my workstation and tried to get on with my day. And it was a big day. I had a number of experiments running. The most important of those would wrap up later that day.  In any case, I kept my head down and got to work.
    It was early afternoon when I went to check on a culture experiment that was nearing the end of its five day incubation period. Reaching the lab oven, I opened the door and was shocked at what happened next.
    “Oh shit!” I exclaimed, as I reached for the culture trays, which were too hot to even touch.
    Hearing me, Andrew approached in a hurry from across the lab.
    “Hey Fiona,” he said as he walked over. “Everything all right?”
    “Hardly!” I groaned, as I let my palms slap against the outsides of my thighs in disgust. I gestured back towards the trays. “Somehow the heat malfunctioned and ruined my experiment. Shit, this will put me so far behind now. Oh why does stuff like this always happen?”
    Andrew frowned in confusion.
    “Excuse me,” he said as he passed by to have a look at the oven.
    For several moments he inspected the work area, and while he did, I racked my brain trying to remember what I’d done. I plopped down in a chair and checked my log book. As I suspected, I wrote the correct temperature down more than five days earlier.
    When Andrew finished his inspection, he walked back over to where I sat. I didn’t bother to lift my head to look at him. I was so screwed. Instead, I dropped my pen on the table and my head into my hands.
    “What temperature was it when you found it, Fiona?”
    I dragged my fingers down the front of my face as the scale of my setback began to register in my mind.
    “Almost four hundred degrees,” I grumbled.
    “Wow, hmm. That is unusual. And you’re one hundred percent sure you didn’t do it?”
    “Yes.”
    “When is the last time you checked on it?”
    “This morning. When I got here.”
    “Were you in the lab the entire time?”
    I barely listened to Andrew any longer as he rattled off his questions. How could I be such an idiot?