“How come you’re still home? Are you feeling okay?” I ask.
“Doctor’s appointment,” she says. Her clipped tone says, We’re not going to talk about me right now, we’re going to talk about you.
Call it the estrogen effect, but mothers and daughters can always hear the words behind the words in a seemingly normal—even dull—conversation.
“So,” she says, “now you’re going to bars? You told me you were working late.”
“I told you I was going to be extra late. I didn’t say what I was doing.”
“The sneaky thing is not going to fly with me, Sam. Not if you want me to trust you.”
She’s right, of course. I’ve got to do damage control.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Please don’t make me quit my job. It won’t happen again.”
“Your father and I talked about it.” She lets out a sigh and continues. “We’re happy you found a job that you truly enjoy, but I think you’re too young to be working so much and so late.”
I open my mouth to talk, but she holds up her hand. “Let me finish. So, we don’t think we’re asking too much when we want to know where you are and who you’re with. And if you’re going to be drinking—”
“Believe me, it wasn’t about drinking. I told you, someone spilled beer on me. I just wanted to hang out with everyone. They go out every week.”
It’s mostly the truth. I wish I could tell her sneaking off to bar night had a little something to do with a boy. Shelby and her mom talk about guys all the time. Connecting with my mom that way would be nice, but I’m too embarrassed.
“I want to believe you, sweetie. But it’s hard after you’ve already lied. That’s my point.”
“Okay, I get it. But if I told you I was going to a bar with people from work, would you have let me go?”
“I’m not sure, Sam. You didn’t give me that chance, did you?”
“I’m sorry. I really am.” I say, though I’d like to throw up my arms and yell, It’s not like I came home pregnant or have a meth addiction. But I still don’t know where I stand. “So? Are you going to make me quit?”
Mom stares hard at me before answering. “We’re not going to make you quit … yet. But it better not happen again.”
“It won’t, Mom, I promise.” I raise my hand like I’m taking the Girl Scout oath.
The tension in her face relaxes. “Okay. I believe you.”
I put my cereal bowl in the dishwasher, then grab my iPod off the table. “Thank you, Mom,” I say, and kiss her cheek. “I’m going to hit the treadmill before work.”
“Do you want a ride? I’ve got some time before my doctor’s appointment.”
“Sure. That sounds good,” I say, adjusting my earbuds. I’m about to head into the garage but change my mind. “I’m going on the street today. Be back in an hour.”
Outside, I inhale the scents of freshly cut grass and the pansies lining our walk. I love how summer smells. After a quick stretch, I jog off toward the high school. I’m going to run there, do eight laps around the track, and run home. I’ve been planning this route for a while, I just haven’t made it out of the garage. According to mapmyrun.com, it’s just over six miles.
I reach Cook Street and know I’ve hit my first mile. Even if I hadn’t plotted my course, I could tell by how many songs have played in my ears and how I feel. It’s funny how my body just knows when it’s ready to pick up the pace.
I run the length of Cook, cut through the new McMansion development, and turn into the high school parking lot. That’s when I hear the familiar sounds of marching-band music bleeding through the alt-rock mix in my ears. Band camp. I get that queasy summer-interruptus feeling.
Lap One: The marching band is too loud. It’s making me think about school. Once September comes, there are going to be exams to take, applications to fill out, colleges to visit—choices I’m not yet ready to make. I haven’t gotten sixteen right yet, and now I’m going to be seventeen. I’m not ready.
Lap Two: Am I selling myself short? Should I take the SATs one more time? Apply to some tier-one colleges, like my parents have been urging?
Lap Three: Do I look for a school with highly rated journalism program? Is that what I want to do? Is that what I should do?
Lap Four: I wonder if AJ will follow the mayor with me again. Prom fantasy aside, I can’t let Tony get Michael’s beat, no matter how adorable he is.
Lap Five: Maybe Harry will let me keep working for the Herald Tribune part-time once school starts.
