If something were to happen between us, he would have to make the first move. Not that I would even know how to initiate any sort of move … he might have been making moves last night. Moves that I blocked? I wish I could ask Babe. It feels taboo to share any of this with anyone, because as far as I know, Pilot has a girlfriend. It’s against the rules to like him. I like to follow the rules.
But, maybe they did break up? It’s not like he would have shouted it from the rooftops. He could have. He said he wanted to go to Edinburgh together next weekend. I mean, the signs are saying yes!
“Shane?”
My head snaps up. Pilot’s at the foot of my bed, waving his hands around. Whoa. Last time I looked up, Pilot was heading to shower. I slam the cover closed on my notebook, hastily click off my pen, and smile at him. “Hey! Yes! Ready?” I shove Horcrux Nine into my book bag.
Pilot and I find Babe and Chad in the lobby, sitting on opposite sides of a bench with their arms crossed.
“Hey,” Pilot says as we step up to their bench.
“Morning!” I greet them.
“Ready to get a cab?” Babe jumps up.
“Yeah, sho—” I start.
“Great!” Babe interrupts. She power walks out the door with her suitcase.
It takes us ten minutes to flag down a taxi in this outskirt area of Paris. When we do, I step up and open the door to the back seat. Babe jumps forward and scoots in immediately. The driver pops the trunk and gets out to help load our bags.
“I’m not getting in that taxi,” Chad announces from the sidewalk. There’s a thump as Babe’s bag flops into the trunk.
I whip around. “Why? What’s wrong with this taxi?”
“I’m not going in the same taxi as her.”
I hear the thump of my bag dropping into the back. The boys both hold onto their packs, so the driver closes the trunk with a bang and gets back into the car.
“What do you mean, you’re not going in the same taxi as her? We’re all going to the train station. There are four seats here.” I try to speak calmly, but bits of anger edge their way into my voice.
“I want to get a separate taxi!” he yells. Pilot and I exchange a look.
“Man, it took us, like, ten minutes just to find this one taxi,” Pilot reasons.
I duck my head down into the cab to gauge Babe’s reaction. She’s looking determinedly at the back of the seat in front of her.
“I will not ride in this cab,” Chad repeats loudly.
“Shut up, Chad,” I say, whirling back to him.
“You guys go. I’ll stay with him, get another cab. We’ll meet you there,” Pilot offers.
I blow out an angry breath, but concede with a nod and slide in next to Babe.
“Okay, good luck,” I say before closing the door. I shoot a glare at Chad and slam the door. “Gare du Nord, please!” I tell the driver.
My eyes are on Pilot as we pull away from the curb. He nods at me before turning to say something to Chad. I settle into the back seat, my puffy jacket swishing against the leather. Babe pouts next to the window.
I heave a great sigh. “Babe, did more stuff happen with you two? I’m sorry about last night, but please don’t be mad at me. Chad came at me with his face to make you angry or something, but nothing happened. I ran away from him.”
Babe sighs as well. “I’m not mad. I’m sorry I yelled at you. I drank too much.” She’s still looking at the floor. “Chad’s just being an asshole and making a scene. He gets really dramatic sometimes.”
“No kidding.”
Babe snorts and meets my eyes. Hers are glassy. “Last night at the bar I thought things were going really well. He freaked out—and then later when we got back to the room, I wanted to explain, but he wasn’t having it. He just talked over me: ‘Babe, we’ve talked about this! I like short girls, you’re not my type, god, why are you trying to ruin this? We’re having fun and you have to ruin things. It’s so frustrating.’” Her Chad impression is pitchy but I like it.
She continues, “And I was like, ‘I don’t understand why would you ask me to plan your birthday, then!’ And he had the nerve to say, ‘I didn’t ask you to plan anything.’ And I was like, ‘You sure as hell didn’t ask me not to; here we are in Paris together for your birthday!’ And he goes, ‘Don’t try to turn this into some romantic thing.’ And then I told him he was being an asshole, and then he stormed out of the room.”
