The Pros of Cons

by Alison Cherry

  “Eh, whatever,” I said. “I don’t really care. Get me something with cheese.”

  Phoebe rolled her eyes on her way out of the room. “Well, obviously. We’re not monsters.”

  They’d only been gone a few minutes before there was a knock on the door, and I left the interview tracks playing as I got up to answer it. “Sorry, I forgot to give you money,” I said as I pulled it open. “Let me get—”

  But it wasn’t Phoebe or Vanessa. It was Jeremy.

  “Oh!” My hands flew up to fix my messy ponytail, and then I realized I wasn’t wearing a bra, so I left my snarled hair alone and crossed my arms over my chest instead. “I, um— What are you—”

  “Hey, I brought you these.” He held up a box of saltines and a bottle of ginger ale. “Are you feeling any better?”

  “Am I … what?”

  “Your dad told me you were sick. When we had dinner last night? I wanted to make sure you had everything you needed.”

  He was such a freaking good person that it made me want to hit him and hug him at the same time. “I’m— Thank you,” I managed. “That’s so nice of you. But I’m actually not sick.”

  “That’s weird. I could’ve sworn he said you couldn’t eat with us because you had a stomach bug. Maybe I misunderstood.”

  “He didn’t even tell me you guys were having dinner. We aren’t really speaking right now.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “We had a huge fight.” I almost told Jeremy more, but then I remembered how he’d shut me down the other day. He had made it very clear that he wasn’t interested in our family drama. I waved my hand like I could erase the few words I’d already said. “Don’t worry about it. Do you want to come in for a second?”

  Jeremy looked a bit bewildered, but he said, “Yeah, okay.”

  He followed me inside and set the crackers and ginger ale on the desk, and I grabbed Vanessa’s hoodie from the back of the chair and wrapped it around myself. I was suddenly very aware of all the empty chip bags and soda bottles scattered around, and I gathered some of them up and crammed them into the tiny trash can. Soleil’s shirt was still crumpled in the corner, so I stuffed that in, too.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so,” said Scott’s voice from my laptop speakers. “It’s already weird because we’ve been friends for a long time, you know?”

  “Sorry for the mess,” I said. “I didn’t eat all of these chips myself.”

  “I wouldn’t judge you if you had. Doritos are the best. What are you listening to?”

  “Well, I was,” said Scott. “But … well, it looks like she’s not gonna show up, so. I guess she’s not interested either way.”

  “I’m working on a project with some friends,” I said.

  “Cool. A radio thing?”

  “Sort of. It’s for—”

  And then my computer skipped to the next track, and my voice came out of the speakers. “So, my mom left my dad and me a little more than a year ago because she wanted to ‘start over’. It’s not like it was a total surprise or anything—”

  I lunged for the laptop and slammed it shut, but it was too late. A crease appeared between Jeremy’s eyebrows. “Was that … you?”

  “Um. Yeah.” And then, for no reason I could fathom, I said, “Sorry.”

  “Why are you apologizing? Cal … did your parents split up?”

  I looked at the floor. “Yeah.”

  “Oh my god,” Jeremy said. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I shrugged. “You said you didn’t want to hear about my family stuff.”

  “I didn’t mean— Man, I had no idea you were going through that. Your dad didn’t mention anything about it.” Jeremy sat down on the edge of the bed. “So … where did she go, exactly?”

  “Arizona. She moved in with her boyfriend. Paul. I guess they had already been together for, like, a while. Not that she told me. My family’s not super big on telling me things, as it turns out.”

  “Do you still see her?”

  “I didn’t want to for a while, but we’re back on pretty good terms now, so I see her during school breaks and four weeks during the summer. I wish it was more. I actually just found out the other day that she asked if she could take me for the whole summer, but my darling father said no without even asking me. He told her I refused to go and that she’d have to take us to court if she wanted more time with me.” I swallowed hard. “That’s what we fought about, actually. I mean, that and the fact that I totally ruined his demo yesterday. On purpose. And I told him I was going to go live with Mom full-time. So … yeah.”