* * *
Back at home, I’m proud of myself for completing my first 10k outside. But my runner’s high is tempered by thoughts of my job ending and my senior year beginning. I need a game plan, for both.
“Morning, Gram,” I say, reaching into the fridge for some water. She’s at the kitchen table doing her crossword puzzle, her daily ritual.
“Morning, hon,” my grandmother says as she gets up and heads toward the Mr. Coffee to refill her mug. “What’s wrong? You look so serious.”
“It’s just my face, Gram,” I say. “Permanently morose.”
“Morose? You? You’re just not a morning person. We can’t all greet the day with alacrity,” Gram says. “Your great-aunt Mary, God rest her soul, now, she was morose. She was the real crepe hanger of the family. She could turn Christmas into a funeral.”
“Crepe hanger?” I’ll look up alacrity later.
“Back when I was a girl, when a family member died, you hung a black funeral drape over the door,” Gram explains. “It let other people know that someone had died.”
I need to write down some of these tidbits before I forget and Gram’s not here to ask anymore. There I go. Being morose again.
“Sometimes I just want to be a normal teenager,” I say. It’s a non sequitur to her crepe-hanger anecdote, but I need to say it aloud. I should have wanted to be at Rob McGinty’s party last night, wearing a strapless top and doing beer funnels. But honestly, I was where I wanted to be.
“I raised four kids, and I can tell you one thing, hon: Teenagers are not normal.” And then Gram comes over and gives me a big, squishy hug. I resist at first.
“Ah, Gram. I’m all sweaty.”
“Oh, come on, that doesn’t bother me.” I put my arms around her and hug her back, happy she can give me just what I need and we don’t have to talk about it.
* * *
An hour later, Mom pulls up in front of the the Herald Tribune building. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Be careful,” my mom says as I open the door. “I’d say come home early, but I have a feeling I’d be wasting my breath.”
“Okay, I’ll try. Thanks for the ride, Mom,” I say. “Why are you going to the doctor’s today, anyway?”
“Just a routine physical,” she says.
I should have asked sooner. Is Mom worried something may be wrong with her?
“Well, good luck. I’ll call you later,” I say.
“Love you,” she says.
“Love you too,” I say.
* * *
AJ is already at his desk when I arrive. I glance at the clock. Am I late? Nope. Right on time.
“It’s Thursday,” I blurt.
“It is.” AJ is nonplussed by my randomness.
“We followed the mayor to the bank on a Wednesday.”
“I’m going to have to trust you on that one.”
“It was. I know because it was the day I made my big obit gaff.”
“Right. Okay, then. Glad we cleared that up.”
AJ goes back to typing.
“So, I’m thinking—”
He pauses then, takes his glasses off, and cleans them on his shirttail. “Here we go.”
“People usually do their banking on the same day every week. Gram does hers on Friday, when the Social Security check arrives, and—”
“I’m begging you, Sam-I-am, get to the point.”
“Maybe we should start following the mayor on Wednesday afternoons.”
“Fine.”
“Really? That was easy. I thought it would take more convincing.”
“I said ‘fine,’ didn’t I? Don’t make me take it back.”
“Great! Thanks! So next Wednesday—”
“Sam…”
“Right. Got it.”
I skitter off to Alice’s desk and pick up the mail, happy to have a plan in motion.
* * *
After lunch, Harry stands on Rocco’s desk to make an announcement. “Listen up, people. Mandatory meeting in the conference room at three,” he yells. “Spread the word to anyone who’s not here.”
“Any idea what that’s about?” I ask AJ.
“No clue.”
Curiosity may kill cats, but journalists aren’t far behind. Grace wonders if Harry is resigning, Jack thinks his features staff is being cut, Jim from sports guesses it’s about another pay freeze.
At three, we all cram into the conference room like clowns in a compact car, ready to find out. Every seat is taken. The sports guys are sitting on the bookshelves, which run the length of the room along the windows. AJ is next to them, and he waves me over and points to the spot he saved for me. Everyone else, including our three burly press guys—Dan, Henry, and Franco—is standing. Harry, with hair looking crazier than usual, is at his seat at the head of the conference table. The phone is in front of him.
