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You Say It First

Page 3

by Katie Cotugno


  She dropped her head back against the couch cushions and stared up at the splotchy ceiling, swallowing down a weird wave of something like panic and reminding herself that nothing happening right now was actually an emergency. She was safe in the house she’d lived in since she was a baby, even if it did look a little grubbier than usual. Her mom was the same as she’d always been. Everything was fine.

  Right?

  All at once, Meg stood up, eyes darting around the room like she was looking for the closest available exit. Like if she didn’t get out of here soon she might die. “Mom,” she called, wiping her suddenly sweaty hands on her jeans and telling herself to stop being so dumb and dramatic. There was no reason to start some huge fight. “I gotta go to work.”

  “Computers are down again,” Lillian reported when Meg turned up for her shift at WeCount, handing her a sheaf of papers held together with a plastic paper clip shaped like a Dalmatian. Lillian was twenty-one and Meg’s supervisor; her girlfriend, Maja, worked at a bakery in Philly, and Lillian was forever leaving boxes of palmiers and fruit tarts on the counter of the tiny kitchenette in the office. “So we’re working from call sheets tonight.”

  Meg nodded, taking the list and dropping her backpack on the floor beside her wobbly rolling chair. She’d been hoping that going into work would distract her from thinking about Mason, which was stupid—after all, Mason was the one who’d sent her the link for WeCount to begin with, from a list he’d found online of nonprofits that hired students part-time. Meg had been working here since the previous fall, out of a tiny office suite above a high-end home-goods boutique in Montco. The idea was that people were more likely to register to vote if somebody actively talked them through it—even if that person was a total rando—so three times a week Meg sat in a cubicle for two hours and encouraged people in swing states to fill out forms on the internet.

  Tonight, her first call was with an elderly woman named Pearl whose registration had lapsed when she’d moved into her retirement community outside of Cleveland. People in retirement communities, Meg had found over the course of her six months of employment, could usually be counted on to answer the phone. “Perfect,” she said once Pearl had successfully navigated to the WeCount home page and clicked the link to register in the state of Ohio. “I can go through the steps with you, if you’d like?”

  Meg spent the next ten minutes doodling in the margins of her call sheet while Pearl filled in her information, then another ten listening while she talked about canvassing for Bobby Kennedy back in ’68. “You’re all set,” she concluded finally, once Pearl had completed the registration form. “You should get your confirmation in a few weeks with your polling place. Do you have someone who can bring you to vote on Election Day?”

  “Nice work,” Lillian said when she was finished, smiling at Meg over the top of the half wall that separated their cubicles. Meg found herself grinning back. She loved working at WeCount; she’d loved politics basically her whole life, since her mom’s cool cousin Jodie sent her a picture book about Rebecca Latimer Felton, the first woman in the Senate, for her seventh birthday. She still had that book somewhere, its pages wrinkly and its binding cracked from a million bedtime recitations—just like she still had the program from the benefit concert Hal had done for Obama back when she was in elementary school tacked to the corkboard in her room. She could quote every single episode of The West Wing, had convinced Emily to read The Federalist Papers in ninth grade, when every girl in their class suddenly had a crush on Alexander Hamilton, and had door-knocked for Larry Krasner when he’d run for DA. She knew it was hugely dorky, but she believed in the system. And she got a not-so-tiny thrill from being a part of what made it work.

  She was about to call the next number on her list when her cell dinged quietly on the flimsy desk beside her. Meg opened up her mail app, letting out a gasp when she saw Cornell University Office of Admissions in the sender line. Holy crap—between Mason and her mom, she’d forgotten all about her application again.

  Her first instinct, bizarrely, was to close out the window, which was ridiculous considering she had ostensibly been waiting for this exact email for the better part of two full months. Instead, she took a deep breath and clicked.

  Dear Margaret,

  Congratulations! We are delighted to inform you that the Committee on Admissions has offered you a place in the freshman class of Cornell University for the upcoming academic year. We look forward to welcoming a student with your outstanding achievements to the Cornell community this fall.

