How To Find Your Future

16 - Mothers, Daughters, and Sisters

Olivia

I lay on my back on my bed holding one of the million pamphlets up above me.

A girl with her hair in a ponytail stands on the cover with a huge fake smile and a thumbs up. Under her picture are the words Nursing Heals. I wish I had known that this pamphlet was cheesy when I picked it up. It's all about how nurses spend a bunch of time with sick almost dying people and how just spending time with them heals their disease. It's so fake.

I close it and throw it on the ground with the other discarded ones. All the ones I've gone through and thrown on the floor are all the same level of cheesiness. They don't teach anything about any of the jobs. They just show the benefits of working there. They don't show any of what the work is like or where to even start. How am I supposed to have an interest in these jobs if I don't have any information about the job itself?

I fish around my bed trying to find another pamphlet in the pile that I haven't gone through yet. But as my hand keeps moving around on my fuzzy blanket and not finding anything of the smooth texture of paper, I sit up. My hair falls into my face and I blow it out of the way. I look down at my bed where I had spread the pamphlets out and find only my gray blanket uncovered. I must have gone through all of them.

I look at my pillow where I had put all the ones that had caught my interest and that I want to show Charlie. There's about five sitting there. I already cringe as I turn and look at my floor that I know will be covered in ones that didn't catch any more of my attention. I sigh when I can't see any of my carpet. I roll off my bed and onto my floor and start picking them up one by one.

His fingers brush mine. I jerk back and hit my head on his.

I drop the papers as the memory flashes by. Why did I think of that now? I shake my head. It's nothing. Nothing at all. Just a random memory that's similar to what I'm doing now. Just, there's no Charlie this time. That's the only difference.

"Olivia?"

My head jerks up and I drop the few pamphlets I had picked up. "Mom? What are you doing home already?"

She blinks slowly like she doesn't understand what I just said. "Honey, it's already five."

I freeze. "It is?"

She sighs. "What have you been doing since you got home?"

I look around me at the mess on my floor. "Going through these."

Mom walks farther into my room. She bends down and picks one of them up. Just from the slogan on the back I can tell it's the dentist one. Smiles from you means smiles for them. I laughed for about ten minutes at that.

"What are these?" she asks. She bends down and picks up a few more.

"Pamphlets from different jobs."

"Where did you get them?" She looks up at me from over the papers.

"Charlie took me to a job fair yesterday."

"Charlie?"

I nod. "The boy who offered to help me find a career that I like."

Mom raises an eyebrow and purses her lips. "I thought we agreed you didn't need his help?"

I lean back until I'm sitting with my back against my bed. "That's what you said. I never agreed to that."

"But why look when you already have a career set up?"

I sigh. "Mom. I told you this. I don't want to work there for the rest of my life. I need something that's for me."