Page 14 of You Say It First

Moira grinned. “You did, didn’t you?”

“What?” Colby shook his head, laughing a little bewilderedly. “No.”

“I don’t know, Colby,” Moira said, shaking her head and nudging him aside to get to the time clock. “I think it’s the first time since I met you that I’ve seen you in here without a scowl on your face that could take the bark off a tree.”

“That’s not—” Colby felt himself blush, though he wasn’t sure if it was because apparently he had a reputation for frowning all the time at work or because she’d noticed he wasn’t doing it on this particular morning. “I didn’t.”

“Sure. Sure. Just try not to forget us little people when you’re collecting all your money.” Moira winked. “Shift assignments in ten, Smiles.”

It was a busy morning, thankfully: a shipment of washing machines to unload that meant a full reorg of appliances, plus a long pick list of items to send to the online distribution facility outside Columbus. Colby was real careful to keep his head down. So fine, he’d had a good time talking to Meg from WeCount on the phone last night. Whatever. He was literally never going to hear from her again, so there was no point in getting worked up about it one way or the other.

When he got into the break room for his thirty, Moira and Jerry were staring at a notice on the bulletin board next to the bank of lockers, where people put up shift-switch requests and ads for roommates and the mandatory OSHA posters about unsafe working conditions. “What’s up?” Colby asked, opening his locker and pulling out his lunch.

“They’re cutting overtime,” Jerry reported.

“Wait.” Colby frowned, coming over to look at the flier. “All overtime?”

Moira nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”

“I love how they didn’t even talk to us about it,” Jerry said with a rueful smirk, his bald white head gleaming in the overhead lights. “Just stuck it up there for us to find.”

“They did it on purpose,” Moira cracked. “They all know you can’t read.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Jerry said, and the whole thing devolved into a pileup of good-natured insults, but Colby was hardly listening. Well, he guessed, so much for moving out by the beginning of the summer. At this rate, he’d probably be living with his mom until he was forty-five.

He ate the ham-and-cheese sandwich he’d packed that morning and got himself a Dr Pepper from the vending machine. Then he got up and went back to work.

Nine

Meg

Seniors could leave campus during their lunch periods, so Meg met up with Emily in the parking lot and they went to the hipster salad place near school. By the time they got there and waited in line, they usually only had ten minutes to shovel their salads into their mouths, but they went anyway because Emily couldn’t get enough of the lime-cilantro dressing and it didn’t seem like something worth arguing about, even though Meg was always a tiny bit stressed about getting back before the bell.

“Did you see that new bookstore in Montco is doing Friday open-mic nights?” she asked now. “You want to go this week maybe?”

Emily glanced up from whoever she was texting, raised an eyebrow. “Why?” she asked. “You hoping to find an audience for your political slam poetry?”

“Rude.” Meg pelted her with a cherry tomato, laughing. “I don’t write political slam poetry.”

“Sure, sure.” Emily shook her head. “I can’t,” she said, setting her phone down and shivering a little inside her Patagonia. It was warm enough to eat outside on the patio, but barely. “I have to help my mom with something.”

“Mysterious,” Meg teased.

“It’s not,” Emily said—a little sharply, which was weird. “It was just a computer thing for one of her classes.”

“Oh.” Meg nodded. “Okay.” Emily’s mom was getting her master’s in social work at Temple, driving into the city two nights a week for seminars and working on research projects at the kitchen table. Meg had asked her own mom if she’d ever thought about going back to school—Mrs. Hurd really liked it, and she’d made all these other middle-aged lady friends and some younger ones besides—but Meg’s mom had said she hadn’t even liked college the first time, and that had been the end of that. “That’s cool.”

She poked at her kale Caesar for a moment, pushing the Parmesan crisps to the side for very last and knowing that the only person actually acting strange here was her. It felt like she’d betrayed Emily somehow by telling Colby about Cornell, even though she knew that was silly. She was going to tell Emily about Cornell. She was going to go to Cornell.

She just needed a little bit of time to get her head in the game first.

“So, okay,” she blurted before she could talk herself out of it, sitting back in her wobbly metal patio chair—wanting to offer Emily something, even if it wasn’t the thing she knew Em was waiting to hear. “Do you remember the other night when I texted you about that guy who hung up on me at work?”

“Huh?” Emily glanced at her phone one more time before turning it facedown on the table. “Oh. Yeah.”

“He called me back.”

“He did what?” Emily’s eyes widened in horror. “Oh my God, how did he get your number? That’s so creepy.”

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