Miranda had an impressive interview, and her resume and references had been beyond reproach. So she’d been hired. But, as is so often the case, the glowing reviews and impressive accomplishments hid a simple truth: the good people at Iowa Northwestern had been trying desperately, hungrily, to rid themselves of her.
And it was easy to see why.
She was absolutely batshit insane crazy.
The warning signs had been there for anyone who cared to look, but it wasn’t until the deal was sealed that worrying things came to light. Miranda had assured Burroughs that Elvis and Lennon were alive and well over coffee one morning, for instance. When prodded, she’d said they were on the same spacecraft in the shadow of the moon. She had an utterly unnerving habit of cutting faces out of the paper and adding them to a collage–of obituary columns. Faces of Irish Lottery winners grinned cheerily from a bulletin board in Miranda’s cube; if pressed, she said they made her feel more alive.
But none of it was enough to terminate her five-year contract early, at least not in the eyes of anybody upstairs. So she was shuffled from project to project, contributing vociferously to derailing discussion and never assigned any deliverables for fear they’d arrive in lavender ink (as had once happened on an official memo to the mayor).
That was the state of her when I was assigned team as Miranda’s team leader.
