And yet...
“Scarf,” I whisper into the darkness, then squish down into my pillow with a small smile on my face.
I don’t have time to do Wordle the next morning. My parents call from New Zealand at 4:30 a.m. (my dad makes a lot of jokes about calling from the future, since it’s already tomorrow there, which I would appreciate a lot more if it wasn’t4:30 in the morning), then Mrs. Finnamore waves me down for a chat while I’m waiting for the local taxi to pick me up to take me to work.
When I get to the shop, I’m immediately accosted by a man who has been waiting in his car for the shop to open. He’s jitteryand strange, talking rapidly about a receipt he needs to “prove how bad his accident was” and lifting his hands over his head to show me how limited his range of motion is. It doesn’t look limited at all to me, though I’m not about to say that to him. I get him a copy of his receipt and then turn pointedly to my computer, but he lingers for several minutes, leaning all over the desk and reading the receipt out loud to me.
“Four-inch scratch on driver’s-side door—see?” He pushes the receipt toward me. “Driver’s-side door, that’s where the impact was, that’s what threw my shoulder out of alignment.”
John walks in halfway through the guy’s lengthy monologue about how he’s going to sue the person who hit him, the police officer who refused to arrest them on the spot, and the doctor who told him there was nothing wrong with his shoulder on his MRI scan. For once, I’m deeply grateful for John’s rudeness, because he cuts right across the guy’s speech to ask me when his first appointment is and then leans against the desk with his back to the guy, totally blocking me from his view. The guy scowls at his back for a minute but then finally leaves the shop.
I let out a sigh of relief. “That guy was weird.”
John makes a vague “mm” of agreement, his typical nonanswer. But then he surprises me by adding, “Some people spend their whole lives looking for something to blame their problems on.”
I blink. “Yeah, exactly.”
He pushes himself off the desk. “Liam get you home all right?”
“Er—yeah, thanks,” I say. “He’s a really nice guy.”
John nods in his signature slow, absent way and then wanders off to the garage. I swear he has some sort of word limit for conversations, or something.
Still, his comment about that customer sticks with me the rest of the morning. I can’t help but wonder if I’m one of those people, trying to blame all my problems and inadequacies on the world. I don’t think I’m quite as bad as that guy—I would never try to claim that a four-inch scratch on my car caused “catastrophic damage” to my body—but maybe I have been feeling a bit too sorry for myself these past few years. I think back on all the job rejections I’ve collected, and I’m embarrassed to admit that beneath the disappointment and self-loathing I always felt when I got them, there was also a vein of defiance. Like, how can they not see that I’m worth hiring? How can they not see that I’m special?
But it isn’t the world’s job to tell me that I’m special. It’s my job to work hard enough to make it true.
Gripped with a sudden surge of determination, I sit up straighter in my chair and take out my phone. Over the rest of the morning, I make out a new, stricter budget for myself so I can pay off my student loan a bit faster (goodbye name-brand Mini Wheats, hello generic “wheatie squares”) and cross about twenty jobs off my “Potential Careers List.” I need to get this thing down and start taking decisive action in my life.
Gallerist—gone. Just because I like wandering around art galleries doesn’t mean that I’d actually like working in one. Plus, I think I’d feel really bad trying to pretend it’s okay to charge fifty thousand dollars for a piece of canvas with two blobs of paint on it.
Photographer—gone. I like theideaof being a photographer, but if I’m honest, thinking about all those complicated buttons and settings on fancy cameras makes my head hurt.
Web designer—gone. I don’t want to sit at a computer all day.
Makeup artist.
Makeup artist? Was I high when I put this on the list? I can’t even do my own makeup, for goodness’ sake. Gone.
At noon, I head into the break room, where John is sitting at the lunch table eating a sandwich and staring at his phone.
I clear my throat. “Hey.”
He glances up briefly and then looks back down at his phone. “Hey.”
I feel a teensy spark of curiosity. Could he be doing Wordle right now? I surreptitiously peek over his shoulder as I walk to the fridge to grab my yogurt.
Nope. He’s just scrolling through Kijiji, shopping for some sort of car part.
“I’ll fix your car later,” he says. “I took a look at it this morning, it’s your alternator that’s shot.”
“Oh, no rush,” I say automatically.
He frowns. “Don’t you need it to get to work?”
“Er—well, yeah. But I can take taxis, if you’re too busy with other stuff today.”
“I’m not. It won’t take long.”