  Meg blinked, then blinked again, reading the letter over and over like she expected the words to suddenly rearrange themselves into something other than what they were. She waited for the thrill of victory to hit her, the urge to text Emily and post the email to Snapchat and stand on her chair and announce it to the entire office. After all, this was amazing. This was, and had always been, the plan.

  Instead, she just felt sort of numb.

  No, she thought, pulling idly on her bottom lip. Not numb, exactly.

  It was more like she was . . . disappointed?

  Maybe she was depressed again. Meg set her phone down and tilted her head back so far that her dark hair almost brushed the carpet, considering. She guessed it was possible that getting dumped by Mason had ruined her for all other happiness, but for some reason she didn’t think that was what was happening here. In fact, the more she thought about it, poking and prodding at her own reaction like running her tongue over a cavity, she was pretty sure what was happening here was that she didn’t actually want to go to—

  Meg hauled herself upright before she could finish the thought, getting a little bit dizzy as the blood rushed out of her head. God, what was wrong with her? This was good news. This was the best news, and if the only emotion she could manage to summon up about it in this moment was a vague kind of dread and boredom at the thought of spending the next four years shuffling through ten-foot snowdrifts and taking dutiful notes in giant lecture halls and listening to Emily obsess over whether to pledge a sorority, well, that was her own malfunction. After all, Cornell had a great government program, and it wasn’t like she had some other secret dream school in her back pocket. It was college. It was exciting! More to the point, it was what normal people did.

  So why wasn’t she even a little bit psyched?

  Her phone dinged again then, a text this time: I’M IN!!! Emily had written, digital confetti exploding all over the screen. ARE YOU IN??????

  Shit. For a second, Meg considered acting like she hadn’t seen the message; she was at work, after all, which bought her another hour or two of plausible deniability. But, like, what was that? What was she even thinking? She’d never ignored a text from Emily in her life.

  Ahhh of course you are!!! she typed quickly, plus a row of party hats. You are such a star.

  Then, her thumb moving seemingly all on its own: I haven’t heard yet!

  WHAT! Em’s reply was instant. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE. Then, a second later: Spam filter???

  Meg looked at the screen for another moment, then down at the next name on her call sheet: David Moran from Alma, Ohio. She dropped her cell into her bag and got back to work.

  Four

  Colby

  The sun was just starting to set when Colby got done at the warehouse that afternoon, tossing his orange apron into his locker and sliding his card to clock out. He’d finally been at Home Depot long enough that they’d let him switch over to days, which meant he was back on the same schedule as the rest of the world, though there was a part of him that missed being awake when everyone else was sleeping, driving home as the dawn was seeping up in blues and pinks and reds.

  He heard the shower running upstairs when he got inside the house: his mom getting ready for her own night shift at the casino. Matt was in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. The fact that he was a person who drank orange juice at all hours of the day was only one of the many reasons his brother was a douchebag.

>   “What are you doing here?” Colby asked, dropping his backpack on the floor in the tiny, linoleum-tiled mudroom and bending down to scratch Tris behind her velvety ears. Matt lived by himself in an apartment complex near the Giant Eagle, which made Colby desperately jealous even though he’d never in a million years say it out loud.

  “Hello to you, too,” Matt said. He was wearing khaki pants and a bright blue golf shirt, like he was a teller at a bank chain on a summer Friday. “I had paperwork for Mom to fill out.”

  “What kind of paperwork?”

  “Insurance stuff,” Matt said mysteriously. Colby made a face. The insurance company had refused to pay out after their dad died, and Uncle Rick had convinced their mom to contest the decision, and now almost a full year later it had turned into this incredibly long, drawn-out train wreck involving lawyers and depositions and endless, endless paperwork. Mostly, it just made Colby tired. He would have told them all to forget about it, not that anyone had asked him, except it wasn’t like they didn’t need the money.

