Dear Ginger,
Thanks for the encouragement. Some people say it's wrong to kick someone when they're down, but not you. YOU march to the tune of your own demented drummer. Don't let anyone tell you different.
Love always,
Your older, wiser, and far better-looking sister
A fistful of mayonnaise makes a decent projectile in a pinch. If I'd been thinking more clearly, I would have grabbed a handful of jalapenos instead, but my vision did this red blurry anger thing and when I ran after Brady Willardson's black Jeep, what I threw was . . . mayo. It's probably harder to clean up and it's better that way, really. Less damage, bigger mess. Dumb kid. I owe him twice that for the way he trashed Handy's. I only wish I didn't mean that literally.
I trudged back inside the sandwich shop, and the door swept aside approximately a thousand of the napkins Brady and his lame friends had strewn all over the floor. I scooped a few up and wiped the mayo off of my hand. Katie and Tara huddled behind the sandwich bar like the sneeze guard was their last line of defense against me. Which it was.
I said nothing, just stared. Katie cracked first, like I knew she would.
“I'm so sorry, Pepper,” she said, verging on a blubber. “I don't know what happened!”
I lifted one eyebrow slowly, the way my mom did when I was little, and I knew the longer it took to reach its full arch, the more trouble I was in. Even mouthy Tara shifted nervously now. I slowly scanned the wreckage inside Handy's Dandy Sandwiches and then eyeballed them again. “How do you not see this coming?”
A high-pitched seal bark escaped Katie. It was her nervous laugh, an involuntary reflex that I hoped for the sake of her future social life, she outgrew soon. Her laugh had summoned me from the back office to catch Brady Willardson's Band of Merry Teenage Idiots wreaking their usual havoc in the dining area.
A visit from Brady goes like this: he shows up flanked by at least two of his wing men and proceeds to put on a show to impress the girls. This involves flinging packets of condiments, punching each other, littering, and otherwise ignoring the counter girls they're there to impress. I guess not much has changed in the five years since I graduated from high school.
This afternoon's special performance reached new highs—make that lows—when one of Brady's atrophied brain synapses fired off what his underworked neural receptors interpreted as a “good idea.” The ensuing napkin fight resulted in shrieking, giggling, and Katie's panicked seal-bark. I walked out to discover her and Tara hiding behind the storage room door while one of the teenage terrorists lay pinned to the floor by a larger tribe mate brandishing a squeeze bottle of ranch sauce over his head. All this while Brady tried to breach the storage room in search of . . . who knows what? More projectiles for lame teenage boys to throw when their hormones suffer a sun flare, I guess.
Don't judge me for chasing them out and lobbing a chunk of fatty mayo at their car. It was the least violent of all the impulses I entertained when I saw the napkins they flung all over the floor. They didn't quite cover a few dozen smooshed mustard and ketchup packets. Worse, enormous handfuls of busted salt and pepper packets formed a fine grit over the whole stupid mess. No, don't judge me. The only shock should be that Brady and his stupid lift-kitted Jeep didn't get what was coming to him months ago. Maybe I should keep an extra dozen eggs and a slingshot on hand as Brady repellent.
A tear formed in Katie's eye. Knowing that a sobbing high school sophomore was not going to help my mood, I sighed. “All right. Here's the lecture. They can't eat here anymore. Call me out if they come back in. Clean up. If you want a paycheck next week, don't distract me again until payroll is finished.”
The tear quivered and then rolled down Katie's cheek, but she looked surprised and then thankful when she realized I was done.
“That's it?” she squeaked. Tara elbowed her and Katie bit her lip while I glared once more for good measure, then headed back toward the office. I could hear them scrambling behind me to clean up. Satisfied that they would have things righted within the hour, I settled down to make sense of the Payroll and Asset Manager program still open on the computer screen. Stupid PAM. I think she had it in worse for me than Brady and his army of condiment hurlers. Awesome. I still had a long afternoon to go at my dead-end sandwich job with only a creeping tension headache to keep me company.
What a way to spend my birthday.
* * *
“Happy Birthday!”