“What kind of douche kabab says those things to their friend? Who treats anyone like that? He doesn’t deserve you in his life.”
“He eventually came back in and went to sleep.”
“And apologized?”
“No, we didn’t speak this morning.”
“What the heck? And that’s why he had a hissy fit outside and wouldn’t share a cab?”
“I tried to talk to him again while we waited for you guys to come down…”
“Babe, there are other guys out there who like Disney. This whole situation is so weird and melodramatic. It was like you were married for ten years, and he caught you with another man in bed this morning.”
“He’s just passionate.”
I slap a palm to my forehead. “You’re not going to pursue him anymore, right?”
She’s silent for a moment, before shrugging coolly. “You’re one to lecture. What’s going on with you and Pilot?”
My lips clamp shut. I swallow slowly, debating whether or not to share my breakup theory. I stay quiet.
She raises her eyebrows. I turn to look out the window.
* * *
We pick up burgers on our way back to the Karlston. I eat mine in the kitchen with Babe, both of us surfing the internet and catching up with the world. I import all the Paris pictures, edit them, and get an album up on Facebook. I spend some time on the Packed! For Travel! site, getting ready for my upcoming first day of work. At some point, Atticus comes in and asks us about our trip.
As we fill him in, he stabs animatedly at a frozen meal and stuffs it in the microwave. When we finish our highlights reel, he launches into a story about a strange show he had to go see for class that revolved around the life of a toad. We get a play-by-play of the entire thing, and it’s ridiculously entertaining through Atticus’s sarcastic retelling.
Thirty minutes into the toad show recap, the kitchen door swings open. Pilot strides in and flops on the black leather couch, looking exhausted. I feel a nervous smile pop up onto my cheeks. Last night—I mean, something changed between us.
“And then the whole cast is just squatted on the ground ribbiting for, I swear, five minutes straight with no dialogue—” Atticus, who had been pacing around the table, stops short, looking at Pilot.
“Hey! I’m telling them about the toad play!” he says cheerily. Pilot huffs a sarcastic laugh and lets his head fall back against the couch. “How’d your call go?” Atticus asks.
A call? I push Sawyer aside so I can see Pilot better. Could it be a break-up-with-Amy call?
Pilot runs a hand down his face and looks at the ceiling. Oh my god, something’s wrong. Was it a breakup call?
“Um,” he starts, “Amy’s going to come visit me next month during her break. She wanted to see me, so she bought a ticket to come. Visit.”
I suck in an audible breath as the cloud I’ve been dancing on dissolves under my feet. Pilot’s eyes flit to mine and then down to the floor. Babe shoots me a sympathetic look.
“That’ll be nice!” Atticus exclaims from his position leaning against the counter near the sink. “You guys should go back to Paris together, city of love and all that.”
I pull my computer screen in front of my face and stare at it blindly.
“Yeah that’s … that’s where she wants to go,” Pilot mumbles. He doesn’t sound excited. I don’t know if that makes this better or worse. I need to get out of here. I need to leave the room.
“Even though you were just there?” Babe asks hesitantly.
My limbs refuse to move. They need to hear all
the details.
“Yeah, she really wants to go.”
“It’ll be fine. There’s always more to see in Paris,” Atticus says, taking a seat at the table.
Pilot stands abruptly and strides for the door. “Yeah, I have to—I have a paper,” he says.
I give it a minute before I pack up my computer to leave too. I want to be sad in the privacy of my top bunk. As I stand, the chair I was on topples backward, clanging obnoxiously against the floor.
I whip around to glare at it. “Fuck off!”
Babe and Atticus watch me silently with wide eyes. I swallow before placing Sawyer back on the table, picking up the chair, and breezing out of the room.