  His mom needed it, anyway. His Uncle Rick was doing just fine.

  “Heard about your little adventure,” Matt said now, finishing his orange juice and rinsing his glass before putting it in the dishwasher. Their mom was fucking maniacal about kitchen cleanliness. “The water tower, dude, seriously? What are you, like, twelve years old?”

  “Fuck you,” Colby said, though he’d basically been thinking the same exact thing in the moments before Keith showed up. It occurred to him to wonder if maybe there weren’t any forms to fill out at all and Matt had just come here to give him a hard time about getting arrested. “Did you tell Mom?”

  “No,” Matt said, and Colby relaxed again. “But you should, before it gets back to her some other way.”

  “I’ll take that under consideration,” Colby said, picking up Tris’s metal bowl and heading over to the giant Rubbermaid of kibble by the back door.

  “You should.” Matt leaned against the counter. “Look,” he said, “do you want some advice?”

  “Nope,” Colby replied pleasantly, dumping a cup of food into the bowl and setting it back down on her place mat, “but that’s never stopped you before.”

  “You should stop hanging around with those dudes. Micah and Jordan and whoever else.”

  Colby straightened up again, watching as Tris buried her blocky, brindled face in her dinner. “I should, huh?”

  “You should. And I know Dad’s not here to talk to you about influences or stuff like that—”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Can you just forget whatever sullen teenager routine you’re doing for one second and listen to me?” Matt frowned. “Rick keeps asking about you, is the other thing, which—”

  Colby snorted. “Good for Rick.”

  “Is this really how you want to spend the next twenty years?” Matt demanded, tipping his head back against the ancient cabinets with his arms and ankles crossed. “Working the Home Depot stockroom and hanging out with a bunch of burnouts and getting picked up by the county sheriff?”

  Colby’s face warmed. “Well, I don’t want to spend it working for you.”

  “You wouldn’t have to work for me,” Matt said—looking almost earnest now, the same way Keith had the other night. I know you guys have had a tough year, Jesus Christ. “You could go get your supervisor’s license, be running your own construction projects inside a year—”

  “I’m not going to work for Rick, either. I don’t know how you can, after—”

  “Don’t.” Matt’s voice was a warning.

  Neither of them said anything for a moment. Tris chomped away at her food. For one traitorous second, Colby let himself think about it: The garage full of tools, old ones from the ’90s that his dad had taken perfect care of. A job that was more than just moving boxes all day long. Then he shoved it out of his mind. What was he going to do, help his Uncle Rick put up forty identical town houses with ugly granite countertops and walls so thin you could practically see through them? His dad would roll over in his grave.

  “Think about it,” Matt said, pushing himself off the counter and heading for the doorway. Colby didn’t say anything at all.

  “Washing machine is leaking again,” his mom reported when she came downstairs in her work uniform a little while later, her cheeks pink with the blush she kept in the top drawer of the upstairs vanity. Colby’s mom was a waitress at the buffet in the casino thirty miles away, all black restaurant clogs and the smell of cigarette smoke wafting from her shoulder-length brown hair when she got home in the mornings. She used to do the bookkeeping for his dad’s business and a few other clients besides, and she still did some accounting stuff for Uncle Rick, but after everything happened last year, she’d needed something with health insurance. She brought extra pastries from the casino’s coffee shop home at the end of her shift. “Do you mind taking a look?”

  Colby nodded. He was good at fixing things, usually; one of his earliest memories was watching his dad take apart a broken ceiling fan and put it back together like a jigsaw puzzle. He’d let Colby screw in the last bolt. “I think it just needs a new seal,” he told her now. “I can get one at work tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, baby.” Colby’s mom smiled. “I didn’t have time to make dinner,” she said, “but there’s potpies in the freezer, or if you’re feeling ambitious we’ve got eggs.”

  “Eggs sound great,” he said, ducking his head to kiss her on one round cheek. “Have a good shift.”

