"What did Keenan do
"He tried to correct his
mistake."
"How did he do that?" "He did it by calling
Hayley Johnson and telling her that he was turning down the money that she'd offered him to ruin one of our most important projects, my anti-wrinkle cream."
"So the reason why three different people betrayed my dad, according to what he told me last night in between sobs, was Hayley Johnson; all this time."
"Yes," said Larry. "Keenan just signed his death sentence. That woman's going to kill him like she killed my mother."
Noah gasped and asked, "She killed your mother! Oh God! It's a shame that we don't have proof of everything that she's done, but I swear to you, that woman's going down. I will destroy her. I've got personal reasons. Wouldn't you like Keenan to be punished somehow?"
"Yes, but I don't want him to lose his job. I want you to show him that you're really giving him another chance," said Larry.
"It hurts you deeply that he almost destroyed our contract, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"What would you like me to do to, punish him? Do you want me to fire him?"
"Suspend pay for a month, I don't know."
"That sounds like a plan. For the next thirty days, he's going to have to work somewhere else to reunite all of the money that he's going to lose," said Noah and got up. "I'm going to tell him."
Noah walked to the door, opened the door, walked out of the office and closed the door behind him. He slowly walked up to Keenan’s office and went in without knocking. Keenan was doing the latest reports on the enterprise's actual progress for him. As Noah closed the door behind him, Keenan looked up at him, got up and asked, "Are you going to fire me?" "No," said Noah, as he stood in front of Keenan’s desk, "but I am going to let you know how badly you've hurt Larry's feelings just to fulfill Hayley's unjustified revenge against us."
Crying, Keenan asked, "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to suspend pay for a month, meaning that you'll have to leave. I don't like it when people work for me for free, and that would be unfair."
"Do I have to leave now, or can I finish these reports?"
"You'll have to leave right now, Keenan, before Dad finds out what you've done. Don't come back for the next thirty days. I will get my new employee to finish these reports," he said and took them in his hand.
"Very well," said Keenan and walked around his desk. He shook Noah's hand, and with a serious face, Noah shook his hand and then let go of it. He would forgive anything except betrayal, and it would take Keenan a very long time to earn him and Scott's trust again. Keenan walked past Noah to the door, opened it, turned his face and looked at Noah for one last time, with tears in his eyes, walked out, closed the door behind him and left. Noah knew that it was wrong for him to hide from his dad who the traitor was, but he had to do it because he didn't know about Didier and he didn't know what Scott did to those that backstabbed him. He didn't know that by calling Scott and telling him that Keenan was the traitor that threatened the safety of the enterprise, its stock holders and its employees, and Scott's own safety, he would kill Keenan; thus giving the prey to his or her predator was like eating him or her, and even not knowing, Noah kept quiet. To put Jill's efficiency to the test, Noah carried the reports in his hand, walked to the door, walked out of Keenan’s office, closed the door behind him, and walked the hallway to Jill's desk on the outside. Jill didn't have her own office like ninety-five percent of the employees did because she was new, and Noah wanted to be fair, and he didn't want his employees to be jealous of Jill and start doing her harm. He placed the reports on Jill's desk, stood beside her and told her, "These are the reports on the progress of the enterprise for this week. Keenan was doing them, but he had to go back home. I want you to read them very carefully to know how you're going to finish them off. I want everything to be perfect. These reports will portray what position you deserve in Spears International. Since you need time to go through them, I want them finished by tomorrow at noon. You can't take them home because you don't have a computer, but I strongly suggest that you buy one so that you can do your unfinished work at home to be able to comply with your deadlines better.
Remember, I want these to be perfect. Take them to my office, finished, by tomorrow at noon, and since you'll need more information, you'll email the major stockholders, ask them how we're doing, in their opinion, and then type what they say in your own words, writing each name at the bottom, print it out, and give it to me."
"Good," said Jill.
"The emails are on your calendar, on a day of the month of June that already passed. I had Ivy write them down for you. I want you to find the day in the calendar that the email addresses are written in and tell me if you can read what she wrote. Ivy can be sloppy or plainly illegible sometimes, depending on how she feels each day," explained Noah.