The chorus of five chipper voices greeted me when I walked in the front door. I stopped short, sure that the small surprise party waiting for me was a figment of my imagination. It had to be, because I had given my family strict orders to ignore my birthday. I planned to spend the evening wallowing in the room I shared with my seven-year-old sister, moping over the extreme sucktasticness I had achieved in my tweny-three years. I intended to bounce around my friends' Facebook pages, envying their cool trips and great jobs, while I tried to figure out how my life had become an Epic Fail. My evening definitely did not involve a cheesy family birthday party that I'd forbidden several times. Loudly.
But no, when Rosemary detonated a party cracker near my ear and Ginger sprayed me down with enough silly string to soak up even the most aggressive BP oil spill, I had to concede that my family had in fact thrown me the world's weakest surprise party.
My mom's smile told me she knew they were on thin ice.
“What is this?” I asked, my head pounding worse than ever.
“A surprise party, duh.” Ah, Ginger, an enemy of the obvious.
“Mom, I told you I don't want to do anything for my birthday.”
“And I think that's ridiculous,” she said. “Twenty-three is a big deal and at the very least you deserve cake with your family.”
“Twenty-three is not a big deal,” I said. “It's boring. There's no milestone. There's nothing I can do today that I couldn't do yesterday.”
My brother Mace tore himself away from picking at the frosting long enough to say, “Twenty-three is a prime number. You can't even divide it by anything. It's totally lame.”
I glared at him.
“What?” he said. “I'm backing you up.”
“I'm with Mace,” Ginger chimed in. She's halfway through her senior year and the resident pain in the neck. “I can totally see why you're depressed. I mean, your age is lame, your job is lame.” She swiped her finger through some icing and took a little cake with it. “I'm sad for you,” she said, her mouth full.
“Ginger!” Mom was struggling to hold on to her temper. Ginger has that effect on people.
“Forget it,” I said. “She's right. There's nothing to celebrate, which is why I said I didn't want a cake or a party.”
“But it's good!” Rosemary shouted. “I picked chocolate.”
My jaw dropped and my mom flushed. I like chocolate everything—except cake and ice cream.
“Rosemary really wanted it, and I got you butter pecan ice cream.” My dad looked both sheepish and hopeful as he added the last part, as if it would compensate for once again indulging one of Rosemary's whims. She's hard to resist, and the fact that she's a surprise baby eight years younger than fifteen-year-old Mace doesn't make it easier.
“But it's my birthday cake!”
“That you didn't even want,” Ginger pointed out. “You should chillax. You're getting older now. You could have a stroke or something.”
That was it. Remembering the satisfaction of watching the mayo drip down Brady's car, I stalked to the counter where Mace had tugged the cake to the edge so he could sneak the frosting more easily. I reached out a finger like I was going to swipe some too but instead, I flipped the whole thing over, pleased when it crashed to the floor and splattered chocolate chunks on Ginger's shoes.
“These are new!” she yelped. “I just got them! Mom!”
That got no reaction because Mom was busy trying to comfort a wailing Rosemary and Mace was trying to get to the cake board to see what he could scavenge. My dad stared at me, one eyebrow inching its way skyward, and then he pointed at Rosemary. “Apologize,” he said, his voice calm.
I ignored the tiny pang of guilt somewhere around my appendix or some other useless organ and headed up the stairs. “I said I didn't want a party!” I yelled over my shoulder.
“You get back down here right now,” my mom hollered up the stairs.
I slammed my bedroom door.
My room didn't improve my mood. A room shared with a seven-year-old rarely does. The Strawberry Shortcake on Rosemary's comforter mocked me with a serene blank-eyed smile, and the bare walls on my side of the room didn't offer a better distraction.
Flinging myself on my bed didn't help because I knew Rosemary would be crashing my pity party any minute. Seven-year-olds don't understand boundaries. I lay there for all of three minutes staring at her collection of American Girl dolls on the opposite wall who all stared back creepily before the door flew open. Rosemary stood there, fists on hips, looking cute, tear-streaked and mad.
“You ruined my cake!”
The seed of guilt my dad's look planted blossomed into an acknowledgment that I was possibly a horrible human being to make Rosemary cry. I clung to surliness to save me. “It was my cake,” I said. “It's my birthday, remember?”
“But I picked my favorite flavor for you, and me and Olivia worked on it so hard this afternoon! She's going to think you're so mean,” she said, as if I cared about her best friend's opinion.
Which okay, I did. It's not like I plotted ways to hurt the feelings of seven-year-olds. “Rosemary, I hate chocolate cake. Didn't Mom or Dad tell you that?” I asked instead, determined to rationalize my poor behavior.
