"So what, now we're going to live together?" Jamie takes another step towards me. "That's your idea of a good plan?"
Unwilling to back down, I poke a finger at his chest. "This is my family's house. Not yours. I have every right to be here."
"Newsfl...
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Despite the shambles my life is in, I’m actually fairly good at organizing people. I think it goes back to my days as a drama kid. Theatrical productions have so many moving parts, you have to be able to order things or there’s no way the show will come together. I assign each of the temps a section of the room to work in and show them how to arrange the different categories of boxes so that they’re neatly sorted. By the time Amanda rejoins us, her hair rebraided and her shirt no longer inside out, almost everything is packed up again.
She falls into the chair next to me. “How did you do that?”
I hold up the paperclip butterfly I’m currently working on. “This? It was mostly Owen.”
As soon as I’d shown him how to link the paperclips together, he’d gone nuts, making me six necklaces and a crown for each of us. Now he seems to be trying to figure out how many paperclips he can slide onto one loop.
He’s so smart. I don’t get why he doesn’t talk. His mom confirmed that he’s five years old, and every other five year old I’ve ever met was like a water fountain, just spewing words nonstop. They’ll take a simple thirty second story and turn it into a ten minute ordeal, where all the details are given out of order and repeated at least twice. But I can’t even get Owen to laugh. The closest I’ve gotten was one more of those adorable, dimple-y smiles.
“Yes, Lissa,” Amanda deadpans, tearing my attention back to her. “I really want to know how you turned my parents’ stationary into a weird shaped flower.”
I stick my tongue out at her. “It’s a butterfly, and now you’ll never know.”
She sighs. “Seriously, though. How are you so good at this?”
“I think the real question is, how are you so bad at it?” I glance at her. “Didn’t you go to business school?”
She glowers at me. “Yes.”
“Don’t they teach you this stuff at business school?”
“They teach you how to run businesses,” she protests. “Not people.”
“Don’t businesses usually involve people?”
“I know. I know!” She buries her head in her hands. “I’m just not good at this part. I like the numbers. Maximizing profits, increasing overhead, using assets to their full potential.”
I know what some of those words mean.
Amanda looks up at me miserably. “I really want to prove to my parents that I can do this. They’re so protective of this place, but I have so many ideas about how to improve it. I feel like they’re testing me with this event coordinator job, and now I’ll never get to show them what I can do because I’m incapable of getting a handful of teenagers to move some boxes around without it devolving into chaos.”
I pat her knee comfortingly. “Amanda, this was just one day. Nobody does a great job every day, all the time. You’re going to have plenty of time and chances to impress your parents.”