Jill took all of the reports in her hand, looked at her calendar, right in the middle of her desk, which every employee had on his or her desk, found the emails and read them. "Well, it seems that Ivy was feeling very good today because the email addresses are written perfectly."
Noah smiled and said, "That's precisely why I love Ivy so much, because she tells us how she feels with her daily performance. Note that this is not the only thing that you'll be doing each day.
You'll only be doing this for two and a half hours of your ten-hour day. In the other seven and a half hours, you'll be doing whatever I ask you to do in my hourly emails. You'll be---"
She interrupted him and asked him, "Ten hour day?" with a smile on her face.
"Yes," said Noah, smiling back, "that's how long we work each day, ten hours," and walked away. He'd tell her a few more things, but he had a lot of work to do. He passed by Jessica's lab, which was relatively close to the open office space. He wanted to keep Jill and Jessica close to one another so that in case that Jessica needed help, she could easily call on Jill and Jill would rapidly and easily assist her, like she always did. Suddenly, Jessica let out a loud and ground-shaking scream. She was working on a formula for an anti-aging serum and one of the chemicals burned her hand. She didn't know that she had to use gloves to handle chemicals. Noah turned around and ran back to the lab, and rushed in. Jessica was bended over, crying uncontrollably. The burn wouldn't leave deep or permanent scars, but it hurt a whole damn lot. Noah ran up to her and held her by the arms with both hands. Jessica turned around and gave him a big hug. "What happened?" he said, and when they let go, he saw the burn on her hand. "Oh geese, you should've worn gloves!" he said as he took her hand in his hand.
In less than thirty seconds, all of the staff on the fourth floor surrounded the hallway, right in front of the lab, and some of them even went in to assist Jessica.
Crying, Jessica said, "I've never used gloves for anything," as Jill hugged her tightly and Chelsea hugged her from behind to try to comfort her.
Greatly fearing that Jessica might have contracted countless diseases, Noah said, "Well, we have to take you to the hospital. You can't have direct contact with everything or everyone, Jessica. It's not only the chemicals that are extremely harmful, but everything's harmful. I mean you don't have to wear gloves everywhere you go to keep the germs away, but you do have to wash your hands and clean them periodically with "Purell" if there's no sink to wash them in."
Ivy suddenly commented, "God knows how many diseases you've contracted because of your lack of information about germs, viruses and bacteria."
Jill intervened and said, "But my daughter's always been healthy. The only thing about raising her that was easy for me is how she never got sick."
Noah placed both hands on Jill's arms, looked her in the eyes and said, "Just because we don't get sick when we catch viruses, it doesn't mean that we're not sick, Mrs. Hague. Some bacteria and viruses take months or even years to manifest the damage that they've done." Jessica was immediately rushed to the hospital, in an ambulance, so that doctors would take care of her immediately. Luckily, in nineteen and a half years, she'd never been admitted, but unfortunately, doctors didn't know her, so they didn't know what to do for her. Dr.
Gonzalez performed all kinds of tests on her that could possibly be done on other patients. Since the tests were numerous, it would take them at least three weeks to have all of the results. Jill constantly hoped and prayed that her daughter was ok. She'd just realized what Noah and Ivy had told her, how dangerous it was to have direct contact with everything and everyone, through any part of the body. Since Jill and Jessica had nothing back home because of the continuous inundations that the broken pipes caused day by day, Scott and Natasha offered them to stay at the Spears mansion. They occupied the two rooms that were left in the house, since John, Jennifer, Corey and Simone occupied four of the rooms and Scott, Natasha, Nicole, Noah and Rob occupied the others. Luckily, Scott Jr. wasn't living at the mansion yet by Georgia and Robinson's request, so he didn't need a bedroom yet, and Jessica and Jill would only stay there for a few days while different people placed cabinets, new tile flooring, furniture, TV's, VCR's and digital cable boxes, among other things inside the house. Handymen were painting the house, and the best plumber in town had driven one hundred and fifty miles to Jill's house, just to literally fix her pipes, her steel pipes. As Jill and Jessica were arriving to the Spears mansion, the men were just minutes from finishing their day because Noah gave them these projects since the moment that he found out that the women had left, and they'd done one-fifth of all of the work that had to be done because the day was rather short. They'd only been working for three hours, from seven to ten, and it was time to go home. They called a van and carpooled to feel safe, and then, the next day, they'd go back to The Hague home and drive back home in their cars at six o'clock in the afternoon; thus they were starting at seven o'clock in the morning. They wanted to finish this quickly because they knew that despite living in the Sunshine States biggest and most beautiful mansion, there was no place like home and Jill and Jessica wanted to be home as quickly as possible. Chapter 18
