The Friend Game (Games for Two #1)

Chapter 1

THIS IS FINE.

Completely fine.

“F-I-N-E,” I mouth the letters, putting my fisted hands in the air like the cheerleader I never was. “Fine!” My voice squeaks on the completed word. Probably why I never made the team. My execution has never been great. Plus, the cheer captain Lana Marie Bell never liked me, thanks to my mom giving her a C-minus in 9th grade English. Although c’mon, y-o-u-r means your, Lana, y-o-u-'-r-e means you are.

But I digress.

Not even my pathetic attempts at cheerleading can salvage this situation. I kick one of the couch cushions lying on the floor, then survey the chaos of my living room: pillows strewn about, books all over the floor, random knick-knacks thrown off my coffee table, every surface emptied of its contents. And still no memory card.

With a heavy sigh I look over at my dog, Holly, who looks back at me with an equally morose expression, sharing in my angst. Then again, maybe not. She’s a basset hound. Her expression is always morose.

“Where is it?” I ask her desperately. “Where. Is. It?” I sink down onto my bare couch, wincing as my butt lands on a spring. Holly waddles over and sets her head on my lap. “This is not a big deal,” I tell her. “Hugo will forgive me. The Mattisons will forgive me. People would rather remember the day with their minds than have actual photographic proof of everything that happened, right? It’s more important to capture the moment with the power of your mind than the power of a Nikon camera. Your mind can’t be lost in a fire. Photos can. Besides,” my voice cracks in hysteria, “how many people actually even look at their wedding photos?”

Holly removes her head as my body starts shaking with sobs.

“Everyone! Everyone looks at their wedding photos, Holly! And I lost them! Hugo is going to fire me! The Mattisons’ life is ruined. They’ll probably end up divorced and rueing the day they hired me, Hannah Garza, as the assistant photographer on the most important day of their lives.”

My phone rings, cutting off my sobs. Hugo. He’ll be wanting me to send over the photos. I was supposed to have them to him this morning, would have had them to him this morning if that stupid two inch blue memory card hadn’t vanished off my coffee table! Because that’s what happened. I absolutely did not lose the memory card. Nope. It just disappeared. Harry Potter probably summoned it away. Oh my goodness, I could really go for a summoning charm right about now.

The phone continues to ring. Any second it will go to voicemail. The third time in the last two hours I’ll have allowed that to happen. Which means Hugo will already be angry with me when I do finally call him back.

“You will always answer my calls,” he told me gruffly when he hired me a month ago to be his assistant photographer. “I am a busy man. Don’t like waiting for people.”

Slowly, I reach for the phone. “Hi, Hugo,” I whisper.

Four minutes later I’m fired.

My career as a photographer over before it really even got started.

***

“Fired? Already?” My sister Jill is aghast as she clutches her coffee mug and stares at me with round eyes. It’s the morning after the explosive ending to my short photography career (and I do mean explosive literally; Hugo burst a blood vessel in his eye yelling at me), and I’m seeking sanctuary in one of the living rooms of Jill’s ginormous house.

“Hannah! That’s your third job in six months!” my other sister Brooke exclaims, then grimaces. “Sorry, you know that already.”

“Technically, I wasn’t fired from my job at the museum,” I protest weakly, leaning back against Jill’s sofa and letting my head flop down.

“Just banned from the premises, and therefore unable to be an employee there,” Brooke says wryly.

“Hey, what happened with the dinosaur skeleton was not my fault. That kid said he had cancer! That it was his dying wish to touch the T. rex. I had to let him touch it. Anyone with a heart would’ve done the same.”

“Maybe,” Jill agrees. “It was just bad luck that the director of the museum walked in when he did,” she adds kindly.

“You mean right when the kid was taking a selfie with Hannah behind the rope, both smiling wildly as they gripped the T. rex’s leg bone.” Brooke shakes with laughter, and even Jill can’t suppress a giggle.

“The scientific name is tibia,” I reply primly, but this only sends them into another fit of laughter. I hate my sisters.

“I’m sorry.” Jill nudges my calf with her toe. “We should not be laughing at you. In fact, I read the most inspirational story about this very topic the other day. A guy kept losing jobs because of crazy circumstances beyond his control, but he overcame his adversity and found the perfect job for himself in the end.”

“Really?” I stare at her hopefully. “Circumstances crazier than getting fired for touching a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton?”

“Well, at least on par with that,” she amends. “Once he knocked down a whole barn just trying to get rid of a rat infestation on a farm.”

“Oh my gosh!” Brooke gasps in horror. “That’s awful.”

