Chapter Three: Sabotage

Out of every day Claudia had worked with the cherries so far, she had never been more exhausted. Her forearms felt like they were burning whilst her fingers felt like icicles from the cold water. Even so, she would not slow down, picking out as many seconds as she could. Sometimes, a third would find its way into her bucket, but she wasn't too worried. Barry would be unlikely to check through every single cherry in the seconds buckets to make sure no one was cheating to fill them up. There was really only one or two in there. Even if he did, she could easily blame Simone and say that his precious niece must have thrown it in there.

There were only two days of work left, and she was neck and neck with Simone in seconds buckets filled up. Simone had filled forty-nine, and Claudia forty-seven. She was almost finished with her forty-eighth bucket, however, and knew that had she been on the first stool Simone seemed to be able to claim without question, she would've have surpassed Simone's total.

It would have been much easier to do so, too, if Simone stopped trying to sabotage Claudia.

"Oops, I'm so sorry!" Simone said.

Claudia wiped cherry juice off her cheek, continuing to use one hand to sort through the cherries. Simone had just squeezed a rotten cherry hard enough so that the juice sprayed onto Claudia's face, most likely in an attempt to distract her from what she was doing. It wasn't the first time the girl had squeezed an obviously rotten cherry and aimed it in her direction, yet Simone managed to look innocent as she placed the offending cherry into the bin section.

"No problem," Claudia said, smiling as sweetly as she could manage. Leaning across, she scooped up a pile of cherries, many with dry cracks, before Simone could touch them. "Let me check these for you, in case there are any more thirds."

Simone shrugged, but from the set of her jaw, Claudia knew that she had hit a nerve.

It became even more clear when, a few more minutes into the session, a rotten cherry found its way into her seconds bucket. The cherry was the most disgusting thing Claudia had ever seen. It had long passed the stage of growing green fur, and now resembled a pimple desperately in need of popping. She knew she wouldn't have bother putting it in her seconds bucket—it was so disgusting that even Jared, in all his denseness, would have spotted it and thrown it away. Looking over at Simone, Claudia could see the ghost of a smile on the girl's lips.

Emily, as seemed to be the case all week, was too busy focusing on her work to have noticed the fungal-missile landing in Claudia's bucket. Claudia contemplated returning the favour by throwing a nasty-looking cherry, a spider web filling in the deep hole inside it, into Simone's bucket. Emily looked up at that moment, however, and she decided to wait until the right time to get her revenge.

For someone who prided themselves on being punctual, Simone sure was taking a long time to leave for lunch. It was as though the girl knew something was going to happen, and she was wavering around the platform on purpose. Still, Claudia took her own time, making sure to help Lee and Tiffany sort out the cherries going past them.

When the last of the cherries fell down into the packing shoot, Claudia shooed Leah away and watched in satisfaction when the Italian linked arms with Simone and dragged her off to lunch. Finally.

Claudia knew she had to move quick. She hurried down the stairs, around the cold water bath, and up the ladder on the other side of the platform, making her way to Simone's station. She looked around to make sure no one else was there—the packing boys were too busy having a competition who could make up the most boxes, laughing like they were twelve years old—before pulling out a few rotten cherries from her tracksuit pocket. She had had to pretend she was eating the cherries that didn't make it into either her seconds bucket or bin whenever someone looked her way. It would've been particularly odd to anyone, for Claudia much preferred to eat the better quality fruit. Thankfully, Jared and Josie were too busy blowing kisses at each other and Leah continually had to run to the bathroom to notice her.

Leaning over Simone's seconds bucket, she scooped a few cherries to the side. Then, placing the rotten cherries from her pocket—about thirty of them—into the bucket, she buried them under the good ones. When Simone got back, she would be unlikely to discover that her bucket held some rotten cherries. When Barry checked it, however, he would see that his niece had tried to get ahead on buckets filled.

With that, Took her gloves off, snapping the rubber as though she was blowing on a smoking gun. Mission accomplished.