Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Winnie poked around the internet, looking at carnival ideas and DIY videos for how people had put them into action.
There was a lot of great material to work with, and a lot of people who showed how to make things fun on a budget.
This was obviously ideal, since you wanted to spend as little money on a fundraiser as you could, without compromising quality, of course, so that you could end up as far in the black as possible.
She perused supplies for a bobbing for apples game that hung the apples from the limb of a tree on a string, rather than putting them in a bucket of water.
She’d been thrilled to find this alternative to the classic harvest game, as the string method struck her as more hygienic and less messy than the bucket of water way.
She had a vague memory of attending a fall festival as a child where one of the kids had fallen into the apple barrel, which had ruined the whole event for the kid and ruined the event for everyone else, since nobody much wanted to put their faces in after that.
She was thinking about the best way to quickly swap out the strung apples so that as many kids as possible could participate in the event when she was drawn out of her reverie by the ringing of her phone. She felt her heart rate increase notably when she saw who was calling.
“Oh, hi, Lyle,” she said, feeling uncommonly nervous about a phone call with her boss.
“Hi, Winnie,” he said warmly. “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
“Not at all,” she reassured him.
“Good,” he said. “I meant to call you earlier. Well, I meant to catch you before we all went home for the day, but paperwork caught up with me,” he amended with a rueful chuckle.
Even though Lyle couldn’t see her, Winnie made a sympathetic face. That was one part of his job that she did not envy. Lyle always seemed to have about a billion forms that he needed to fill out, and as soon as he completed one set, there was another one waiting for him.
“Seriously, it’s no problem,” she assured him. “I was just doing some research, anyway. For the fundraising.”
It was likely to be the only reason that Lyle was calling her at seven o’clock in the evening, so Winnie decided to rip off the proverbial band-aid and introduce the subject herself.
“Exactly what I wanted to discuss,” he said approvingly. “I hope this means you’ve been making some progress with coming up with something innovative for this year?”
He didn’t sound like he was trying to put a lot of pressure on her, but Winnie felt it anyway. She had made big promises to her boss, and she very sincerely hoped that she was not about to let him down.
“I hope so,” she said. “So, I’ve been working on this idea for a carnival, only it’s based on historical events…”
She went on to explain her vision, mapping out how the events could be organized chronologically, either based on the era in which they were popular, such as the games that were played in colonial eras, or the toys that had a boom in the 1950s, or based in the era whose history they were meant to represent.
“I talked to Garrett Wilder over at the hardware store,” she said, “and he said it would be cheap and easy to source some boards that could let people playact at building the old stacked fences they had in the late eighteenth century,” she explained.
“And I thought we could do a ‘flagpole sitting’ competition, like the ones that were popular in the 1920s. I’m going to contact the high school to talk about borrowing some of their gym mats for safety. ”
Lyle’s contemplative pause felt excruciatingly long.
“I… like that,” he said eventually, and Winnie felt herself let out a sigh of relief. “Of course, the true test will be the success of the event.”
“Of course,” she agreed, pleased that she sounded calm even when this caused a serious uptick in her nerves. It stunk that she would have to wait until the event actually happened to know if her idea had been a good one or not.
“And,” he added, sounding as though he was thinking even as he spoke, “I do feel a tiny bit worried about what the usual patrons will feel about this more family friendly version of the event, since they’re accustomed to something a bit more elegant and classy.”
“I was thinking we could do an adults only night,” Winnie said.
“Since it will take a while to set up the whole carnival, it seemed like something where we could run for a whole weekend, not just one night. Then, maybe on Thursday or Friday, as a preview, we could have the upscale version. People would dress up, we would have drinks, that kind of thing. My hope was that some of the regular patrons would come back later in the weekend with their kids or grandkids, once they see that there’s fun to be had for everyone. ”
“Well, I do like that,” Lyle said, the words coming a little more quickly this time, to Winnie’s enormous relief. “And I like that it’s different. This is good work, Winnie. You should be pleased with yourself.”
She was pleased with herself, come to think of it. And she thought that she might be blushing a bit too, come to think of it.