“Yes, but I made yours special with chocolate chips. I even had to find them in the cabinet all by myself because they didn't come in the box, and you ruined it.” More tears welled. I felt some of my own pricking my eyeballs. I hate being a sympathetic cryer.
I pulled my pillow over my head, clinging to righteous indignation so she couldn't guilt me into feeling worse. Or crying. “Go away, Rosie.”
“It's my room, too. You can't make me leave.”
“I need some time to myself,” I said. “Why don't you go to Olivia's and complain about how awful I am?”
“You're rude!” she yelled, but the idea of relaying all the drama to Olivia must have appealed to her because I heard the door shut behind her. I enjoyed about thirty more seconds of blank-brained quiet before a sharp knock sounded and peered from under my protective pillow to find my dad poking his head in.
He waved at the foot of my bed. “Is that seat taken?”
I shoved the pillow behind me, then shook my head and stifled a sigh, knowing I was in for it.
He sat for a moment and studied me with a half-smile. My dad has mad skills that are like, Dr. Phil level. Except my dad is nice. Which makes it hard to kick him out of my pity parties. “So when you say you don't like chocolate cake, what you really mean is you hate chocolate cake's guts?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Hey,” he said, giving my foot a gentle shake. “Where did your sense of humor go?”
“I don't know, Dad. Probably down the same black hole that sucked all the other good things out of my life.”
He sighed. “Do you think that's an overstatement?”
Ah, the joys of having a marriage and family therapist for a dad. They're obnoxiously reasonable and hard to ruffle.
“No. I don't.” I punched my pillow, trying to shove it into a more comfortable lump.
He didn't say anything else, just watched me with his patient therapist gaze.
I groaned. He still stared.
“Fine, I'll talk,” I said, struggling to sit up straight.
“Resistance his futile,” he intoned in his best robot voice.
“Let's start with the fact that I'm not overstating what a disaster my life is,” I said. I crossed my arms tightly across my chest to communicate that I was totally not playing.
“Okay. That's as good a place as any.”
“I have the worst job, I live at home and share a room with my kid sister, I have no social life and I'm still nursing a broken heart.”
“That's quite a list,” my dad said. “Let's take them one at a time. The worst job? Really?”
“Yes. I have teenage customers all day long. I have teenage employees. And even the non-teenage customers are cranky all the time. And I have a college degree, for Pete's sake. Why am I managing a sandwich shop?”
“Yes. Why are you managing a sandwich shop?” my dad echoed. His tone was neutral but I wasn't fooled. He was using what he likes to call “reflective listening,” a therapist term for spending an hour saying, “How do you feel about that?”
“Don't you do your counseling voodoo on me,” I grumbled. “I'm on to your tricks.”
He smiled. “This is dad voodoo. I'm in here right now because I love you and I'm worried about you. You flipped over the birthday cake that Rosemary worked all afternoon on. I thought I better find out if there was a good reason for that. It's not the action of a happy daughter.”
“It was chocolate,” I muttered under my breath.
Dad let that pass because he's smart. “So, your job. Maybe it's not the job you want, but it pays the bills, right?”
“Not fast enough,” I said. “Otherwise I wouldn't still be living here and sharing a room with Rosemary. And before you say it, yes, I understand the law of natural consequences. It still stinks. ”
Natural consequences was another one of his favorite expressions. He and my mom loved to throw that out there any time one of us kids was verging on or recovering from a disastrous choice, which is the perfect way to describe my broken engagement and the mountains of resulting debt. No doubt we'd be analyzing that soon. It was a perfect example of their mantra. “You're free to make your own choices and you're free to pay the consequences.”
The payment of my consequences turned out to be super literal when my ex-fiance, Landon, forced me to call off our wedding a week before the date. I had paid for everything myself and I had a massive credit card bill to prove it. That's because it was the second time in two years that we'd called our wedding off. The first time my parents had footed the bill. They loved me, but not enough to do it twice. Even though my sandwich wages would (barely) cover rent in a borderline apartment somewhere in Salt Lake City, I had to move back home so I could pay my credit card off faster—a credit card my parents had advised me not to get in the first place. Right after they advised me not to marry Landon. In the gentlest terms, of course.