  Jeremy’s eyes widened, and I wondered for a second if he was going to reprimand me for being an awful person. But he just said, “Man, Callie. This all sucks so much.”

  I nodded. When I’d told Phoebe what was going on with my family the other day, the words had come out just fine, riding a wave of anger and adrenaline. But now it felt like they were piling up in my throat, stopping my breath. “Just twenty more months until I turn eighteen, and then I don’t have to live with anyone. I can make it that long, right?”

  “Hey,” Jeremy said, his voice so gentle it hurt. “Come here.”

  I went over and sat next to him on the bed. He put a hand on my back, and it felt safe, like someone was anchoring me. My eyes filled up with tears, which I tried my best to blink away.

  “They love you so much,” Jeremy said. “Both of them.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Sure I do. I basically lived at your house when you were little. I saw how you guys were together.”

  “It’s not like that anymore.”

  “Your dad couldn’t stop talking about you last night, about what an advanced taxidermist you are. He showed me like twelve pictures of the raccoon you mounted. It’s really good. He loves having you in the studio with him.”

  I shook my head. “He only wants me there because I’m useful. I could send a raccoon-mounting robot in my place and he wouldn’t even notice the difference.” I sniffled hard. “It’s just … if he doesn’t even care about me, why is he trying to keep me from spending time with Mom? I don’t understand why he won’t let me go, you know? It’s like he’s just holding on to me out of spite.”

  “He’s holding on to you because he wants to keep you close,” Jeremy said. “Remember how you said the other day that he was crazy controlling? He wouldn’t try so hard to keep you near him all the time if he didn’t want you around. He’s probably afraid he’s going to lose you like he lost your mom. It must’ve been a huge blow for him when she left so suddenly.”

  “It wasn’t at all. It’s not like he paid any attention to her when she was there, so why should he care that she’s gone? He doesn’t even miss her.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Jeremy said. “I bet he’s hurting a lot. Sometimes people don’t realize they have a good thing until it’s too late.”

  I knew Dad was angry at Mom for abandoning us, but he’d never acted hurt. After she left, he stopped talking about her completely, like she had never existed at all. I had always assumed it meant he didn’t care, and the possibility that it might mean something else made my stomach turn over in an uncomfortable way.

  “Well, that’s stupid,” I said. “He should’ve paid attention when it actually mattered, and then maybe she wouldn’t have left.” I reached for a tissue from the bedside table. “If I leave, too, maybe he’ll actually decide I’m worth something.”

  “Or maybe he doesn’t want to let you leave because he knows exactly how much you’re worth already.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I shrugged.

  “Listen, I don’t want to tell you what to do or anything, so take my opinion with a grain of salt,” Jeremy said. “But maybe you shouldn’t write him off completely? Try to understand his side of things a little bit? I know he’s not the most open person in the world, and he’s not very good at talking about his feelings. He obviously hasn’t made you feel very loved,
and your anger at him sounds pretty justified. But I think it’s possible you two are kind of going through the same thing. So, just … think about that?”

  I didn’t want to think about it. My fury was safe and uncomplicated, a lofty tower where I could lock myself away and judge him. I didn’t want to consider the possibility that all those times Dad and I stood next to each other at the prep table, passing tools back and forth, he was suffering in silence, like me.

  But at the same time, I couldn’t completely dismiss what Jeremy was saying. The reason I’d kept assisting my dad all this time was because it was the one way I could bridge the vast distance between us. As long as there were raccoons to stuff and birds to flesh, there was a reason for us to communicate, and I needed that—I had already lost one parent, and I couldn’t lose the other, too. Maybe Dad was doing the same thing. After all, Mom had offered to pay for him to hire another assistant for the summer, and he’d turned her down. It was possible he really did want me, specifically.

  And now I had snipped the few remaining threads holding us together.

  “This sucks,” I said.

  Jeremy gave my back a little rub. “I wish I could help.”