Jessica and Jill made each other comfortable in what for the next five days would be their new home. Nicole was in her room and suddenly, she got out. She wheeled herself on the hallway all the way to Jessica's room. Jessica didn't know where to shower, so she hoped that she could return home the next day, shower there, and be excused for being late for work on her second day. This was Nicole's house, but to show respect, she knocked on what was now Jessica's bedroom door. She'd lived at other people's houses before Natasha married Scott and she knew what it was like to be treated as if she was inferior just because she was a guest. Jessica thought that it was one of the owners of the house, trying to get some of her time to talk to her about some rules that they'd set especially for her or for all of their guests. Jessica was frightened. She thought that she'd be yelled at, insulted, and even kicked or slapped, but she was brave enough to allow entry. After all, they were the owners of the house and she had to let them in every time that they wanted to come in. They felt entirely differently, though. They were treating Jessica and Jill as if they were part of the family. Jessica yelled, "Come in!" nervously, and Nicole opened the door and with slight difficulty wheeled her chair in because the door was kind of stiff as it caressed the carpet every time that it was opened. All of the doors were standard size, so any wheelchair could easily come in. Concerned about her health and thinking that Nicole had a permanent cerebral disability or that she was paralyzed, in addition to having to cover her face, Jessica took the liberty to ask, "Will you be in that wheelchair for long, if you don't mind me asking?"
Smiling, Nicole answered, "No, I don't mind you asking. If you're asking it's because even though you just met me and you've only been here for a few minutes, you care about me. No, I won't be in the wheelchair for long, thank God. I'm only in the wheelchair because I was in bed at the hospital all the time and I wasn't allowed to walk and this developed a strange but deadly condition in my legs.
Doctors are taking care of it, though, so I'll be just fine."
Jessica was relieved because she'd received a totally different treatment from what she expected; Jessica smiled back and said, "Yes, that's right. I care about all of you guys deeply although we just met because you've given me and my mom a new home for a few days. We could've stayed at our house if you hadn't even contemplated deciding that we stay here."
Nicole went even closer to her and replied, "We decided because you're Noah's new friends and we'd like to show him that we accept, take in, embrace and trusts his friends. Noah would only bring here a person that's not worthy of our trust if he didn't know beforehand that this person is not what he or she seemed. Anyway, I have to talk to you."
Jessica smiled again, threw herself on her bed because she didn't know how to sit down normally and correctly and said, "Yes, about the rules."
Nicole became serious, and astounded, she asked, "What rules?"
Jessica turned serious and said, "The rules for guests in this house."
Nicole positioned her wheelchair perfectly beside Jessica's bed, vertically, leaned over to be closer to her beautiful face and said, "In this house, there are no rules for guests. When we don't like something that a guest does or when he or she tries to act as if he or she was one of us and took attributions that didn't belong to him or her, we'd simply kick him or her out."
Jessica said, "But---" Nicole interrupted her,
"But I know," she said, "that even though you're special," she didn't have to think about this word before saying it like other people would to avoid saying the word, 'retarded' or 'mentally impaired' to hurt her feelings, "you'd never do something like that, and your mom sure wouldn't, so you guys won't be kicked out."
Jessica smiled and blurted, "Thank you for assuring me that you guys trust us," and out of the blue, and for no reason at all, she gave Nicole one of the biggest hugs she'd ever gotten. Only Noah had hugged her like that, and no matter who did it, it felt good to be hugged like that. Nicole just smiled while her face was looking the opposite direction of Jessica's.
Suddenly, Natasha knocked on the door. Jessica and Nicole let go and Jessica said, quietly this time, "Come in!" and Nicole turned around to see the person.
Natasha opened the door, stayed outside the room, and simply said, "Jessica, you have to bathe to come down and join us for dinner. Hurry up."
