“Oh, it’s true! You should have seen us. We brought the student council to its knees just now.”
“Really? Student council?” Wyatt purrs, smooth as a milk shake. “Well, that’s like slaying a dragon, isn’t it? That’s news. I expect to read about that in The New York Times tomorrow morning.”
“Wyatt—” Jesse begins, but Esther laughs, undeterred.
“Yeah, okay, that might seem like small potatoes to you, but how do you think big things get done? One little bit at a time, right? Hey, Jesse and I are going to Beverly Coffee to get some cocoa, do you want to come with us?”
Wyatt meets Jesse’s eye for a moment.
“Oh,” he says, careful and polite, “I do appreciate the offer, but I’m afraid I have to visit local thrifting establishment Rose’s Turn this afternoon. I thought my friend Jesse might join me, as she often has in the past. But I see you two have plans. That’s fine. I don’t want to intrude.”
“You wouldn’t be intruding,” Esther insists.
“No, come with us. Please come with us?” Jesse urges him.
Wyatt squints at Jesse for a second now. “It’s tempting,” he says, “but I’m on the verge of a breakthrough with my new Charles Lindbergh look, and I don’t think I can wait another day to find the right aviator scarf. Plus, I don’t want to miss Marla’s shift. Last time I was there she gave me a free pair of tassel loafers. You girls have fun.”
Wyatt turns and begins walking away, down the access road that leads in the opposite direction from town. And in the opposite direction from Rose’s Turn, Jesse realizes.
She calls after him, “I’ll totally come with you next week!”
Without turning around, Wyatt lifts his hand to wave.
13
Emily
I couldn’t wait for next Tuesday—almost an entire week—to talk to Jesse about what she did. I felt like her showing up to my meeting was the beginning of something very, very bad, and I could tell that if I didn’t nip it in the bud, it would be out of control in only a few seconds. So I emailed her—the first time I had ever used the email address she gave me almost a year ago, actually—and asked her if we could move our regular meeting up from Tuesday to Friday afternoon. She emailed back one word: “Okay.”
I told my mom that I had to check in with Carol at the library about something on the way home and that’s why I’d be late to help with dinner on Friday. She was fine about it. She’s very big on honoring your commitments and showing the people who put their trust in you by hiring you that you’re responsible (partly because at her job as office manager of the Dower Group she’s always having to cover for people who don’t pull their own weight, so she really disapproves of slacking off of any kind). As soon as school was over on Friday, I went straight to the library, straight through the back entrance, and straight up the back stairs to the handicapped restroom on the third floor. Jesse didn’t get there until 3:05, so I had almost twenty-five minutes to gather my thoughts and prepare for exactly how I wanted to talk to her. I was more than ready to have the conversation I wanted to have with her by the time she knocked on the door.
I started out totally reasonable and calm. I was like, Hey, I just wanted to talk to you for a second about what happened at that meeting, and I know we’re probably going to disagree about some things, but—
Right away she cut me off. She was like, Yeah, we are. All snappish. I could see that she was totally upset.
I could have stopped then or changed direction. I could have tried to calm her down or lied to her about how I felt, but I really wanted us to have an honest conversation, so I was like, Look, we don’t have to talk about the things you said about NorthStar, which I don’t happen to agree with, but—
And she cut me off again. She was like, It’s not a question of you agreeing with me or not, the facts are the facts.
I took a deep breath, like my mom always says to do whenever you find yourself in an escalating situation. I reminded myself that all I had to do was get her to see my side of things. I didn’t need to make her change her crazy mind.
So I was like, Okay, whatever, the thing that I need you to know right now is that the NorthStar project is actually my baby, it’s really, really important to me, and I need you to not keep going with this campaign to get rid of them because it’s seriously messing up all my plans.
She looked at me sort of funny then, and she was like, What do you mean, your “baby”?
I explained my whole history with NorthStar, I was like, This is actually an idea I came up with on my own, I approached NorthStar personally and I made it happen and I’m working with them at their office once a week. I was like, It’s okay, I know you didn’t know that because I didn’t tell you but it’s actually been an incredible experience so far and also it’s a really big deal for Vander and you just need to please back off on this one. For me.