Customer Service

If the event at the salon was a nightmare for Noah, the following days dealing with their customer service were hell itself.

Once Noah had gotten out of bed, he immediately booted his laptop and got to work trying to contact customer service. It took some investigating to even find a way to contact customer service, which Noah assumed had to be intentional. Eventually, finding what he was looking for, Noah filled an email with all of his anger and frustration about the experience he had. It had felt good to vent and he really needed to get a few things off his chest.

Unfortunately for Noah, that was the last time the exchange would feel good in any way because he soon learned that even their emails were run by robots. Back and forth he attempted to explain the issue until he got a message saying that their records showed that the session under his account was successfully completed. The issue was promptly marked as "Solved" and said to call if he had any further questions.

"...what?" Noah was livid.

Further emails were equally unhelpful, forcing Noah to borrow his mother's cell phone to try and get in contact with a human being. After days of uselessly having his call sent from one department to another, he finally said whatever magic combination of words he needed to, eventually making progress.

Though he wanted to just pick up his items directly, he had to settle for the company's weird internal protocols which translated to them gathering and sending his personal items to be shipped. Of course, even that was automated. As for the removal of the prosthetics, he was given a code for a single free session that he could redeem at his local salon. Things were finally looking up, it would seem.

Noah handed his phone back to his mother, "Do you think you could take me to the salon today?"

"You...want to go back?" she asked with confusion in her voice.

"I don't want to, but I got a code to finally get rid of these," he gestured to his chest.

She put her phone in her purse and drank the last of her coffee, "Sure, we can go now if you are ready."

Noah couldn't be more ready to put the whole thing behind him. His back hurt from the extra weight he had been carrying, and was looking forward to finally relaxing again. Moments later they were walking down the driveway heading to the car when Noah heard a familiar voice.

"Noah!" called out Courtney walking in their direction, holding a manila envelope.

Noah froze, his blood turning to ice in his veins. His arms instinctively flew up to cover his chest, hoping that the oversized hoodie he’d thrown on would hide the shape from Courtney.

“Noah!” Courtney called again, wearing ripped jeans and a local band t-shirt.

“Uh… hey, Courtney,” Noah managed, his voice unsteady. He tried to subtly angle himself in a way that he thought looked casual but still obscured the forms.

His mother stepped forward slightly, placing a hand on Noah’s arm. “Courtney, dear. What brings you by?” Her tone was pleasant, happy to see Noah's friend.

“Morning,” She held up the envelope. “And I have photos from prom for Noah.”

“But I didn't go to prom?” Noah began panicking, not knowing Courtney had figured out who Noelle really was.

Courtney paused, confused by that response, but her eyes soon glanced at Noah's mother. His mother was watching, an eyebrow raised as she listened to the conversation, and Courtney took a guess at what was going on. She figured Noah must not have told his mom about Noelle yet, and was afraid she almost let the cat out of the bag.

"Yeah, I know...I just thought, uh, you might want to know how it went," she said, fumbling to cover their secret.

"Cool," Noah said as casually as he could.

She handed Noah the envelope and tried to hold his gaze, "I got some nice photos of Jacob and his prom date. She was so pretty. I look forward to seeing her again."

"Cool. Cool," Noah said, missing the hidden message of acceptance from his friend.

Noah's mom, however, did understand the message. By the way Courtney was talking about the night, it sounded like Noah's wild story wasn't as true as she was told. Did Noah actually want ...that? If so, why didn't he tell her? Did he not feel like he could be honest with her?

Noah was unaware of what was going on in the heads of those around him. Instead, he just clutched the manila envelope, his knuckles white. Courtney's comment about Noelle being "so pretty" made him feel a way he couldn't articulate, but he eventually settled on "embarrassed".

"Hey, uh, we have to go," Noah said, wanting to escape.

"Alright, honey. Courtney, it was lovely seeing you. Thanks for dropping those off," Noah's mom said, trying to be in Noah's corner.

Courtney gave a small, slightly perplexed smile back. "No problem. See ya later, Noah." She lingered for a moment before riding off.