Nicole said, smiling, "Yes, that's what I was about to tell her until she became affectionate and gave me a tremendous hug," and Jessica laughed nervously, "that she could bathe in my bathroom, right now, because I just finished bathing and getting dressed."
Jessica always spoke her mind, not caring how others felt. She blurted, innocently, "Oh, so that's what you had to tell me," and laughed nervously again, and started scratching her head and with a tough tone of voice, she said, "I was thinking about ten thousand other things that you could've told me just now."
Imagining what Jessica thought those things would be, Nicole said, "Well, whatever that those things were, you can just forget about them because I wouldn't treat you roughly even if I became angry. I know how to treat all kinds of people."
Natasha just smiled and said, "Well, Jess, you know what to do. Get right on it. We won't start eating until you get down." This was the way to teach Jessica how to behave and when to behave a certain way. They were starting to train her and she wasn't aware of it.
Jessica smiled and said, "Ok," and got up and walked to the door. Natasha made way for her. "Show me where the bathroom is, Nicole, please."
Jessica and Nicole walked the hallway together to go to the next hallway, where Nicole's room was. Nicole's bathroom was right in front of her room. They arrived and Nicole opened the door. They went in. Jessica couldn't stop looking around her. She'd seen nothing like this before. The bathroom, like all of the bathrooms in the house, was so big that even a couch fit in there, and Nicole had it in there because she wanted her bathroom to be original; to stand out. The couch and the cabinets never got wet because Nicole was always careful not to let the water splash outside the bathtub. She never showered; she always bathed, so she didn't have to worry about that. When she bathed, she would only fill the bathtub with water halfway. The entire bathroom was decorated as if the bathroom were underwater. Nicole had tiles on the wall and all of those tiles had fish, jellyfish, and even sharks painted on them, with a blue background. The floor tiles were entirely blue, resembling underwater ambience. Even the roof was painted blue, resembling the surface of the water. The nice paintings were even all around the bathroom sink, and Nicole had a snail-shaped bottle with hand soap in it. The toilet was painted blue, with the same designs, and so was the bathtub. The sliding doors were just painted blue with no designs. "Well, Jessica," said Nicole, noticing how amazed she was, "here's my bathroom, and since I knew that you guys were coming, I had Geisha bring you your own towel, your own soap, your own shampoo, your own washcloths and poufs, your own shaving kit, your own toothbrush, and your own toothpaste. Don't worry; everything came to a total of forty dollars, because I got her to get you the best of the best. My things are here, together with yours, and you'll notice what's yours because everything you're going to be using is brand new, ok? Remember that."
Jessica smiled shyly and said, "I will."
Nicole went to the door to get out of the bathroom, opened the door, wheeled out slowly, and Jessica went to the door and closed it for her. The day that she met Noah and bathed with him, Jill explained to her what would happen to her if she bathed with a man or if she even stood in front of a man naked. She explained to her what would happen if she caressed, kissed, or talked to a man a certain way. Jessica interpreted her affection as friendly and innocent, but the men that she gave it to would interpret it sexually. They'd think that she wanted to have sex with them. She knew how respectful Noah was by telling her all the things that he told her to keep her from giving in to him.