“Insurance probably covered that, though,” I say with a fresh wave of somberness. “I lost a memory card with a couple’s wedding photos on it. You really can’t put a price on that!”

“Well, another time, this guy got fired from the circus,” Jill adds. “ He almost killed a lion. And you know, nothing is more precious than life. Not even wedding photos.” She eyes her own wedding photo displayed prominently on the wall. I don’t miss the hint of doubt in her tone.

“He almost killed a lion?” I ask dubiously. “Who was this guy?”

“Uh, I doubt you’ve heard of him.” She takes a hurried sip of coffee before continuing. “His name is, uh, Cliff. Cliff something-or-other.” Jill coughs, then sets her mug on the coffee table. “Anyway, the point is that, as I said, he ended up with a great job that he was perfectly suited for. And if it can happen for Cliff it can happen for you.”

“Cliff something-or-other?” Brooke echos, raising one perfectly manicured brow. “You know, I actually think I’ve heard of this guy. Liam mentioned him to me.”

“Oh yes,” Jill shoots Brooke an annoyed look, “I was so inspired by his story that I mentioned it at the dinner table the other day. Liam really resonated with it too.”

“Really?” I say again in surprise. Liam is Jill’s 6-year-old. I love the kid, but I didn’t think he resonated with anything beyond Spider-Man and Buzz Lightyear.

“Well, he liked the ending because of the job Cliff ended up choosing.” Jill explains.

“And what job did Cliff end up choosing?” I lean forward in spite of myself, feeling that familiar flurry of hope in my stomach. Hope that maybe this job idea will be the one. The job that finally sounds right. The job that excites me.

“Police do—” she cuts herself off, “man. Police man.”

“Police dog?” I narrow my eyes at her. “Did you just almost say police dog?”

“What? No,” Jill laughs shrilly, shifting suspiciously in her seat. Brooke’s lips are pursed together, and now I’m the police, cracking the case of who exactly Cliff something-or-other actually is. Liam. Cliff. Police dog.

“Oh my word, Jill!” I exclaim. “You’re trying to give me advice based on the life of Clifford the Big Red Dog!”

“What?” Jill assumes her best Jill Bernard, media consultant face. Incidentally, it’s the same one she uses with her two kids, “No, I did not put vegetables in those muffins, Ellie. Those green specks are just bits of fairy dust .”

“I absolutely was not trying to give you advice based on Clifford the Big Red Dog! I was trying to make you feel like you weren’t the only one out there who has struggled with finding the career they're best suited to.” The woman knows how to spin. She’s basically Rumplestiltskin with a bob.

“That’s right,” Brooke chimes in. “She wasn’t giving you advice based on the life of Clifford, she was just comparing your life to Clifford’s life.” Once again she can’t control her laughter.

“Brooklyn Natasha Garza,” Jill rises to her full seated height, “stop undermining my pep talk!”

“Sorry,” Brooke says, sounding anything but. “You know pep talks aren’t my forte.” This is true. Brooke is a straight shooter. On the plus side this means if she tells you your new haircut looks stunning, it does. On the not so plus side, if she tells you your new perm makes you look like the blonde before version of Anne Hathaway’s character in Princess Diaries , it does.

Actually, that might also be why I didn’t make the cheerleading team in ninth grade. Curls are not my friend.

Jill’s doorbell rings, interrupting our conversation, and she stands to go answer it. “Don’t worry, Han,” she says as she heads out, “you’ll be back on your feet in no time. And in the meantime you know Max and I love having you in our guest house.”

She disappears through the doorway, and I stare after her with a weird mixture of gratitude and jealousy. My beautiful, successful, older sister has the life of her dreams. An exciting career working with her senator husband, two adorable kids, a golden retriever that just got featured on the cover of the August/September issue of Dog Mania , and this gorgeous six bedroom home that comes complete with a guest house in the backyard. The guest house that Holly and I have been occupying for the last seven months while I, as Jill continues to insist on calling it, get back on my feet. Sadly this phrase only serves to make me feel like I’ve sat down in a poorly stuffed bean bag chair and sunk so far into the floor I can’t get back up. I’m going to need some major intervention to make it happen. Please somebody grab my elbows and just yank .

Still, I can put up with Jill’s word choice if it means living rent free in an 800-square-foot house that overlooks a sparkling in-ground pool. Not to mention the free dog poop removal it comes with because, that’s right everyone, Jill and Max Bernard are wealthy enough to pay someone else to pick up their dog’s poop. The American Dream. Or at least an offshoot of it.

