Chapter 4
News flash: I am not good with either kids or traffic. And, as it turns out, kids plus traffic is the sum total of what crossing
guards need to be good at.
I’ve been on the job for two weeks, and every day is a nightmare of screaming, sprinting kids and drivers with a fetish for
kid-flattening.
“Heeeeey, buddy,” I say, as a kid approaches the corner. I say it the way you might talk to a horse, or a bear—the kinds of
animals that can smell fear.
This kid can totally smell my fear.
He’s glaring at me and wielding his dinosaur lunch box like he might swing it at my head, but despite this, I squat down to
his height, so he can see me as friendly and approachable. I smile like I’m not scared of getting brained by a lunch box.
“How about today, let’s stop at the curb and wait for me to go out first, okay?”
The kid narrows his eyes at me. I narrow mine back.
“Don’t even think about it,” I say.
The little turd grins and then sprints at full tilt across the street, flipping off the drivers who, thankfully, for once, are actually paying attention and screech to a halt to avoid steamrolling him.
That’s it. I am going to get fired. Again. I have one job here and it is literally to not let anybody die, and it is exceedingly
clear to me that sooner or later I am going to fail.
And look, I tried not to take this gig, I really did. I tried to come up with my own solution and get a real job. But it turns out word travels fast when you show your (actual) ass in
a client meeting. Chicago’s a small world when it comes to boutique marketing agencies, and the only thing Kendra loves more
than work is work gossip. I figure everybody in the city knew my bra size by EOD.
At some point, I’ll need a new job, or even just an extra job, because this one pays peanuts and my savings, as previously
indicated, are nil. But my first priority at the moment is insurance, because all these heart attacks aren’t going to pay
for themselves. I don’t even have Chris to hand me paper bags anymore.
So here I am.
Standing on a street corner, wearing a neon traffic vest that very much does not match my fabulous business casual outfit
and espadrilles—neither of which are technically regulation crossing guard attire, but I just can’t bring myself to wear the baby blue polo and knee-length navy shorts that
make me look like a deranged mailman. Oh, and I’m holding a stop sign the size of the friggin’ sun.
And that’s not even the worst of it. Kids flipping the bird at speeding SUVs are a minor annoyance compared to my new archnemesis.
AKA: Poodle Dude.
I don’t know his name, I just know that he drives a seafoam-green Kia Sportage and has at least three standard poodles, because every time he drives past, there’s a poodle sticking a white, fluffy head out of each passenger window.
He comes through my intersection every day at the same time, and every day he is somehow more pissed off than the last. Best of all—he seems delightfully hell-bent on running me over.
Poodle Dude actually speeds up when he sees me and then screams at me for being in his way.
It’s definitely personal.
Days like this, I really miss that shitty copier.
“Hey, I mean it, slow down!” I shout, chasing after another child with a death wish. Like I needed the job to be any harder, this kid isn’t even going
the right way—he’s hustling away from school, like he forgot his lunch or something. By the time I’ve made it to the middle of the intersection, the kid has
already sprinted across the street, toward the construction site on the opposite corner featuring my favorite view: a half-built
and possibly abandoned parking garage.
Whew, these suckers are fast.
I realize I’m still standing in the middle of the intersection when a car honks at me, the driver yells, “What the hell is
your problem?!,” and I shuffle back to the curb sheepishly. Meanwhile, the kid ducks under a hole in the chain-link fence
surrounding the abandoned construction site. This doesn’t strictly seem “safe” or “legal,” but there haven’t been any actual
construction workers here since I started at this job, so I guess it’s fine? I mean, what can be in there other than a lot
of rusty nails and loose pipes and chain saws and stuff. Totally acceptable shortcut for children.
Anyway, the fence and the construction site are not my realm.
My realm is the street, I think dramatically as I pull out my phone to check the time. Please let this shift be over soon.
“You’re not supposed to look at your phone,” says a kid next to me, looking at her phone.
My face gets hot. “I’m not looking at my phone, I’m checking the time.”
“On your phone.”
“Well, yeah.”
“So you admit you were looking at your phone.”
“I . . . that’s . . .”
We face off for a second. She’s probably twelve and she’s weirdly confident and has a lot of pink hair. Her eye contact is . . .
intense. Honestly, she terrifies me.
I may be new to dealing with kids, but there’s one thing I do know: Don’t argue with the tweens. They will destroy you.
After a long, tense moment, I realize that she’s actually just waiting for me to walk her across the street. She doesn’t think we’re in a face-off. She couldn’t care less, which somehow only makes this even more humiliating. I sigh and
step into the crosswalk, stop sign held high, before she and her friends cross.
“Have a good day,” I mutter.
“Always do,” she says cheerfully.
Must be nice.
I’ve just turned away from her when I catch a glimpse of the older lady who lives in the house just to the left of the construction
fence. She’s hard to miss, always sporting a huge floppy green hat. That, and she resents me with an intensity that could
probably heat my apartment.
My first day on the job, I smiled my biggest “be nice to the olds” smile and tried to crossing-guard her, but as I held my
sign up, she stopped dead in the middle of the street. She folded her arms over her chest, and said, “I’m not a child, I know
how to do this by myself.” She wouldn’t finish crossing until I went back and stood on the curb. She even made me turn my
back to her so I “wouldn’t be tempted.”
Another time, she hid behind a tree for a full seven minutes. We locked eyes. “Don’t even think about it, ma’am!” I yelled.
“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, you fascist!”