18. I Can Learn to Do It
January 24, 2011
Mom and Dad,
My internship starts tomorrow. My boss’s name is Wendy, and she’s already the coolest. She said if things go well, I might get to write a piece about studying abroad in London for the magazine! I spent the morning researching the company to get a better feel for their posting style. This afternoon, I’m going to put together a list of touristy things in London to try out these next few months. This way, if I get the chance to write that article, I’m prepared. Wish me luck!
XO,
Shane
P. S. I miss your cooking.
P. P. S. I like a boy. He has a girlfriend who isn’t me, and it’s the worst.
* * *
I’m outside the door of Packed!, jittery with freshly consumed caffeine pumping through my veins.
I glance at my phone again: 9:52 a.m. Eight minutes early. That should be fine. I push in the doorbell and step back as the buzzing sound blasts from the speaker.
Tracey the receptionist welcomes me in. She brings me to a little table outside the office kitchen and sets an old white MacBook on it. This is where I’m to sit. Then she speeds me around the wide-open space, introducing me to the employees. I try to take note of everyone’s name, but we only exchange quick hellos, so it’s difficult (Donna, Janet, Declan, George—and Jamie?). They’re all trendy-looking, and they all have English accents.
Then I get a rundown of their kitchen–tea station. They have cool cubed sugar, a stainless steel electric kettle, ten different types of tea, and a chart pasted to the wall with everyone’s specific tea preferences. I’m to make tea for whomever requests it. It’s a quick tour, and she finishes by leading me back to the little table with the white MacBook.
“So you can reach me on IM if you need me,” she adds before heading back to the front desk.
I carefully pull out the chair and sit. I open the MacBook and bring up iChat. Tracey’s name is there as my sole contact online.
For the rest of the morning, I obediently man my station. Any time someone walks by my table, I sit up straighter, ready to be asked to make tea. I can make you tea, I think toward them, ask me to make you tea! But no one asks me for a cup of tea. They just walk on by and start making it for themselves. Don’t they know I’m here to make their tea?
I catch pieces of conversation about different cities around the globe as people go by, but not enough to feel like I know what anyone’s working on. I watch the office breathe for hours, utterly clueless about how I should be spending my time. I instant message Tracey, asking her what she’d like me to work on, and she messages back: I’ll let you know. But what do I do in the meantime?
During high school and over breaks, I’ve always worked at my dad’s office (he’s a financial advisor). Every morning, he has his assistant email me a list of things to do. It was mostly numbing, mindless work, but from that extreme mindlessness came some of my best ideas. I’d zone out and plot stories in my head while inputting financial stats for hours. The thing is, I don’t want to zone out here. I want to zone in.
I love the cool, modern office environment. Indie, alternative music plays lightly from Spotify on an unmanned computer at the editing station in the center of the room. The editing station is a group of five big Mac desktops grouped together. The cute, young male employee I noticed during the tour works over there. He’s pale and skinny, with square black-rimmed glasses and curly brown hair. I remember his name: Declan. Then there’s the pretty brown-skinned lady with long, flowing locks who works at a desk adjacent to the editing bay: Donna. And across from her desk is I think the oldest man in here, George. He’s got pasty skin, round black-rimmed glasses, and a receding hairline. Across the room are two other desks positioned back to back. One is Janet’s, a petite black woman with cool red glasses and voluminous shoulder-length bronze curls, and the other is Jamie’s: a posh, fake-tanned, might be in her forties, intimidating, tall woman with bleached, straight hair and bangs.
The boss, Wendy, stops by at the music computer every once in a while to switch up the tunes before returning to her office. This morning, she announced that she loved Neon Trees, and we’ve been listening to their music all day. Now I like them too.
At 3:30 p.m., Tracey finally comes over to my table with a task. I straighten excitedly as she hands me a Post-it. It’s a grocery list. She wants me to pick up some groceries down at the supermarket near Covent Garden.
