Page 17 of My Heart to Find

“We should all do something,” Phia says, taking her apron off. She hangs it on the peg at the side of the staff room—which is barely big enough for four people to stand in—and then shakes her glossy dark hair out. It’s naturally black, but she recently dyed it a vibrant red, and she’s totally rocking the look, despite what our boss thinks.

When Mr. Richards first saw Phia’s new hair color he told her he didn’t think Asian women should dye their hair as “it doesn’t suit them” (whatever that means), and Phia and I told him exactly what we thought of that comment, earning ourselves written warnings. Not that the written warnings mean anything. He’s not going to fire us, not when he went to so much trouble to hire the three of us specifically in the first place.

“Make a stand,” Phia continues. She grabs her compact mirror from her bag and checks her make up. As usual, her winged eyeliner is perfect. I’m always jealous of how amazingly she can do it—and so quickly too. Phia snaps the mirror together. “He can’t treat us like this.”

“A stand? Like a strike?” I turn to her, nearly knocking her with my elbow.

“And you think that’s a way to speak to a customer!” Mr. Richards’s voice is loud, even through the door.

“I wasn’t going to be humiliated like that.”

“What happened to the customer is always right?”

“What happened to the customer when he’s a sexist pig?” I mutter. Because I’d been out serving the table next to Lizzy’s when the incident happened. A guy in his thirties had grabbed Lizzy’s behind. She’d told them to leave, at which point he’d asked for the manager. And of course Mr. Richards took the customer’s side. Why would he ever want to protect one of the young women he’d hired? We all know we only got the job because of our looks—he made it clear in our interviews. Lizzy, Phia, and I started here together, right after the factory we all previously worked at closed. Mr. Richards had contacted our former bosses and asked for us specifically.

“Yes, I want some attractive young girls,” he’d said. “Different races too, if I can. Don’t want anyone accusing me of being racist.” Apparently, that was why his last waitresses had left. All three of them—all white—had quit in protest after they’d heard him on the phone using racist language.

What. An. Asshole. Though hiring staff of different ethnicities doesn’t mean he now can’t be accused of being a racist. And given the words he mutters about Lizzy and Phia when he thinks we’re out of earshot, he definitely still is. The two of them always end up bearing the brunt of his idiocy. I’m white, so he’s a bit nicer to me. It makes my blood boil.

We should’ve known what we were getting ourselves into. I mean, we knew he was problematic from the start, and we were hesitant, but we didn’t think Mr. Richards could be this bad. And we also needed jobs, and jobs aren’t easy to find in Brackerwood. Most of the others I used to work with got work in the city, but I need to be close by so I can take care of my niece and nephew when needed. My sister’s an on-call doctor and she doesn’t get much warning a lot of the time.

So, the three of us accepted this job—just until we found something better, that was the plan. But now we’re here, we’re bonded even more. United in our hatred for Mr. Richards. And I can’t just leave the other two to endure Mr. Richards on their own. We’re a team. We always have been.

The unmistakable sound of Mr. Richards storming out of the café reaches us. Lizzy enters our room. Her eyes are watering, and she’s blinking fast.

“Did you get anything?” I ask her. I take off my own wire. We ordered the kits cheaply, and they only pick up words from a few meters away, but the sound isn’t always that clear. We need evidence if we’re going to take down Mr. Richards. Using recording apps on our phones would be much better—if Mr. Richards even allowed us to have our phones on us during shift.

He doesn’t. He said that the bulky shape of a phone in a pocket ‘ruins’ a woman’s natural shape. Apparently, if we so much as hide our phones in our bras, we’re violating the terms of our employment. Then he spent way too long leering at us and said he didn’t want to have to introduce full body searches but he would if he suspected we had our phones on us.

“We better have,” Lizzy says, unhooking her wire.

“Maybe we should get an undercover diner in,” Phia says. “Like you see on those TV shows where horrible bosses are exposed.”

“LikeWatchdog?”

“Nah, that’s more for scams,” I say.

Phia shrugs and reaches for her coat. “We need someone to witness it—especially if these wires don’t work.”

And that’s the thing. We’ve been wearing these for a week, and there were plenty things they should’ve picked up—but they didn’t. The sound was too poor, too low quality. Words were muffled, and the whole sound was distorted, so much so that at a time when Mr. Richards was insulting Phia it didn’t even sound like him. And of course he’d claim that it wasn’t him if we ever tried to use it. Nah, we need indisputable proof.

“Maybe we should set up cameras too.”

Lizzy’s eyes widen. “I’m not happy wearing a wire in case he finds out. Cameras would be so much worse.”

“We could disguise them.”

They each hand me their memory cards. We’ll listen to the audios we recorded later, as we sit in my apartment with River and eat ice cream and the brownies I baked a couple days ago.

“Too risky.” Lizzy shakes her head, then lets down her locs. “We’ve got to be careful.” She looks at me. “It’s easier for you. If he catches you recording him, you’ll just get a slap on the wrist.”

She’s right, I know she is, and it just makes my stomach tighten more.

We talk about it all for a few more minutes, until Phia complains about how slow her boyfriend is at replying to her texts from earlier, and that launches us into complaining about men—current partners and exes and the blokes that never notice us. A conversation that lasts us until we get to my apartment. River lets us in and tells us she’s ordered takeaway to arrive in an hour.

“I still can’t believe Max got off with Anastacia.” I shake my head as we make our way into the living room and lounge on the sofas.

A few weeks ago, River found an advertisement on Facebook Marketplace for the most amazing set of sofas—free to a good home. They’re proper luxury, and we snapped them up. Lizzy and I are on one, River and Phia on the other. The coffee table between us holds an array of different ice cream cartons and a handful of newspapers.

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