Still, not all of the men were like Noah. Most of the men that she approached would take advantage of her if she caressed them like she did Noah, and if she kissed them that way. Now she knew better. She knew it when a man touched her inappropriately and when she touched a man inappropriately, and what would happen. She'd wind up having sex without realizing what she was doing, or she might even get raped. She knew the consequences of her behavior, so now no man would take advantage of her innocence. She locked the door to keep Noah and Rob from coming in, and then she walked to the bathtub, took all of her clothes off, slid the door open, walked into the bathroom, slid the door closed, and turned the shower on; with mild intensity, like she always did, to keep water from spilling out all over the place and end up slipping and falling on her own mess. There were two poufs hanging on the rack where the soaps were, but the shower head was positioned away from the rack to keep the soaps from melting with the water, and to keep the shampoos, conditioners and poufs from getting ruined. One pouf was yellow and the other one was pink. They came from two different body wash kits, both of them branded Olay. The bottles were placed on another rack right behind her on the other side of the bathtub. She turned around and walked closer to the bottles. She was five feet and nine inches tall so both bottles and everything that was with them, the shaving kits, toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes, was well within her reach. Right now, she had to figure out which bottle was used and which bottle was brand new. She took the yellow bottle and lifted it to see how heavy it was. Nicole had used half of it. Then, she lifted the blue bottle and it was much heavier than the yellow bottle, so it was obvious to her that the blue bottle was unused. Right then, she figured out that the blue bottle of body wash and the blue pouf were hers, so she walked back to the rack that the poufs hung from, took the blue pouf, positioned it under the water for about thirty seconds, and then poured three ounces of the body wash on it, all over it. She didn't know if she'd need more body wash, so she placed it right by her shampoo, just above where the poufs hung, instead of placing it back where it was. She closed the bottle so that if it fell because it didn't have enough room to stand there; it wouldn't be spilled all over the place. She rubbed her face with the pouf with slight strength to remove all of the sweat from her face, all of that sweat that caused blackheads to appear. She rubbed it in a circular motion around her face and then down her neck. Finally, she rubbed her forehead, her nose, and her eyelids. She rinsed her face under the water so that she could breathe more easily and open her eyes without having the soap getting in her eyes and irritating them. As she rubbed both hands all over her face, she took slow breaths with her mouth closed to keep the water from getting in her mouth and causing discomfort in her nasal passages. When she was done rinsing her face, she took a few steps back to stand away from the water and rubbed the rest of her body, first the neck, then the shoulders and the arms, passing the pouf from hand to hand as she did it on each side, the left side and then the right side, and then she rubbed her chest, her breasts, under her breasts, her upper and lower abdomen, her private parts front and back, and then she bent over to rub her legs, the right leg after the left. She usually shaved with razors because since she hadn't watched TV in a long time, she didn't know anything about the new shaving alternatives out there, so there was stubble in her legs.
She got under the water again and rubbed her hands all over her body, in the same fashion that she had lathered her body, very quickly, though, and when she was completely and well rinsed off, three minutes after, she turned the shower off by pulling a steel tab forward that people usually pushed to turn on the shower, and the water was running in the faucet right below now. As the water ran, Jessica grabbed her bladeless razor kit, first the bottle of shaving kit and then the bladeless razor, sat on the floor to shave, stretched her legs, and as the water caressed her feet, poured five ounces of the shaving cream all over her leg, placed it on the corner of the bathtub right by the faucet, and rubbed the shaving cream all over her leg so that her leg would be completely lathered. She went on to rub her leg with her razor from the foot up to the knee. With just one stroke, she'd removed all of the hair on the front of her leg, from the foot to the knee. She gasped when she noticed how easy it was to shave with a kit that she'd never used. Jessica liked this better because she didn't have to worry about cutting herself. She did the same stroke up her knee and then down to her thigh, and then rubbed the hair off. Little by little, she rubbed the left side of her leg, exactly the same way and rubbed her hair off with her right hand.
Then, she did the same thing on the right side of her leg, until her left leg was completely shaved. Finally, she did the exact same thing on her right leg, and then she shaved her vagina until it looked like the vagina of a baby girl, and she then shaved her underarms. She rinsed her shaved parts off and then turned on the shower once again by pushing the tab in, had one more thorough rinse all over her body.
After she rubbed her body with her hands one more time to make sure that there was no body wash or shaving cream on it, she turned the shower off by turning the wheel that turned on the faucet and the shower on the opposite way. As the water drained, she got up very slowly and carefully, walked to the back of the bathtub, where the rack was, and placed her body wash on it, right beside Nicole's, and did the same thing with her shaving kit, walking to the other rack and placing it on there, right by Nicole's. Finally, she opened the sliding door once again, walked out of the bathtub very carefully, and with her left hand, she closed the sliding door behind her. She walked up to the rack where the towels were hanging, beside the bathroom sink and the mirror, right above the couch. There were two towels, one towel was the same color as the tiles were, light blue, just like the sea, and the other one was crimson red. Jessica figured that the crimson red towel was hers, took it in her right hand, stretched her and wrapped it around her body. Nicole usually used towels of different colors, but tonight, she used a light blue towel, the same color of the tiles, so that Jessica could tell which towel was hers and which towel was Nicole's. Very carefully, Jessica walked to the door, opened it, walked out of the bathroom, and closed the door behind her. She walked the hallway back to the doorway where the guest rooms were, and she went into Jill's room thinking that it was her room. Jill had just taken a shower in Noah's bathroom and she was putting her panties on, after she'd put on her robe. She was wearing a bra underneath her robe. Even when Jessica figured out that this wasn't her room, she walked in and closed the door behind her. Jill looked at her and said, "Hi, sweetie!" and walked closer to her and said, "You smell great!"
