Chapter Two #3
The app is called GoodWord and I find it in the app store.
It’s free. The app was originally designed as an encouragement device, like someone can send a single encouraging message per day, intended to be received and never reciprocated.
It’s a way to receive a daily personal boost from a friend or loved one or, in my case, complete stranger.
There is a companion app called GoodWord Maker, which presumably my secret person can use to send me a message, one per day.
As the app downloads, I’m deeply moved by its description and sample images.
Some code writer out there thought it would be great to have a way to send encouragement out into the world without reciprocity.
Maybe the world is a tiny bit less selfish than I think.
I also spend a minute thinking about my secret person and how she even found this app, and what that means about her character.
Or maybe I have it all wrong and she’s just misusing a great invention for something sinister like playing with my mind so deviously.
I decide it doesn’t matter; I’m pressing on.
And pressing the “Open” button when the app installs.
The million questions I have about how the app will know which messages I’m supposed to get from whom are answered when I see that I have “One GoodWord” waiting in my inbox.
I have logged in with my email address, so I’m assuming that’s all my secret person needs to know in order to make this work.
Which is something to think about.
I open my GoodWord and read it. Over and over.
“Ready for adventure?” it says. “It feels like you might just be up for personal challenge, so this one’s for real—Karaoke Night at the Palm Frond. Show the world your song, enjoy the moment, challenge yourself. I believe in you, William.”
My heart sinks further into my stomach with every re-read.
First of all, she keeps using my full first name.
I haven’t been called William since high-school, so that clue keeps taking me all kinds of weird places.
Does she know me from before college? Is she just trying to mess with me?
I spend little time dwelling on this matter, because I can’t stop hearing the word “song” echo through my skull.
Karaoke.
Singing in public.
This is so out of character for me. There is no way in God’s green earth that I would ever get myself onstage and sing in front of people.
Sure, I’ll belt out tunes in the shower or in the car or even around my apartment, even secret performances where I imagine I have great moves.
But, in public? With other people? Hell, no.
Which brings my eyes back to the words “challenge.” This person knows this about me. I feel special and small all at once, like I’m being loved and spied on simultaneously. It’s a weird feeling and my brain spirals around the contrast.
I also notice that the nature of the task has changed. The first few were actions: go here, get that, pick up this, as if I was being given gifts in a fun, creative way. This time, there’s nothing to get.
This time, there’s just being. Doing something out of my comfort zone.
I trust from my tasks so far that this is not some weird initiation ritual, like joining a cult, and I feel confident that I’m not being trapped.
I can stop the madness anytime and move on.
But my mind is storming about how I feel.
I’m inspired by the challenge. I’m way too scared to try something like this on my own, or even for a friend, perhaps, but the courage I’m feeling about doing something crazy like this for my secret person astounds me.
Like, this might actually be the person I want to be, but can’t face it without my secret person, some unknown encourager somewhere out there cheering me on.
At the same time, I’m considering deleting the app and walking away from, well, whatever this is.
That way, I can just keep being the same, consistent person I always have been.
I also can’t get another thought out of my head: The bookstore task was meant to be a “just go get” adventure, and I turned it into something else.
That’s when I started my life of crime. Even though the shame has mostly dissipated, I can’t help but feel different, like some part of me is gently unraveling so I can knit it all back together in a better way.
I’m still made of the same old wool yarn, but I’m just seeing the possibilities of what that fabric can be made into.
I still can’t express exactly why I took the book, or why I’m not over-thinking my crime, or what it all means for me, but I feel a deep warmth in my core that something, possibly good, is happening.
And with the next task being so different, it feels like my secret person knows this too.
I’m not worried that the next task will cross a line, like there will be a demand to rob a bank, or kidnap a celebrity, or send her my severed finger, but in the simple complexity of my life, I feel as if I’ve broken through a similar barrier with consequences just as big.
It feels like I’m at a crossroads. With my secret person. This persistent thought nags away at my brain, mixing the excitement of the possibilities with the fear of what it can bring, of what I might become.
I can’t process it. My eyes flick back to the last sentence, “I believe in you, William.” I repeat the words out loud, maybe so the universe can hear them.
The words are truer than I want to admit.
I believe in you, too, I whisper to myself.
I can do this. For me. And maybe for my secret person, or because of her, I can’t decide.
I resolve then and there that my eighty-year-old self will not look back at this moment and regret being “safe.” I’m going to do it. I’m going to be a singer.
There’s so much to think about. And, I need to call Martin.
Several of us have met at Grady’s in Southtown, just for drinks and a few laughs.
We aren’t planning to be there long, but you know how that goes.
Jeannie and Brad are already there when I arrive and have drinks ordered for us all.
Brad is an operations analyst at Pratney and Jarrow and we met unraveling the mess we had last year on the Phillingham account.
After we’d put our heads together and had found the source of the problem, we’d started a friendship outside of work because we didn’t ever see each other since that one team effort.
He’s a great guy and his girlfriend, Jeannie, does something with box manufacturing.
I’m not really sure what, but she’s hilarious.
“Maybe you can help settle this dispute,” Brad tells me as I approach and grab a chair at the bar-height table with them. There’s one empty chair for Martin when he arrives.
“Yeah, what?” I say, settling in.
“Which do you think is better, the sourdough at the Village Bakery or the orange wheat at Barbell Brewery?” Jeannie is looking at me like the my answer matters a great deal.
“Are we comparing beer to bread? How can you even compare?”
Jeannie jumps in: “They’re both made from yeast, so they’re mildly related. Surely you have a preference. Which one is better?”
I look at Brad, his eyes wide like he’s trying to communicate telepathically what my answer should be.
“I like sourdough in the morning, toasted with butter. I like beer in the evening with dinner. They can’t be compared because they’re two different things.”