ME: We’ll be better about it. I promise.
When I’d told Zoe about Luke asking me to be his girlfriend, she’d mocked how quickly it had happened. “Hasn’t he ever heard of hanging out? Seeing if you really have more in common than a shared fence in your old backyards?” I’d replied that she needed to be willing to go out on a romantic limb with me—a limb that we hadn’t climbed out on very often in the past. The most romantic thing we’d experienced was when Cale Roberts was sending Zoe love letters in ninth grade. He moved to God knows where in California and left her to cyber-stalk him on Facebook, dreaming of what might have been.
Luke and I didn’t need to spend the time getting to know each other. We already knew all the important things. Plus, not that much has changed since we were kids. This was destiny. I wouldn’t let Zoe’s doubts get into my head.
I tapped my fingers on the table, waiting for him to reply, but he never did. I hefted the anthology back into my lap when my phone buzzed again. Excitedly expecting Luke to have called, I picked up without looking.
“Hey there,” I said.
“Is this Danielle?” a female voice asked on the other end.
“Oh! Yes, it is,” I said.
“Hi, Danielle, this is Ameera Chopra from Green Transitions.”
I almost dropped my phone on the floor. “Hello! Hi. How are you?” I asked.
“I’m great, thank you.” I swear, she almost laughed on the other end of the line. “I just wanted to call and officially offer you the position as my intern at Green Transitions if you are still interested.”
“Really?” I asked. I managed to stop myself from asking the “Why?” that bubbled up inside me.
“Yes, really,” she said. “I admired your honesty and passion for environmental policy. You have to be passionate to go into this line of work, especially when you will constantly have people against you for one reason or another. I see that fight in you, and I want to be the one to help cultivate it, if you’ll let me.”
“I would be absolutely honored,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Can you come in Monday afternoon?”
“I’ll make it work,” I replied. “See you then.”
“Looking forward to it,” she responded. “Talk to you soon, Danielle.”
We hung up, and I stood up and did a happy dance in the middle of a strange coffee shop. I couldn’t contain my excitement, plus the caffeine was really starting to roll through me. I hopped onto my computer to check my work schedule and saw that I worked on Monday afternoon, so I sent a quick text to Porter.
ME: Do you think you could cover my shift on Monday afternoon? I could take a different one of yours in return.
PORTER: Hot date?
ME: Better. New internship.
PORTER: Where at?
ME: An environmental policy office in Cleveland. I know, random. I’ll tell you about it when I see you next.
PORTER: And that will be…?
ME: According to the work schedule, Wednesday.
PORTER: Stop by the bookstore later? I have some new observations that need to be shared.
ME: Stuck at Noah’s movie set for the day. Another story for another day. I’ll see you Wednesday.
PORTER: Sounds good.
FAMILY:
any group of persons closely related by blood, such as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins.
The last time my family hosted guests for a dinner party was during my Battle Royale with Claire. To say that the thought of another dinner made me nervous was an understatement. The only thing keeping my anxiety from paralyzing me was the fact that Luke knew my family. They were just as excited to see him as I was, and this dinner would be a breeze in comparison. Mom and I were still not on great terms, but we were at least speaking again. I hoped that Luke would help bridge the gap in our relationship and give us something to talk to each other about.
I went downstairs to see what I could cook for the night, and my dad was sitting at the table reading. He put down his book and looked up at me.
“So, Luke Upton is coming over for dinner?” he asked.
“Correct,” I said. I’d always dodged the topic of boys with my dad. We had a mutual agreement that the less we shared, the less awkward it would be in the long run.
“So, are you two … official?” he asked.
“Yes, Dad,” I said. “Please don’t act weird about it at dinner. He’s the same kid you knew way back when.”
“He’s an eighteen-year-old boy dating my only daughter; he’s not the same kid,” he said.
“Oh, Peter, calm down,” Mom said, coming up behind him and rubbing his shoulders. “We know he’s a bright kid. Nothing to worry about.”
I cringed slightly. She used to say things like “Danielle is a smart girl. We can trust her.” I wondered how long it would take for me to gain her trust back.
“He likes lasagna, right, Danielle?” Mom asked.
“He’s the world’s least-picky eater. I’m pretty sure he’d eat anything you set in front of him,” I said.
“It’s good to know some things haven’t changed,” she said. A tiny smile reached her lips, and it made my hopes soar even more. “Danielle, you’re in charge of garlic bread and salad. You think you can get the bread ready without burning the house down?”
“I will try my best,” I said.
Dad volunteered to pick Noah up from Cleveland for the afternoon so I could stay and help Mom get ready for the dinner. She was surprisingly chatty, asking me about work and school in ways that she hadn’t for weeks.
“This Misty just lets you kids run the store at night?” she asked.
“She trusts us,” I said. “Besides, there aren’t too many customers at night. There is never more than two of us in the store at a time.”
“Do you like the people you share shifts with?” she asked.
I spread garlic on some discounted loaves of bread Zoe sent home with Mom. “I do. I usually either share a shift with a girl named Megan who’s a year older than I am, or Porter. He’s Luke’s roommate, actually.”