  I reached for another tissue to wipe my blotchy face, and my eyes fell on the blue registration folder sitting on the night table. I hadn’t opened it since our first day here, but I knew there was a ticket to tonight’s awards banquet tucked into the right-hand pocket. And as nervous as it made me, I suddenly knew what I had to do.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You’ve helped a lot already. But I think I can handle the rest on my own.”

  As soon as Phoebe and I left Callie’s room, Phoebe started texting. From the look of extreme stress on her face, I guessed it was one of her band people—maybe even that guy Scott.

  “Hey,” she asked, as I pressed the down button on the elevator. “Can I meet you at the crepe place after you drop off the forms? Brian said he’d meet me for a few minutes.”

  Oh, so not Scott. Brian, her best friend.

  “Sure,” I said.

  The elevator arrived, and the doors opened to reveal two guys—a Gandalf and a skinny guy holding a mounted jackalope—eyeing each other distrustfully.

  We rode in silence until the third floor, where Jackalope Guy stepped off. As soon as he was out of earshot, Phoebe whispered, “Fly, you fool!”

  Gandalf, of course, cracked up.

  When we reached the convention center, I wished her luck with her friend, then headed off to the A-wing, Creativity Corner form in hand. There was no line at registration, so I stepped right up to the desk, where a bored-looking, pink-haired woman was doing something on her phone.

  “Um, ’scuse me,” I said.

  She jumped, startled, but then gave me a huge smile once she’d recovered. “Hey, look! A real live human to talk to! You looking for an agent pitch session slot? We’ve only got one left.”

  I smiled to myself, remembering Callie’s interview with Ms. Scherer, and how that awful-sounding guy had interrupted them. “No, actually. Sorry. I’ve got my entry form for the Creativity Corner. Do I give that to you?”

  “Indeed you do,” she said, holding out her hand. I handed the paper over, and she skimmed it, muttering to herself. “Names of participants, good … format, oh, interesting … name of— Oh, hey, sweetie. Your entry needs a name.”

  I pushed my glasses up my nose, looking down at the empty space on our form. “Um. Well, we don’t have one yet. And it says you have until four o’clock to email audio-format entries …? Right?”

  She nodded. “Four o’clock for the actual material, yeah, but they do need a title now. It doesn’t have to be perfect. They’re judging you on the content, not the title.”

  “Oh. Okay, hold on.” I pulled out my phone, intending to send an emergency group text … but then I had an idea. It was kind of dumb, but it worked pretty well for the way our story was shaping up so far, and the other girls wouldn’t be mad if I didn’t ask them first, right? No, they weren’t like that. I took the form back from the pink-haired woman, grabbed a pen off the desk, and wrote our title in all caps.

  “A Thousand Feels,” she read with a smile. “Very nice. You’re all set! And you have the email address to send your final file, right?”

  I nodded. “Thanks!”

  And I started to walk away, toward crepes and my friends and another several hours of surprisingly fun editing work. But then I stopped.

  The night before last, after Callie had fallen asleep, I’d had an idea for a new story. I’d taken my laptop into her bathroom so my typing wouldn’t wake her up, and I’d kept Ms. Scherer’s advice in mind, and I’d started writing. And I’d continued writing all yesterday morning, instead of going to any of the panels at WTFcon. Now I had five brand-new pages of something I actually really liked, something I actually wanted to continue, and I’d just been told that there was one agent pitch session left, and if that wasn’t the universe trying to tell me something, then I’d eat a taxidermy jackalope.

  Heart absolutely pounding, I went right back to the registration desk.

  “Sorry, hey, hi,” I said. “Um, how much for that agent thing?”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, I was waiting for my turn in the hallway outside room A-21—the very same room where Soleil, on that first panel of hers, had ditched “Carry Me Home” and read one of her solo stories instead.

  In my left hand, I clutched the first five pages of my own solo story, which I’d printed from the A-wing’s business center.