  Once she was gone, Colby opened his laptop at the kitchen table and scrolled to the apartment he’d been looking at before work this morning. It was a few streets over from the place Matt was renting, and not as nice—just a studio with a sleeping alcove, a kitchen sink the size of a shoebox, and a stall shower so narrow he thought his shoulders would barely fit inside. Still, it got good light for a basement unit, and most important, it was cheap—with a few more weekends of overtime he’d be able to put down first month, last month, and security. And then he could be out on his own.

  Colby hadn’t been planning to move out, not really—most of his friends still lived at home, so it wasn’t like anybody was dying to be his roommate, and the idea of leaving Tris made him feel a little sick—but the closer it got to the anniversary, the more it was starting to feel like he couldn’t stay here. The more it felt like the walls were closing in. He kept winding up at the door to the garage without remembering exactly how he’d gotten there; he hadn’t slept without a stupid nightmare in weeks. He kind of wanted to tell his mom she should sell the damn house altogether, except that sounded exactly like something Matt would say.

  The landline rang as he was heading into the kitchen to see about dinner. They only had a landline to begin with because the bundle made cable cheaper, but his mom still insisted on calling it sometimes if she knew he was home and needed him to do something. He thought maybe she’d forgotten her purse. “Hello?”

  “Hi,” said a bright, chipper voice on the other end. “Is this David Moran?”

  Colby felt that punch to the gut same as he always did when somebody was looking for his dad. It happened less frequently now than it had in the first few months after he’d died, when all kinds of random people—the mailman, the receptionist at the vet’s office, the rich people whose gutters his dad cleaned every fall for extra Christmas money—had needed to be told. Colby almost missed it, in a messed-up kind of way. Sometimes it felt like everybody but him had forgotten.

  “Uh, sorry,” he said now, pulling a scratched-up frying pan out of the cupboard. “He’s not available.”

  “That’s okay,” the girl said, sounding completely undeterred. “Is there another adult in the home I could speak with?”

  He thought one more time of Keith at the station the other night: you’re eighteen, Colby. “I’m an adult,” he heard himself say.

  “Great!” the girl exclaimed. “This is Meg with WeCount. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with this evening?”

  Col
by made a face at his reflection in the microwave. Who even talked like that? She sounded about eleven years old. “This is Colby,” he said, opening the fridge and pulling out the Styrofoam carton of eggs and a stick of butter.

  “Are you a registered voter, Colby?”

  “Uh,” Colby said again, “nope.”

  “Well, that’s okay!” Meg said, in a voice like possibly he’d just told her he didn’t know how to read or wasn’t toilet-trained. “WeCount is a nonpartisan organization that works to empower Americans through voter registration. Voting is an essential way to defend our democracy and build a nation with liberty and justice for all. I’d love to help you get registered so that you’re ready to make your voice heard on Election Day.”

  Colby dug a couple of bread butts out of the bag on the counter, wondering how many times per night she had to read that little speech, or if possibly she’d committed it to memory. “I’ll pass, thanks. Have a good night.”

  “Are you sure?” Meg asked quickly. “If you’ve got access to a computer, I can talk you through it right now over the phone. It’ll just take a couple of minutes.”

  If he had access to a computer? Jesus Christ. Colby rolled his eyes. He could just picture this girl in New York or Boston or wherever the hell she was, imagining she was calling him at his one-room shack. “What about the electoral college?” Colby asked.

  Meg from WeCount hesitated, just for a moment—surprised, probably, that he’d even had time to learn what the electoral college was, considering his busy schedule of chewing toothpicks and shooting beer cans off fence posts. “I’m sorry?” she asked. “What about it?”

  “Well,” Colby said, turning the stove on and knocking a spoonful of butter into the pan, not entirely sure why he hadn’t already hung up on her. “I mean, tell me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t the loser of the popular vote become president twice in the last two decades?”

 

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