When I announced that the wedding was off (again) and I wouldn't be moving out, they didn't so much as hint at “I told you so.” They did, however, inform me that they had promised Ginger her own room for the first time ever and they weren't going to renege, which meant I had to swap places with her in the shared room with Rosemary. I guess my dad was absent from his family therapy class on the day they taught that family harmony depended totally and utterly on each child having their own room. That, or my parents didn't want to pay for a six bedroom house. Whatever.
“We've covered the bad job and sharing a room, which just leaves your social life and your broken heart. Might I guess that those two things are related?”
I shrugged. “Guess all you want. I'd rather not talk about this part.”
“Then I will,” he said with an easy smile. “How long do you think you're going to mourn the end of your engagement? It's been seven months.”
“You of all people should understand that these things take time,” I said. “You're supposed to be on my side.”
He ducked down to stare me in the eyes. “I am always on your side, Pepper. Always. That's why I'm going to dish out a little tough love.”
Aw, crud. Nothing good has ever followed those words.
“I have watched you climb out of depression and cheered for you, but you've hit a plateau. I'm worried you'll back slide if you don't do something soon to fight this funk you're settling into. And you are settling. Almost everything you've mentioned as wrong with your life is something you have the ability to change. But you don't. Why is that?”
“I can't change any of it,” I said. “I can't give up my job or I can't pay off my debt. If I don't pay off my debt, I can't move out of the house. As long as I'm at home, my social life will continue to be severely limited. I definitely have grounds for a funk.”
“I didn't say quit working, but there's no reason you can't find a different job.” He tapped his finger on my knee. “You said it yourself; you're college educated. What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“It's an English degree, Dad. A bachelors in English qualifies me to do exactly what I'm already doing. Manage a sandwich shop.”
“If only I had known that when I signed the tuition checks.” He shook his head sadly. “I'd have made you switch to cosmetology school.”
“What a waste. I'd have failed hair brushing 101 and been kicked out. You can write that check for Ginger.”
“I will when it's her turn.” She had a five year plan that involved opening her own salon, and a ten year plan which included world domination via beauty spa. She already worked part-time as a receptionist at the trendiest salon in town.
Even though I knew what was coming next, I couldn't resist a smile when he broke into the chorus of “Beauty School Drop Out” from Grease, his mellow tenor doing Frankie Avalon proud.
“It should have been you instead of Landon,” I grumbled when he was done. “You have a way better voice.”
He reached over to ruffle my hair. “I think I'm a little too old for The It Factor,” he said, naming the show that had stolen my fiance from me. “I'm happy with my adoring fans here at home.”
“Dad, you're starting to make me feel better, and it's really annoying. Could you leave me to sulk in peace?”
“I would if I didn't love you. But the tough love is just beginning. I'm serious about you changing your job. This one isn't making you happy. What do you want to do instead?”
Before Landon and I broke up, I hadn't worried too much about my future career plans. I had toyed with the idea of journalism in high school, but I met Landon as soon as I started BYU and suddenly my goal was to marry, settle down, have babies, and support Landon in his career. There was no way I could work when he was going to be on the road all the time touring. I only got my degree because my parents had pushed me to get it, and I picked English because that way I could at least spend some time reading and discussing interesting literature. Once Landon and I married, I figured if things were tight at first, I could work as a freelance editor to pay the bills until Landon got his break. The only problem was, Landon got his break way sooner than either of us expected, and it included a break from me. Permanently. I sighed. “I don't know what I want to do. Not make sandwiches. Beyond that, I haven't figured it out. It was hard enough to get this job with the economy as bad as it is.”
“Really?” my dad asked, nudging my foot. “You really have no idea how you want to put that English degree of yours to use?”
I flushed. I knew he was hinting at my blog. “Blogging doesn't require an English degree,” I said. “And it doesn't make any money unless you're crafty and have a billion followers to click on your sidebar ads. I'm not and I don't.”
“But you love writing,” he said. “And people love reading you.”
“A few,” I said.
“A few hundred,” he corrected me. “I've seen that people counter thing on your blog page.”
“My blog isn't going to make me enough money so I can quit my job,” I said. “And I don't want to trade jobs to something for better pay but that I hate even worse.”
“It sounds to me like you have all kinds of excuses for not moving your life to the next level,” he said.
I shot him a wounded look. “What do you want me to do?”
