Page 39 of Tomorrow Belongs to Us
“How am I? Don't even start.”
“Bad day?” I pause for a few seconds. “What happened?”
“I don't need to tell you anything but you're on the phone now, and it's late.” It's sounds to me as if she’s justifying it to herself.
“Just tell me, Megan,” I implore softly.
“I had an interview and it didn't go too well.”
“Sorry to hear that. Why do you think it didn't go too well?”
“Because the other guys who went for it are smug confident assholes.”
I chuckle.
“It's not funny.”
“No, it's not. That's not why I was laughing.”
“Why were you laughing?” she asks.
“Because you're all fired up and mad.”
“You're weird,” she says, but there is no malice in her voice. I am just thankful that she's still on the phone and talking to me.
“What happened in the interview?” I nudge her gently.
“I tripped up.”
“You tripped up?”
“Are you going to echo every single sentence I say?”
Feisty. Bad tempered. She wasn't like this before. The transformation of the girl I knew into a woman isn’t only physical. I’m seeing a new side to her personality. The girl in high school was fragile, battered by life and her home situation. It was one of the things that drew me to her. She was broken in little pieces that only the trained eyes of a teacher could see and I wanted to help put her back together again before it was too late.
I could see that this girl had the brains and the mind to do well given the chance. She had a lot of potential and I wanted to help her before she fell apart. It wasn't her fault what was going on with her parents. “These things happen,” I tell her, wanting to put her mind at ease. “You shouldn’t worry too much about one interview. There will be others.”
“You don't understand how badly I wanted the job.”
She has a point. I don’t. “You don't know yet whether you got it or not. Sometimes what we think is our worst turns out to be our best.”
“You sound like Mr. Turner again.”
“That's because IamMr. Turner.”
I hear a soft giggle from her end and it makes me feel relieved. Makes me think that she's talking to me and enjoying our conversation as much as I am. “Don't beat yourself up about it.”
“How's your niece?” she asks. It takes me a moment to interpret her sudden switch to a new topic.
“She's good. She's good. Her dad remarried and now she has two younger siblings. A brother and a sister. Just like you, if I remember correctly.”
“Not like me, I hope.”
“How are they?” I ask tentatively.
“They're ... good.”
She doesn’t elaborate and the silence stretches out even longer. I sense that she doesn't want to talk about them.