“What an interesting coincidence,” Mom said. “Is he cute?”
The loaf of bread leapt from my hands and landed garlic-side-down on the floor. “Porter? I mean, probably to certain people he’s considered attractive.”
“Did you really just put that bread back on the tray?” she asked.
I shrugged. “It only hit the ground for a few seconds! It’s totally eatable.”
“You truly have a gift for clumsiness,” she said.
The garlic bread made it into the oven (and still looked delicious and not like it had been dropped on the floor, by the way), and we set the table for dinner. Noah and Dad came home and kept peeking in the kitchen, trying to steal bites of the garlic bread. I kept checking my phone for word from Luke about when he might be over, but I didn’t have any texts as it reached the time he was supposed to arrive.
“This is not cool, Dan. You know how hungry I am after a day on set,” Noah whined.
“Eat a crouton and suck it up,” I said. He stuck his tongue out at me, and I threw a crouton at his head. He managed to catch it in his mouth, and he lifted both of his arms and yelled, “Goal!”
The doorbell rang, and I sprang up, trying to beat my surprisingly fast mom to the door. She was steps behind me when I opened the door to find Luke, colorful flowers in hand and all. He looked especially attractive in a light-blue button-up that matched his eyes and made him dangerously cute.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said back, showing a little smile that played tricks with his dimples. It had been so long since I’d seen him that I had somehow forgotten how adorable he was. His almost-white blond hair had been trimmed on the sides and he had a fresh, clean-shaven face that made him look more like the little boy who stole my heart so many years ago.
“Luke, it’s wonderful to see you again,” Mom said from behind me. I moved to the side to let him in the door. In stand
ard Mom fashion, she opened her arms for a hug. When he pulled away, he held out the flowers to her.
“Thank you for inviting me to dinner, Mrs. Cavanaugh. These are for you,” he said.
I could have sworn Mom blushed. “Aren’t you sweet. Thank you. We are glad to have you.”
Mom took the flowers to the kitchen to find a vase, and Luke and I followed slowly.
“Trying to earn bonus points with my parents?” I asked.
He winked. “It never hurts to be on their good side, right?”
“I think you’ve just made it to the top of my mom’s favorite person list,” I said.
We were herded into the kitchen and hastily asked to pick out our ideal piece of lasagna. Noah looked longingly from the table as Luke chose the coveted middle piece. I managed to grab all my food without any spilling, and I noted just how delicious the garlic bread that had a small stint on the floor looked.
Luke and I sat down on one side of the table, across from where my mom and dad sat. Noah sent another glare after realizing he was hard-core fifth wheeling this dinner. He mouthed a small “you owe me,” and I mouthed back “tough luck.”
“So, Luke, we’ve all been wondering about why you decided to come back to DCC,” Mom said.
“I don’t know how much Danielle has told you, but I got an amazing scholarship to play here,” he said. “I tore my ACL in my senior year and I barely played, which really hurt my chances of going anywhere big. But at least for this year, DCC will be a good place to be.”
“This year?” I asked.
He turned to face me, making a confused face. “Well, yeah. I’ll transfer somewhere bigger once schools see that I’ve healed and what I’ve accomplished here. It might even happen at the end of this semester, if I’m lucky.”
“Oh,” I said. He’d never mentioned this before. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Mom rested her chin in her hand, like she was concentrating extra hard on something. “And your parents? Are they coming up to visit anytime soon?” she asked.
“Actually they’re going to come watch the game tomorrow. You all are welcome to come if you’re available,” he said.
“That sounds like so much fun!” she exclaimed. “Dan, wouldn’t that be fun?”
“I work tomorrow night during the game,” I said. “But I can totally meet up with you all after! Don’t let me hold you guys back.”
He sent me a little sideways glance. “I won’t be able to do anything after since the team goes out to dinner after the games. Maybe we’ll have to do it another time. They will come to other games, I’m sure.”
“Danielle, you could trade shifts with Megan or Porter, couldn’t you?” Mom asked.
“I can try. It’s sort of late notice,” I said. The mood in the room was edging dangerously close to another battle royale dinner, and I hoped that someone would turn it in a new direction.
Luke shifted in his seat, taking a quick bite of lasagna. “Danielle was telling me about your movie role, Noah. That’s so cool.”
“Thanks,” Noah said. “It’s been a really cool experience.”
Luke nodded, and we sat in silence for a few beats. “I also heard from a little bird that congratulations were in order.”
The blood ran cold in my veins.
Luke continued, “Porter told me that Danielle got a new internship in Cleveland.”
My mom’s head snapped my way. In my effort not to jinx the good thing that the internship had been so far, I hadn’t exactly told everyone in my life about it. To be fair, the only reason Porter knew about it was because I needed to trade a shift with him.
“This is news to me,” Mom said. The air deflated from my lungs as I tried to grasp for the right words to say.
“I was going to tell all of you, but I didn’t want to jinx it,” I said. “I just found out that I start next Monday. I swear, I was going to tell you after I went for the first time and figured out that it wasn’t some computer error that I was accepted.”