“Alice, let’s dial up Bernie. She should hear this,” he says. After a minute or so, Alice turns the phone toward Harry.
“I’m putting you on speaker now, Bernie. Hold on,” Alice says.
“Harry!” booms Bernie. She sounds like she’s locked in the bathroom. Oh, how I’ve missed that voice.
“Bernie, I hear you’ll be rejoining us soon. Looking forward to it.”
“Oh, man,” I whisper. It’s great that Bernie is recovering and all, but her return means we’re back to being Moron and Moronica. I catch AJ’s eye. I can tell he’s thinking the same thing.
“All right, listen up. The publisher and I have been enjoying many breakfast meetings together this summer at the Tick Tock Diner. After extensive negotiations with several potential buyers, he has decided to sell our small group of newspapers to a larger media conglomerate.”
“What does that mean for us?” Michael asks.
“I’m getting there, Fishman. I’m getting there.”
Harry takes a deep breath. He looks tired. More tired than I’ve ever seen him look.
“For starters, it means layoffs. We’re cutting our workforce by forty percent. There are three papers in our group. A total of a hundred and twenty-five editorial jobs. You will all have the opportunity to apply for the seventy-five remaining positions.” The news sends a wave of grumbling throughout the conference room. Selfishly, I wonder if this dashes any hopes I had about continuing to work here during the school year. It’s like the escape hatch from high school is closing.
“Okay, settle down,” Harry says. “There’s more. This is important.”
“We’re shifting our format to more online content and substantially reducing the size of the print version. I’d like all of you to start thinking about content that will drive people to our site. Blogs, message boards, columns, smartphone apps. We’re changing our entire business model, and while it’s probably a good thing to bring the Herald Tribune into the twenty-first century, this last change will be the most difficult of all: We will be shutting down our presses at the end of August and sending the paper out for printing. I am not exaggerating when I tell you it will be the end of an era.”
With that, all eyes fall on the press guys—Dan, Henry, and Franco. They’re all pushing sixty and have been doing this job most of their lives. It’s not like their skill set has prepared them for a career switch at this stage of the game.
“I want all of you here at five in the morning on the day we shut the presses down. Mandatory. That’s all for now. See me about any individual questions or concerns.” People start exiting the conference room, but Harry calls us back. “I almost forgot.” He walks over to the wall, where I notice someone (Harry, I’m sure) has mounted a rectangular countdown clock, like the kind in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. He hits the switch, and it starts counting backward from 1334 hours 00 minutes 00 seconds until the last day of August. I think about all I want to accomplish by summer’s end. It’s like me and the printing presses are on the same deadline schedule.
chapter seventeen
Movie Times
On Friday night, Shelby arrives at my house at seven o’clock with the chocolate Twizzlers, peanut M&Ms, and Diet Cherry Coke—all required, she insists, for a night of movie watching. I left work promptly at five thirty today. I’m trying to earn back my parents’ trust. Mom swung by the Herald Tribune and picked me up on her way home from work.
I make popcorn, and then the four of us—me, Shelby, Mom, and Gram—settle in the family room to watch a movie. Mom and I are on one couch, Gram and Shelby share the other. Our snacks are spread before us on ottomans that double as tables by flipping the cushions over.
“You girls ready for the eighties experience?” Mom says.
“Let’s start with The Breakfast Club, then Sixteen Candles,” I say.
“Two movies? Is Shelby going to sit still that long?” Gram jokes.
Shelby throws up her arms. “Thank you!”
“Okay, fine,” I say. “Just Sixteen Candles then.”
I should be happy to have a friend who doesn’t mind staying in on a Friday night to watch movies with me, my mom, and my grandmother, but the truth is, movie marathons are my thing with Mom. Shelby called me at work to see if I wanted to go out, and I felt bad blowing her off again.
Mom puts the DVD in the player. “You’re going to like this,” she says. “All my friends were in love with Jake Ryan.”