“Just because I wear a uniform—” I started to argue, but before I got any further, she ran right into traffic, yelling at a car for almost plowing her down.
Needless to say, she is not my biggest fan.
So I’m obviously thrilled she’s back.
This time, she ducks between two parked cars, her green hat bobbing above the roofs, like she’s in a knockoff Mission: Impossible for old ladies. I wave and shout, “Good morning, ma’am!” so she knows I’m onto her.
Then, as I’m herding the next wave of children, she speed walks across the middle of the block, nowhere near the crosswalk.
And flips me off in that old Italian way where it’s your whole arm.
I flip the bird back at her, going on adrenaline and pure instinct. The kids in the intersection giggle and immediately start
flipping each other off. Meanwhile their parents go stone-faced, and whoops—like I said, not great with kids.
I am really doing an excellent job of charming the residents of my new neighborhood.
The first bell rings, which means it’s almost time for the grand finale of my morning: Poodle Dude. Worse than judgy parents,
mean old ladies, and death-defying children put together. It’d probably be funny if he wasn’t out here trying to run me over
on the regular.
Every day, I dread the approach of 8:13 a.m. (Poodle Dude is very punctual). Getting yelled at and nearly run over is not good for my nerves, which are not good to begin with. My chest feels
tight in anticipation, so I try to breathe through it like Hannah taught me. She’s the reason I have this job, so what the
heck—I might as well lean in and UPGRADE the situation. If that’s possible.
And since the G in UPGRADE is for Ground Yourself, I give it a shot.
The breathing doesn’t work, of course, but I power through anyway. I’m just wrapping up the four-part breathing, trying to calm myself, when my exhale gets caught in my throat.
Because holy shit. Forget Poodle Dude. My life may be about to change for the better.
But first, let’s back up.
So, both my new apartment and my new job are in Buffalo Park—Hannah was right about there being some cheap options up here.
But Buffalo Park is in the nosebleeds of Chicago. I might as well be in Wisconsin. And the people who live here are not the
quick-walking suits I’m used to. Everyone who crosses the street has either a dog or a kid. And sure, my job is at the junction
of a school and a dog park, but still.
Point is, I never thought I’d see someone I know in my new neighborhood.
And yet, half a block away, walking toward me and scrolling on his phone, is Mark Sunari.
This is a message from the universe. This is hope, in the form of a mustache (they’re back again, apparently), a patterned
shirt, and cuffed pants.
This is a lifeline.
Mark is VP of Creative at Livewire, another scrappy little marketing agency in the city. We met at a networking event about
seven years ago, and he was chill and smart and told me to reach out if I ever wanted to leave Kendra. We’ve crossed paths
here and there, and he always remembers my name.
He hasn’t seen me. Yet.
I have to think fast.
I shove my stop sign in the bushes and make my way toward him, remembering at the last minute that I’m wearing a vest you
can see from space. I rip it off, ball it up, and do the only thing I can think of: Shove it down the back of my skirt.
“Oh my god! Mark?” I say, trying to sound casual.
He looks up and does a double take. “. . . Mo Ellery?”
“Yeah!”
He blanches.
Shit. He knows about my little, erm, HR indiscretion.
That’s okay—this is part of Hannah’s UPGRADE program too. The R: wRite Your Own Story (or Someone Else Will Write It for You).
Sure, the R’s sort of shoved in there, but the message is solid.
“This is so funny! Do you live around here?” I ask with lots of friendly, nonthreatening eye contact.
“No, but the, um, the guy I’m dating does,” he says, and he is literally looking around like someone might save him from me.
Time to turn up the charm. “Nice! I haven’t been here long, but I like it. New place, new me! I’m shaking things up!” Then
I plaster on a confident smile and lean in, like I’m sharing a juicy secret. “You know, after my short-lived career in accidental
Zoom porn.”
He laughs at this, a little cautiously, but I can tell he’s warming up, all because I broached the subject myself. Man, Hannah
is good.
I keep up the confessional tone. “It’s a very ‘lemons into lemonade’ situation. It gave me an excuse to move on, find a new
challenge. Things were getting a little stale over there, you know? I’d already been thinking, ‘I wonder what cool stuff Livewire
is up to these days?’ ”
Boom. Operation Get Hired is officially underway.
“Sure,” he says slowly. “But, like, you did flash the entire senior leadership team at Midwest Tool Warehouse, right?”
“Look, Mark,” I say in my best givin’-it-to-you-straight voice. “I’ll be honest. I know I’m pretty spicy property right now,
but I respect what you’re doing, and I’ve got a killer portfolio featuring 300 percent increases in web traffic, 200 percent
increases in newsletter subscribers, and almost 0 percent nudity.”
He actually smiles a little, and I think my spin is starting to work. My mom would be so proud.
“Maybe we could get coffee,” I add with a grin. “How’s Friday?”
He opens his mouth to reply, but before he can squeeze out the “sounds good” that I so desperately need, a car horn blasts.
We both turn to look.
No. Not now.
The seafoam Kia Sportage, poodle ears blowing in the wind.
And it’s racing toward my intersection. Meanwhile, I’m halfway up the block with Mark, and if I turn my back on him, he’s
going to see the vest balled up in my waistband.
But also . . . on the far side of the street, a distracted dad scrolls on a phone, and his kid barrels toward the curb, totally
unsupervised.
Come on, universe. This feels downright biblical. Do I seriously have to choose between Mark (glorious future) and some random kid
(shitty present)?
I watch in horror as the Kia closes in.
And it is not slowing down.