Mom set down her fork with a loud clank on the nice dinner plates, and she wiped her mouth methodically with her napkin. “Who is the internship with?”
“Ameera Chopra at Green Transitions,” I said. My hands shook as I waited for her to reply.
“And what will you do there?” she asked.
“Ameera’s an environmental policy analyst. I will be helping her specifically,” I said. I felt like I was back at my interview with Ameera, trying to prove myself worthy once again. This time, the stakes were higher.
“Environmental policy?” she asked. “Do you even enjoy that type of work?”
“I do,” I said. “I’m actually kind of passionate about it.”
“You’ve never expressed interest in it before,” she said. I looked over at my dad, who was frozen in mid-chew on a bite of lasagna. I urged him to jump in to my defense, but when Mom was in interrogation mode, everyone knew to steer clear.
“I mean, yeah I have,” I said. “Don’t you remember when I job shadowed a conservationist in ninth grade and loved it? And I took AP Environmental Science in high school? It’s not some big secret.”
Her mouth formed a tight line, and she folded her napkin. The scraping of her chair on the linoleum sent shivers down my spine, and my stomach sank as she stood up from the table.
“Luke, I apologize. I’m not feeling very well,” she said. She placed her napkin on her chair and walked slowly up the stairs. Tears stung the corner of my eyes, and I felt like I might vomit all over the table.
“Dani, she’ll come around,” Dad said, trying to reach out to touch my hand. I wiped a straggling tear from my cheek and stood up, leaving out the front door. My breaths came out in staggered huffs, and I felt like I might faint. I sat down on my front lawn, putting my head in between my legs to try to keep from passing out. Footsteps crunched on the ground next to me, and I felt someone’s hand on my back.
I peeked under my arm to see Luke, who sat silently and patted my back in a way that he meant to be comforting. I felt like I was being suffocated. We stayed out on the front lawn for God knows how long before he finally spoke.
“Do you want to go back inside?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said, wiping under my nose. “But I should. It’s getting late. You have school and a game tomorrow.”
“True,” he said. “Do you want to go somewhere? You could stay at my place for the night. Just to get away.”
“You’re very sweet, but I think leaving with you would make her a thousand times angrier. I better just go back,” I said.
He hopped up and reached his hands out to help me up. He patted my head as if I were a little kid he was telling to chin up. “It’ll be all right, Dani. You and your mom fight all the time and work it out. It always works out.”
“You’re right,” I said. No matter how many times different important people in my life told me this, I still couldn’t believe it. Mom and I had been walking a tenuous line of peace for weeks, and now I felt like I’d severed the line permanently. I should have told her. I should have done so many things differently with her.
FIRSTS:
being before all others with respect to time, order, rank, importance, etc.
Once again, I’d swiftly avoided my mom for the weekend. I only left my room when I knew she was with a client, and I’d become an expert in eating dinner elsewhere. And by elsewhere I mean either at Zoe’s house or at the bookstore. Today was my first day of the Green Transitions internship, and all the nervous energy I’d felt before my interview was back and multiplied by a hundred. I weaved in between cars on the highway with an extra-jerky nature and was a bit too brake happy the whole way there.
When I finally pulled into the Green Transitions office, I took a deep breath. Zoe, being the superhuman best friend that she is, texted me exactly five minutes before my shift was supposed to start.
ZOE: You’re going to kill it. Go save the environment, you badass boss lady, you!
I sent back a mixture
of happy and scared emojis before stepping out of my car. I took the same rickety elevator that scared the daylights out of me last time I was here and vowed to find a flight of stairs to use for the rest of my time at Green Transitions. Sheila was at the front desk when I walked in, and she directed me to go on back to Ameera’s office. I knocked on her door and waited for her to open it.
“Danielle,” she said as she opened the door. “Come in.”
I walked into her office, which looked the same as the last time I saw it, except for a small desk that now sat in the corner of the room. A computer was set up for me and everything.
“This is where you’ll be working,” she said. “Right next to your desk is a filing cabinet that holds the data you’ll be inputting. I’ll have Sheila come by in a bit to show you how to use our server. If you want to get started by getting onto your computer and getting acquainted with all the files on there, I will let Sheila know you’re ready for your instructions.”
“Okay, sounds great,” I said, taking in the giant filing cabinet next to my desk. I looked it up and down and then back at her.
“I have a meeting to run to, but I will be back in an hour or so with more instructions,” she said. She picked up her laptop and a cup of coffee before exiting in a flurry. I stood in the middle of the room, unsure what I really should be doing at this point, and then headed toward the computer. I sat down on the chair and was just about to turn it on when the door opened back up.
“Oh, Danielle?” she said.
“Yes?” I asked, turning around.
“Welcome to Green Transitions.”
* * *
It was finally Wednesday, which meant it was my shift with Porter. And it happened to be my turn to be really annoying with the notebooks. I was bored one night when I was closing up alone, and I decided to write down things that I saw and thought about in the day. I took it with me to class, back home, and even out to dinner with Zoe. I would write little messages like, “There’s a man with very bad body odor sitting behind me. I hope he’s not going on a date, otherwise it is going to end badly for both of them.”
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