I’m guessing that’s who’s at the door now, since I saw the truck parked outside on the curb when I walked over this morning. They must’ve finished.

“So what career are you going to try next?” Brooke asks, picking up her jumbo-sized water bottle and taking a long sip. Looks like she’s behind this morning on her 'drink a million ounces of water per day' goal. She hasn’t even hit the first of the eight motivational sayings lining the bottle. You know, things like, “Chug it!” and, “You’ve almost reached camel status now, girlfriend!” Or something to that effect. The point is, usually by this hour she’d have hit motivational statement three, two at the very least. Guess I’m not the only slacker in the family.

My triumph is short-lived though as she finishes drinking, and stares at me expectantly. With resentment I notice she’s now past motivational statement one, “Don’t think, just drink! ”

Well,” she prompts in response to my silence, “what’s it going to be? You’ve done the graphic design thing, you had that brief stint as my interior designer, worked at the history museum, you were a photographer’s assistant—what fabulous job do you have in mind next, my lovely art major sister?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I say into my lap. The thing is Brooke isn’t making fun of me, she really does want to know. And usually I’d be excited and ready to share my next career goal with my family. Two days after the T-Rex incident I sat on this very couch and showed Brooke and Jill Hugo’s advertisement looking for a photography assistant, telling them how I was certain this was it, the career of my dreams. I was going to be a photographer and take the wedding circuit by storm.

And the time before that, mere hours after I finished redecorating Brooke’s office at her piano bar and dance studio, I explained to them that I’d discovered I didn’t care much for looking at paint colors and flooring samples after all. Instead I was going to use my art degree at a museum, starting as a guide and hopefully working my way up to being a curator. I had it all figured out.

Each time, l’d had it all figured out.

This time, though, everything feels different. Maybe it’s because this time, my career change came at the expense of a couple’s important memories. Yes, there’s definitely that fact weighing me down, but there’s something else too. I’m starting to think that there may be no right job for me, that maybe I’ll just mess up any job I have. Maybe I’ll have to live in Jill’s guest house forever, sinking lower and lower into the beanbag chair of my life until I’m lying flat on the floor, dead.

Not to be dramatic or anything.

“Hannah! Oh my goodness, Hannah! Come here!” Jill’s excited voice sails through the house.

Brooke and I exchange a look as we both hop up and head for the front door. Jill meets us halfway, beckoning us forward.

“Marty from Scoop the Poop Express is at the door,” she tells us, “and you’ll never guess what he has!”

“It better not be a job offer,” I mutter as I follow after her, “because even I can’t get excited about a career in poop.”

“You know what they say,” Brooke says from behind me, “love what you do…do.” She pauses to laugh. “Get it, doodoo?”

“My 28-year-old sister, folks,” Jill says with a shake of her head. “Anyway, it’s not a job offer. Just hurry up and come see!”

We round the corner to the foyer, where a man who I presume is Marty stands staring up at the huge chandelier on the ceiling. He starts to attention when he hears our arrival .

“Marty! The man of the hour,” Jill trills. “Show Hannah what you found in Holly’s,” she stumbles over her words, grimacing slightly, “in the, uh, backyard,” she amends. Always a spinner, that one.

Marty steps forward, palm extended. “I was picking up poop when I spotted something bright blue in one of the canine excrements.” He flips his palm down, holding the corner of a ziploc bag between two fingers. My eyes land on the familiar blue item inside, and I gasp.

“The Mattison’s memory card!” I leap forward and grab the bag, then promptly drop the bag as my brain puts together the fact that this memory card was in Holly’s, uh, canine excrement. Eww.

I recover quickly though, scooping it back off the floor (it’s in a bag after all, and what are Lysol wipes for if not moments like this?). “Marty,” I exclaim, going in for a hug, “you’ve saved the day!”

Marty blushes. “Just doing my job, ma’am.” He taps the logo on his brown polo shirt. “It’s all part of the services you receive when you hire Scoop the Poop Express.” He smiles. “Get twenty dollars off your next poop removal when you refer a friend.”

There’s a beat of silence as my sisters and I all process this, then Jill turns to me .

“This is great, Hannah! Maybe Hugo will give you your job back!”

Spoiler alert. Hugo does not give me my job back. But after I explain to the Mattisons what happened, not only are they thrilled beyond belief, but they’ve never heard of a company that picks up dog poop for you. Apparently, they, like Jill and Max, have enough extra income to pay someone else to pick up their dog’s business. So, I don’t get my job back, but I do earn Jill and Max a twenty dollar credit on their next Scoop the Poop Express bill.

So at least there’s that.