I grab a handful of popcorn and slip into my comfort zone. I don’t think about yesterday’s announcement at the Herald Tribune, the search for Sy Goldberg, my driving test looming in August, and school starting after Labor Day. I get lost in this hilarious romantic story about a girl named Samantha, who has a major crush on a gorgeous, popular senior named Jake. Relate much? The last scene is killer. Jake spends half the movie looking for Sam because it turns out he likes her too. She comes out of the church, where her sister has just gotten married, and is standing on the steps in her poufy bridesmaid dress watching the guests leave. When the last car pulls away, it’s like the big reveal! There is Jake, leaning against a red Porsche, waiting for her. I am melting. John Hughes was a genius.
“Why can’t that happen to us?” Shelby says as she chews the tip of her straw, like she’s done since we were kids.
“As much as I love your dad, nothing that romantic has ever happened to me,” Mom says. She’s already off the couch and loading the dishwasher.
“Real love doesn’t drive up in a red sports car,” Gram says. “When you finally find the right one, it’s so simple. You won’t believe you never saw it before.”
“Was it love at first sight with Gramps?” I ask.
“Yeah, did you know right away you wanted to marry him?” Shelby asks.
“Right away?” She laughs. “It took ten years. Longer, if you count the time when we were just kids. I grew up with your grandfather. We were neighbors, so I really didn’t think of him that way.”
“When did things change?” Mom asks.
“I suppose when I was old enough to start dating. There were so many times when I’d come home after a night out, and there he was, sitting on my porch.”
“Really? What was he doing there?” I ask.
“That’s what I always wanted to know.” Gram chuckles at the memory. “He always said the same thing: ‘Waiting for you.’ Oh, sometimes he’d be inside playing cards with my brothers, but most of the time, he was on the front porch.”
“That might be considered stalking by today’s standards,” Shelby says.
“You could be right,” Gram says.
�
�So, what made you finally want to go out with him?” Mom asks.
“Well, I was engaged to another man at the time. Joe. He gave me a ring and everything. I hid it on my bookshelf. I told no one except your grandfather. He was my best friend, I suppose,” she says. “I even showed him the ring.”
“You were engaged? So, what happened?” I am riveted. My grandmother almost married another man? She dated? Who knew? Mom looks as shocked as I am.
“It was Easter Sunday. I’d bought a new dress, gloves, and matching shoes. Oh, and a beautiful hat—we all wore hats back then,” she says. “Joe was supposed to take me to church and then have dinner with my family.”
“What happened?” Mom asks.
“Joe said he was going to New York with his friends instead and wouldn’t be able to see me until later that evening.” She waves her hand, as if to swat Joe away. “I told him, ‘Joe, you go with your friends, and don’t bother coming around,’ and then I walked next door and knocked on your grandfather’s door.”
“Gramps caught a break that day?”
“Yes, he did,” Gram says. “When I told your grandfather Joe went out with his friends, he said, ‘I’m glad he did.’ We got married a year later.”
My grandparents were together three times longer than I have been alive. I wonder if anyone will ever love me the way my grandfather loved my grandmother. The way they loved each other.
No disrespect to John Hughes, but Gram’s story was better than the movie.
* * *
On Saturday, I return to the bookstore solo, laptop in hand. Yes, I’m on a sort of stakeout, but I heard what Harry said about coming up with online-content ideas, and I want to do some brainstorming. Perhaps he’d let me do a blog for teens, and then I could keep working at the Herald Tribune. I need an amazing idea to pitch to Harry.
I sit facing the door at a table toward the back, power up my laptop, and get started. I do a search of existing blogs using key words like teens, girls, high school, punk fashion, college music, YA book reviews—whatever pops into my head. I wind up reading tons of posts, everything from tips on writing college-application essays to toxic shock syndrome. I come to the conclusion that I can blog about almost anything, but it’s better if I focus. What should the point of my blog be? Do I have enough to say? Two hours later, I look up to see Joanne and company settling into a table near mine.
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