“I… thank you, Lyle,” she said, pressing a hand to her warm cheek. She was very glad he couldn’t see her at the moment. “That means a lot.”
“Keep working on it,” he urged her. “Start making plans more concrete. We’ll touch base about this again soon.”
Winnie assured him that she would, then hung up the phone, feeling like she could jump for joy.
She felt as though she were filled with bubbles, as though her insides held the same effervescence of champagne. She needed to tell someone about this.
She glanced down at the phone in her hand. She could certainly call Miriam. She was starting to feel comfortable enough with the older woman that she thought that she could ring her up to share some good news. She’d be nervous about it, certainly, but she could do it.
If she was being honest with herself, however, Miriam wasn’t who she wanted to talk to…
And then, almost as if by magic, her phone rang in her hand. She smiled, so broad it had to look goofy. This was exactly who she’d wanted to share her news with.
“Shane, hey!” she said. “Perfect timing. You were just who I wanted to talk to.”
For a split second, Winnie feared that she had revealed too much. She was normally reserved, but the problem with Shane was that he was way too easy to talk to. But she could hear the smile in his voice too, when he responded.
“Well, me too, obviously, since I called you,” he said with a chuckle. “But what’s up? Something specific you wanted to talk about?”
She relayed everything about her conversation with Lyle, her words skipping over themselves in the rush to get out. Shane made appreciative noises at all the right moments, and listened patiently as she ran through the details.
“That’s amazing, Winnie,” he said. “I mean, I knew the idea was amazing, obviously. But it’s super exciting that your boss sees it too. You should be proud.”
Winnie’s cheeks hurt from all the smiling. “You know, I am proud,” she said. “And I couldn’t have gotten here without you, so thank you.”
“Aw,” he said. “You didn’t need me, not really. I was just there to bounce ideas off of.”
“Agree to disagree,” Winnie teased, then paused as something occurred to her. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You called me to tell me something, and then I just blathered on about myself all this time! What’s new with you?”
He quickly filled her in on his impromptu tech work for Diana.
“And it was just fun to get my hands on a keyboard again,” he admitted. “I still don’t know if this is the answer to my career problems, but it’s… good. For right now, it’s good. And I think I might pick up a few more odd jobs around town, at least while I’m here.”
Winnie knew it was probably foolish, but she felt another little shiver of excitement at the idea that Shane would be staying longer, even just a little bit longer.
She would miss him when he went back to California, but she reassured herself with the idea that this phone call had gone well.
Maybe they could be long-distance friends.
Winnie was, of course, not an expert, but she thought it could work.
She and Shane could keep chatting. It was one of the marvels of modern technology.
“That’s amazing,” she told him sincerely. “I can’t believe we’re both having professional successes on the same day. And I’ve actually got one more, if you can bear to add another piece of good news into this conversation.”
“Can anyone ever have enough good news?” he teased. “Give up the good news, Burnett.”
She laughed at his jokingly commanding voice.
“Well, it’s not as concrete as the other two things,” she admitted, “but I took your advice about opening up to the book club. I told them all about the carnival idea, and they had tons of thoughts! But more than the feedback, it just felt really nice to let them in.”
“Aw, Win, that’s great,” he said. “I know that it’s not easy to be vulnerable, but you’re crushing it. You have a goal, and you’re working toward it, and that’s incredible.”
For all that she had struggled making friends, Winnie had never really suffered from a lack of praise in her life.
Her parents had been intensely supportive, and though she’d lost them far too soon, she’d still had academic success to bolster her, and she’d always done pretty well for herself professionally.
But Shane’s praise felt better than those other kinds, she found.
“Thank you,” she said. She didn’t know if she’d ever meant it as sincerely. “I feel like we deserve to celebrate all these accomplishments.”
Again, Shane didn’t let her frisson of nerves last for longer than a heartbeat.
“Yeah, absolutely!” he agreed. “What do you say to a celebratory dinner tomorrow night?”
Winnie had never understood what people meant when they said that their hearts skipped a beat… but now she did.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding even though he couldn’t see her. “That sounds amazing.”