Prologue #2
At this, I laugh. “Well, you look like a kid.” I sniff. “And you smell like a kid.”
When he shouts, “Well I’m not!” I rear back. He might be a demon.
“You’re kind of feisty for a guy who lost it all at the Alamo,” I tell him.
This simultaneously confuses and silences him.
Around us, the other mentors begin enthusiastic reads of their picture books, and I wonder how the hell they know how to do that. I’m the middle sister of three girls, but Remy is only a year younger than me. There are no surprise babies in my house. I was a kid the last time I was around one.
I clear my throat. “We’re supposed to be reading.” I gesture at him with my magazine that is in no way age appropriate. “Wanna look for words you know or something?” Amanda’s reading a book with large letters on the cover. “Or say the alphabet?”
He crosses his little arms over his little chest. “I hate reading.”
“I hate small spaces,” I offer. “But I still go in the walk-in cooler at the diner when I work.”
“So?”
“So, just because you hate something doesn’t mean you get to skip it.”
He scowls at me. “Why not?”
“Because if you don’t read, you won’t make it very far.” I tap the magazine. “And sometimes you have to do things you don’t want so you can get the things you do.”
“Like what?”
“Like this.” I wag a finger between us. “I have other things I’d rather be doing, and you don’t like reading, but I’m doing my part.”
“So.”
“So?” Now I straighten. “So you aren’t, and I need you to if this is going to work.”
Again, he says, “So.”
“So I need you to do what you’re supposed to.” My voice is clipped. “And I’m older than you so you have to listen.”
He shakes his head, and my need for his compliance rattles me. I don’t know what I expected out of this, but it wasn’t to be paired up with a defiant little asshole.
I let out a sharp breath and pivot. “What’s your favorite color?”
Silence.
“What’s your favorite food?”
Nothing.
“So you don’t eat?”
He looks at me; I will not lose my cool.
“What do you like to do?”
He. Does. Not. Speak.
And though I don’t care if he likes me, as everyone around us easily takes turns reading with exaggerated smiles, I’m losing a game I didn’t know I was playing.
I hate losing. I won’t. I don’t care how much of a waste of time this is, I refuse.
If I don’t get this kid to read to me, I might as well stamp failure on my forehead.
All that matters is you try your best! taunts me from the walls and makes my middle finger twitch.
I rip a sheet of paper from my spiral notebook, write can you please read with me so I don’t look stupid? then slide it across the table to him.
He looks from the words to me and reluctantly asks, “What’s it say?”
At this, a secret is revealed: Davy Crockett doesn’t hate to read, he doesn’t know how.
It softens me like a cold stick of butter in a microwave on high.
I thumb through the pages of the magazine. “It says I don’t like listening to people read so I was wondering if you’d let me read to you instead?”
A flicker lights in his eyes just fast enough for him to mask it. “I guess.”
I land on an article titled “Is Glass Broken?”
From the summary, I gather it’s about manufacturing costs and how recycling isn’t panning out the way environmentalists were hoping, but the first paragraph explains how glass is made—a seven-year-old might like that.
“Should we learn about glass?”
He shrugs and eyes the picture of a landfill covered in bottles.
I take it as a yes and begin. “‘The secret of making glass is found by mixing the perfect combination of silica sand, soda ash, limestone, and heat,’” I read. “And—”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means if you have the right sand and enough heat, you get something pretty cool.”
“Hot sand?” He does a double take. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He’s intrigued; I continue.
I read about scientists being fascinated with the fact glass isn’t quite a solid but definitely not a liquid, triggering design trends focused on the fluidity of the material.
The demand for glass is at an all-time high, which has led to increased energy use.
I read about cullet, pieces of recycled glass that could potentially lower the cost of manufacturing if the costs of recycling weren’t so high and the process so flawed.
I read about the waste in the process and that hardly anything recycled is really being recycled.
What a con.
“What does that mean?” he asks again.
“Means that glass prices will go up.” The next page is filled with bright images of glass-made items. A blue swirled faucet on a modern sink.
A sleek, window-covered skyscraper. A display of colorful glass baubles hanging from an atrium ceiling made by a glassblower named Dale Chihuly at his current installment in Chicago.
Even tech companies have hopped on the glass train, using it in wires and screens, trying to make it thinner and stronger.
“And the people with the most glass will be the ones with the most money.” I point to one of the skyscrapers and grin.
“I’m going to work in a building like that someday. ”
“Hm.” He leans close enough to the picture his little nose almost touches it then points at one of the blue-green artistic baubles. “I like these better.”
They’re beautiful. Like a scene from a Dr. Seuss book was plucked from a page then turned into glass. “Maybe I’ll buy a chandelier made of them someday,” I tell him, closing the magazine. “I’m going to be rich.”
His eyes widen. “I’ve never met a rich person.”
“Well. Now you almost have.” I smile. “I’ll be loaded.”
“Where are you getting the money from?”
I haven’t figured out the specifics, but it will be in finance.
“Be the best at my job.” I give him a conspiratorial smile.
“Work so hard I’m the most important person in every room so nobody can do anything without me.
” I have no doubt I’ll accomplish that. I’m just a waitress at a diner now, but my boss tells me all the time that I go above and beyond, proven by me having the most tips at the end of every shift. “You’ll see.”