It’s not magazine-related in the slightest, but I happily get the groceries, eager to be helpful. When I return, Tracy tells me to search the internet for a creative-looking coatrack for the office. I spend the rest of the afternoon gathering links to weird coatracks and emailing them over to Tracey. At 5:00 p.m., she gives me a bag full of packages and tells me I can go home after dropping them off at the post office.
My shoulders slump as I thump down the stairs and out the door. That was not what I expected. I felt more like a burden that no one knew what to do with today than any sort of assistant. On the trek home, I try not to be disappointed. This was just the first day.
* * *
“I love my office!” Babe exclaims, as she drops a bag of food onto the kitchen table. “It’s covered in Disney-themed things. Everyone has little Disney stuffed animals on their desk. Oh Mylanta, it’s amazing!” The entire flat has congregated in the kitchen to discuss their first days at work. I just finished up the shawarma I picked up on the way home; it’s not Shwednesday, but I was craving it.
“I have to go back in to work in an hour,” Atticus calls from the couch. He’s typing away on his laptop. Atticus is always moving, juggling, multitasking.
“I ran errands all day: food, dry cleaning, groceries.” Sahra sighs as she puts a pot of water on the stove.
“Yeah, I did data input on a computer,” Pilot adds as he unwraps a Byron burger.
“I researched artistic coatracks for a good two hours,” I tell everyone. I glance over at Pilot sitting two seats away at the end of the table. He doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Coatracks?” Babe asks in disbelief.
I twist to look at her. “Yep, I really got an inside look at how a magazine is made.” Babe laughs.
“Sahra and I have decided we’re hitting a club in Soho this Friday. You guys want to join?” Atticus asks.
“I’m staying in this weekend,” Babe answers.
“What about you?” Sahra points her wooden spoon at me.
I can’t help glancing at Pilot again. Why isn’t he saying anything? He always wants to do things. Right now, he’s concentrating intently on eating his burger. Is he not going to come with us? I look from Atticus to Sahra.
“Okay,” I answer.
1/28/11 8:30 p.m.
Days two and three at Packed! For Travel! went slightly better than day one. I genuinely want to learn, so on Wednesday after 1.5 hours of panicked internal anguish, I got up—out of my seat and everything—with a plan. I traipsed around the office like an anxious kitten and quietly asked each employee if they would like a cup of tea. This led to mini conversations.
They would open with something like: “Hi, how are you, darling?”
And I would come in with something brilliant like: “Hi, would you like a cup of tea?”
And they would return with an e
xcited “Yes, please!” or “No, thank you!”
I made two cups of tea. One for Donna and one for Janet. I was super-nervous concocting the first cup. I mean, I’m American and they’re British. By default, they have higher tea standards. But that chart in the tea station was a lifesaver. I’ve never used these sugar cube things before, and I’m very amused by them. They should make sugar stars! And other shapes! Sugar octagons!
On Thursday, all the employees acknowledged me with a “Hi, Shane!” or “Morning, Shane!” when they came in for the day. They know my name. I’m one step closer to learning how every detail of their job works. I did a tea sweep at 11:00 a.m. and then another at 3:00 p.m. because that’s about the time I start finding it difficult to keep my eyes open at my lonely little island table.
After the morning tea circuit, Tracey gave me a task that was vaguely related to the company. They ordered five hundred canvas tote bags with the Packed! For Travel! logo on them. I had to go through them all to sort out which ones were printed correctly and which ones were printed slightly crooked, or “wonky” as the British call it. I’m learning so many new words.
At the end of day three, Donna (Irish Breakfast, one sugar, extra milk), got ready to leave, and the whole office came alive. They stood, gave her hugs, and wished her luck on her trip to Moscow. She’s going to research travel ideas for Packed! Part of her job is going to different cities, staying at different places, and exploring different attractions.
Today’s Friday, so this morning I had class and wrote another sad postcard to my parents to add to my collection. And oh, it’s been five days since Pilot and I have had a conversation. It’s almost like he’s avoiding me.
Again, But Better Page 13