“Find your bliss!” he said. “Find whatever it is that makes you happy and do it, because what you're doing right now isn't working.”
True enough.
“Choose right now,” he said. “If Handy's closed tomorrow and it freed you to find a different way to pay the bills, what would you do?”
I didn't actually have to think about it. A daydream had evolved over the last few months of sandwich assembly, my “if only” scenario I hadn't shared out loud with anyone. But my dad could read it in my face.
“What is it?” he prompted me.
“Writing,” I said. “I want to be a reporter, do some slice-of-life stuff but for a bigger audience than my blog.”
“Then do that,” he said. “Dream big, Pepper.”
I entertained the notion for half a second, the idea that I could be a famous writer, find a super hot boyfriend, a cute apartment, and new friends to hang out with Friday night. I would write a fat check to pay for the last of my wedding debts and have money left over to buy a stack of new release books and a box of expensive chocolates to while away every Saturday afternoon. Maybe . . .
“No,” I said out loud. “It wouldn't happen. No one is going to hire me when my only experience writing is from my blog and some old college term papers.”
“Excuses, Pepper. We've let you make them for months and it's not helping you or any of us.” For the first time I saw true frustration on my father's face. “I'm going to give you a writing assignment that I use with clients at work. Consider it practice. Every week for the next year, you are going to write a thank you note to someone in your life.” He held up his hand when I started to protest. “I mean it. You have spent so long feeling sorry for yourself that you are losing the ability to see the good things in your life. Maybe when you start recognizing the blessings you have, others will reveal themselves. You need an attitude of gratitude.”
“Geez, Dad. You sound like a motivational poster in a guidance counselor's office. Can I get a 'Yay, team'?”
“I'm serious, Pepper. Your moping is unacceptable. And if you find your life unacceptable, then you need to change it. This has been a fantastic therapy for people with far worse problems than yours.”
“I don't need therapy, and I'm not going to write a bunch of cheesy notes to people, Dad.”
“That's your choice,” he said. “But here's your consequence. We'd be pretty rotten parents if we stood by and did nothing while your life went off the rails. We will not be enablers. If you choose not to take this opportunity to grow by writing these thank you notes and looking for a new job, then we'll assume that living at home is holding you back because we're keeping you too comfortable.”
My mom slipped in to hear the last part of my dad's speech and the lack of surprise on her face told me they had discussed this well before the Cake Tipping Incident.
“You're okay with this?” I demanded, my voice rising in panic. “You would kick me out?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don't try to guilt trip us, Pepper. You can afford a room somewhere on your salary and you can still make your credit card minimums. We're not exactly dooming you to homelessness.”
“But I'll never make a dent in that bill if I only make the minimums!”
She shrugged. “It's the law of natural consequences. You'll never make a dent in your self-pity if you stay here and keep doing what you're doing. Believe it or not, we're trying to help you.”
My mom is a substitute teacher. She's immune to drama and far tougher in the tough love department than my dad. My stomach flopped knowing that things just got real.
“So that's it?” I said. “I'm supposed to fill out a few job applications and write some thank you notes or I'm cut off?”
“See it for what it is,” my dad counseled. “This is a growth opportunity. Use it.”
My mom tugged on his arm. “Let's let her think it over, Grant. Think about your brothers and sisters too,” my mom added. “You can be a good example or a horrible warning.”
Ouch.
“Our imaginary maid has forever off, so I expect you downstairs within ten minutes to clean up the cake mess,” she said on her way out.
My dad stopped at the door. “Before you do that, you owe both of your sisters big apologies and I think Rosemary is really going to make you work. She's completely justified, by the way. Suck up like you mean it.”
I let the door click shut behind them before flopping over on my stomach and pounding on my pillow for a while. I was okay with the apologies, but the rest was so unfair! Wasn't I proving that I was taking responsibility by trying to pay back my debt? Apparently it wasn't enough, though. I had to do it with a smile. Ugh.
I dug my beat up laptop out from under my desk and logged into Facebook, scowling when a sidebar ad suggested that I “like” Landson Scott's fan page. Of course. “Being a grown up is overrated,” I typed into my status bar. It took Ginger all of thirty seconds to comment. “Ur overrated.” With a growl, I typed back a response thanking her for her consideration.
Well, that was one note down. Only fifty-one to go.