I had a video interview for the job I’d been dreaming about. In the middle of it, my stepmom barged into my room and told the recruiter not to hire me. I was convinced everything was ruined. But two days later, I got an email that left both of us speechless. It said: “Thank you, but we’d like to invite you to the final round of interviews.”
I read it three times, thinking it was a mistake. My stepmom, standing over my shoulder with a smug expression, blinked and said, “That has to be a glitch. Maybe they sent it to the wrong person.” But it was addressed to me. By name. With details only I had shared in the interview.
Let me back up for a second.
I’ve wanted to work in publishing ever since I could hold a book. There’s just something about stories—about the way words can change someone’s day, or even their life. The job was at one of the biggest publishing houses in the country, and I had worked for months on my resume, my writing portfolio, and mock editing tests. When I finally landed the first interview, I cried in my car. That’s how much it meant to me.
The day of the interview, I got dressed like I was going into the office even though it was over Zoom. I wore my one good blazer, brushed my hair back, and even put a sticky note on my door that said, “PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB.” Not that it mattered.
My stepmom, Valerie, and I have never gotten along. Ever since she married my dad three years ago, it felt like she was always trying to prove something—that I wasn’t good enough, that she ran the house now, that I was just some leftover from his first life.
I tried to stay out of her way. I worked part-time, studied, helped around the house. But no matter what I did, she’d find a way to criticize it. “You call that folding laundry?” “How can you be so sensitive?” “No wonder your mother left.”
That last one? She said it once. Only once. My dad made her apologize. But I never forgot it.
So when she barged into my room mid-interview, I wasn’t entirely surprised. Just stunned. She didn’t knock. Just walked in with a laundry basket and a frown, looked at the screen, then at me, and said, “Oh, you’re wasting that recruiter’s time. She’s lazy and entitled. Doesn’t even clean her bathroom.”
Then she walked out.
The recruiter—her name was Mrs. Reyes—just stared at me. I fumbled for an apology, said something like, “I’m so sorry, that was completely unexpected,” but honestly? I was frozen inside. I felt heat rising in my cheeks, my throat dry.
Mrs. Reyes smiled softly. “It’s okay. Let’s keep going.”
I tried to focus, to answer her questions clearly, but my voice shook. My hands trembled in my lap. I got through it, somehow, but afterward I collapsed on my bed and cried so hard I got a headache.
Valerie didn’t say anything the rest of the day. She didn’t even pretend to care.