Page 41 of Latte Girl
Mel gives us a big smile and nods inthanks.
“You’ll be a coffee lover soon enough, if you keep hanging around with Hailey,” she tells Jordan. “We’re just waiting for the day she makes Cuppa Joe famous. I promised I’d name a latte afterherthen.”
She leaves soon after that and Jordan turns backtome.
“What did she mean about you making this place famous?”heasks.
I shift in my seat, glancing away to look out thewindow.
“Oh,” I answer, watching a bus go by on the street, “it’s nothing. Just this idea I told Mina and Mel aboutoneday.”
I’d mentioned my blogging idea to the Cuppa Joe owners once, and they’ve been after me to start working on it ever since. They started their own business from scratch, and Mel especially is always slipping me names of website designers and other cafe owners sheknows.
“Well now you have to tell me what it is,” coaxesJordan.
I put my latte down on the table nexttohis.
“Well, I’ve told you how much I like cafes,” I begin, “and I guess my sort of ‘dream job’, if you will, would be to run a blog where I review different coffee shops, maybe travel around and give people tips on what to do if they’re in the area of acertaincafe.”
I’m too nervous to look at Jordan, and keep staring down at the foam inmymug.
“I mean, I should probably go to school first, have a fallback,” I add, trying to come off as a bit morereasonable.
“Why wait?” he asks, and the enthusiasm in his voice makes me feel brave enough to look back up. “That sounds awesome. Lots of people dream about having a passion they can make a career out of, and it sounds like you alreadyhavethat.”
“You don’t think it’s illogical?” I ask, thinking of my mom and Steve’s opinions. “Isn’t putting my focus on something with such a small chance for success a bitnaive?”
Jordan shakes his head. “Other people might say that, but personally I think the only expectations you should care about are your own. I’ve met lots of people with lots of degrees who still had no idea what they were doing in life. It’s rare to really want something. It’s even rarer to have the guts to go after it. If you’d like my opinion, I’d say start as soon as you can. School is always going to be therewaiting.”
I’d never really thought of it that way before. In my mind, there had always been two paths: what I wanted to do, and what the sensible thing to do was. It didn’t occur to me that if I followed my impulses, the sensible route would still be there if things didn’tworkout.
“Thanks.” I try to put as much sincerity into the word as I can. “If I do end up getting Cuppa Joe famous, I’ll make Mel name a latte afteryoutoo.”
We spend a half hour trading stories. Jordan wants to know more about Amanda and I fill him in on her Einstein obsession, math skills, and the original names she gives to her Barbies. He tells me about the nanny who looked after him as a kid, and I give him hell over the fact that he actually had ananny.
We sit until the leftover foam in our mugs starts to go brown and stick to theceramic.
“So,” I say, “you going to show me that weird musicparknow?”
After getting up and waving goodbye to Mina, we head out of Cuppa Joe and Jordan leads me a few blocks away to a park no bigger than the lot of a townhouse. Most of the ground is covered in concrete and there’s only one tree, so the place hardly feels like it can be described asapark.
The focal point clearly isn’t meant to be the flora and fauna, though. The lot is dominated by two larger than life statues, one of a keyboard and one of a guitar. They’re made of clear resin encasing a milky white interior, so that they seem to glow from theinside.
“Giant alien Rock Band!” I exclaim and Jordan laughs, motioning for me to comecloser.
There’s an information sign with the artist’s biography and a description of the exhibit, along with instructions for downloading an app that lets you control theinstruments.
“It’s genius,” Jordan tells me, pulling out his phone. “It uses Bluetooth and you sign up for either instrument, then have a certain amount of time to play it before it goes to the next person in line.” He holds his phone so I can see it and scrolls through the app. “You can record what you play, too. Sometimes they hold contests where you submit songs, and then anyone who has the app can vote on awinner.”
I shift my eyes from the screen of the phone to his face. He looks like a kid explaining how their favourite toy works. All the sarcasm I’ve come to associate with him is gone, replaced by an earnestness so visible it almost makes me feel the urge tolookaway.
“So do you want to try the guitar or the keyboard?”heasks.
“Guitar,” I answer. “You can watch me be aguitarhero.”
He passes me his phone, where an image of the white guitar is showing, the strings highlighted in different colours. I swish my fingeroverthem.
In front of us, the resin neck of the guitar lights up from inside, flickering between green, red, and blue as a few discordant notes emanate from inside the statue. They almost sound eerie, echoing through the crisp air of theemptypark.