As Jessica dried off, she asked Jill, "Did you already eat dinner?"
"No," said Jill, "I'm just wearing this robe because I have nothing to wear. They're still waiting for us to come down to eat dinner."
"I washed my hair this afternoon right before going to work," said Jessica, "so I didn't wash it tonight. I think that washing my hair once a day is more than enough."
"I agree," said Jill. "Besides, your hair smells great!"
Surprised, Jessica said, "It does?" and wrapped her body with her towel again.
"Yes, it does," said Jill. "You don't sweat except when you're under the sun for a long time, and running around a lot like you always do. The air conditioner in that building was too strong for us to sweat."
Jessica sat on the bed and said, "I know, right? It was cold in there."
"Tell me about it." "What are we going to
wear?" said Jessica. "We didn't bring any clothes."
Scratching her head as she walked to the left side of her bed, Jill said, "I don't know, Jessica. I mean I'm wearing these clothes because they were in the closet. I don't know whose clothes they are."
Nicole was passing by that hallway in her wheelchair at that very moment. She realized that both Jessica and Jill were in Jill's room when she heard them talking, and so she knocked. Jill said, "Come in."
Very slowly, Nicole opened the door and very carefully, she wheeled in and said, "I wanted to come in here because I heard you asking what clothes you were going to wear."
Jill smiled at Nicole and said, "That's right, we don't know what to wear."
Nicole opened the door to the closet and said, "Well, ever since Noah sat down with us and told us about you and your situation, we knew that you'd be here for a few days, so we went to the mall and got you some clothes." Jill gasped. "Jill, I bought these clothes for you. Jessica, your clothes are in your room, in your closet, right next to this room."
As Jessica walked to the door, she said, "Thank you for everything," and opened the door walked out and closed it, and walked the next door to her room, opened the door, got in, and closed it.
Meanwhile, Nicole stayed in Jill's room. She wanted to know a little more about Jessica. "Jill, do you mind if I ask you a few questions about Jessica?"
Jill smiled, sat on her bed and said, "No, not at all. Go ahead."
Jessica was starting to get dressed. She was putting on some red panties that were made of silk, that she'd found in the dresser, right by the TV. "What disabilities does Jessica have?" "Fortunately, she only has a mental disability. She never had any physical disabilities. Her mind is special. It's complex; hard to understand. We go to the hospital every year to perform MRI's, EER's, and other brain tests. I also take her to get her IQ tested every year to see how her mind's matured and evolved."
Nicole wheeled her chair closer to Jill and said, "Has there been any progress?"
"She's still extraordinarily intelligent in math, science, history, language, and other branches of basic human knowledge, but her mind still haven’t matured. She still thinks and acts like a five-year- old." She got up. "Some doctors say that she'll never really grow up."
Nicole became very sad when she heard this. Jessica was putting on some hip hugger blue jeans that she'd found in her closet. Her red push-up bra and her sleeveless shirt, V-shaped on the neck and the chest, right above her bra, were still on the bed. First, she dressed from the waist down and then she dressed from the waist up. "I'm very sorry," Nicole said.
"It hurts," said Jill as she turned her robe off, giving her back to Nicole, and then very quickly, still giving her the back, ran to the dresser on the other side of the TV, right by her window, opened one of the drawers, and grabbed the first bra she found and put it on as quickly as she could, "but I'm resigned to reality and I'm used to the pain. I no longer expect more from Jessica." She walked back to the closet, grabbed the first shirt she saw, put it on, and then got some jeans from the hanger right next to where her shirt was, and put it on very quickly as well. She loved the orange t-shirt. It matched perfectly with the blue jeans. She looked back at Nicole and asked, with tears in her eyes, "Do you mind your guests dressing c