  My right hand held my phone, which I’d just used to send a text to Callie and Phoebe. I’d apologized for how I was gonna be late, explained why, and said I’d grab our crepes as soon as I was done. Phoebe replied almost immediately with, Don’t worry about the food! I got it! Callie, a few seconds later, added, Good luck!

  There were six or seven people waiting in the hallway, and every single one of us perked up when the door to room A-21 opened, and sure enough, out stepped the WTFcon volunteer in charge of keeping the pitch sessions organized.

  She squinted at her tablet, then looked up at us. “Karen?” A dark-skinned, spiky-haired girl raised her hand. “Holly Bowen-Davies is ready for you. And … Vanessa?” I raised my hand. My sweaty, shaking hand. “Wendi Scherer’s ready for you.”

  Karen and I exchanged tight smiles, and we followed the volunteer into A-21. The room was totally different from the last time I’d been here. All the audience chairs had disappeared, leaving a space that was empty except for four desks, one in each corner. Behind each desk was a professional-looking person. Two of them were talking to people already, and the other two were just sitting there, waiting.

  “Karen, Holly’s over there,” said the volunteer. “And Vanessa, there’s Wendi.”

  Yup, there was Wendi. Sitting behind a desk, perfectly coiffed and super professional and so intimidating that I came pretty close to turning and running out the door and out of the convention center and out of Florida altogether. But I took a deep breath. I tucked my phone into my pocket, clutched my five pages, and started walking toward her.

  “Hi there,” said Ms. Scherer, as soon as I got close enough. She gestured toward the folding chair that faced her. “Have a seat. Hey, weren’t you in my workshop the other day?”

  I nodded as I sat. “I’m, ah, Vanessa.”

  “And I’m Wendi,” she said in the same friendly teacher voice she’d used at the workshop. “Nice to see you again.”

  I nodded and nodded. Then stopped nodding, because I should probably actually say something, because that was the whole point of this, right? Me saying things?

  I put my pages on the desk and rubbed my hands on my denim-covered thighs to get some of the sweat off and took a deep breath and tried to get my thoughts in order.

  Ms. Scherer—or Wendi, apparently—glanced down at my pages. Her eyes moved, like she was reading. “Is this the same story we talked about in the workshop, Vanessa?”

  I no
dded—then made myself stop. “No.”

  “All right,” she said. “I ask because I remember you saying that you hadn’t written anything beyond the first chapter. And it’s not usually a good idea to try to find an agent for a book before it’s finished.”

  “I know,” I said truthfully. She’d said the same thing in the workshop. “And I’m not actually, uh. I don’t want an agent. I mean not yet. Not right now. Um.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “In that case, I should probably ask why you signed up for one of my pitch sessions. Since the whole point of pitching your book is, well, trying to find an agent.”

  For some reason, the fact that she was kind of sarcastic made me like her more. I started talking.

  “Okay, so yeah, I know that’s the point of this—pitching and stuff—but I actually wanted to talk about what you said in the workshop.” She frowned politely, tilting her head a little to the side. “You gave me notes. You said my dialogue was good but it needed to point toward something. And you said the seeds of my book needed to be in the first chapter. And I said I didn’t know how to do that because I didn’t know what the rest of the book was about yet, so you had the whole class talk about stuff I could pull from the dialogue and make into a story.”

  Wendi nodded. “Did any of the class’s ideas resonate with you?”

  “Some,” I said. “But I’ll be honest: Most of what, um, resonated with me was how I had this huge fight with my roommate later that day, and it made me think about … about … I dunno, people’s personalities? And character motivations, and getting inside other people’s heads, and … and I’m not sure how to describe it. But I wrote it down.” I put my fingertips on my five pages and pushed them a few inches toward her. “I know this probably sucks, because it’s just a first draft and I haven’t even looked it over or anything, but that’s because I wasn’t even planning on coming here today. I literally just signed up twenty minutes ago. But, see … um, I took your notes. I made the dialogue point toward something. And I … um, I wanted to see if you think I’m doing it right.”