A heavy weight crushes my chest, just another reminder of my emotional scars. “Some things just aren’t meant to be.”
Caroline’s attention is back on me. Both of them are clearly hoping for more details. But they’re about to be disappointed.
“You already know what happened. He went home for Christmas break and got back together with his high-school girlfriend. There’s not much else to tell.”
“But things had been going so well with you two,” Sylvia says, kicking one foot into the air.
“I was a rebound.” I like to tell myself this late at night as I try to fall asleep. I tell myself it doesn’t matter that I gave him up without a fight because I would have lost him anyway. Too bad I don’t believe it.
“Ouch.”
I shrug.
“You know what they say about getting thrown off a horse. You need to get back up there on it.” She winks. “And by get back up on, I mean—”
“Yeah, I get it.” I laugh, but it’s forced—her joke comes a little too close to home. “I’m too busy. School and work take all my time and energy.”
“You know that’s just an excuse, don’t you?” Caroline asks. “I was busy with the fashion show and I still found time for Reed.”
“Excuse or not, this is my choice.” I put enough force into my words to get them to drop the subject. “Working on the summer program for the kids is my focus right now. I’m still trying to find the right location.”
“I thought you had a place.”
“We do, and it’ll work, but it’s the local park. I’d like to have a variety of activities for the kids every day. I’m putting together a proposal to take to my advisor, and it’s taking up all my spare time. The partnership between the university and the charity has gone well so far, but this will really take things up a notch.”
Sylvia narrows her eyes suspiciously. “So, I know the basics, of course, but what’s your plan for the expansion of the program?”
“Well, the charity’s after-school program has done a great job with helping kids who are struggling in their academic work. Caroline found that out firsthand last fall when she met Desiree.” My brother’s girlfriend gives me a soft smile. Desiree was a girl Caroline discovered on her first visit to the tutoring center. The little girl reminded Caroline so much of herself at that age that she came up with her own line of children’s clothing for the fashion show. “But we all know that kids lose a lot of information over the summer and lower-income kids are at a greater disadvantage than upper-socioeconomic income children.” I pause, certain they’ll think I’m crazy. I’ve never told them this much about my plan before. “So I’m proposing that we have a summer university for middle-schoolers.”
Sylvia raises her eyebrows. “I thought the idea was to get them to do fun things. No one wants to go to summer school.”
“They will if the right classes are offered.” I give Caroline a pleading look. “Like how to design your own clothes from thrift store finds or a fun interactive chemistry class. Classes where they’ll actually learn something and keep their minds active, but they’ll have fun too. Plus, a lot of these kids don’t plan to go to college. If they spend some time on the campus and in the classrooms, they might realize it’s not such a scary place. Of course, this all depends on if the chancellor agrees.”
Sylvia looks skeptical.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Caroline says. “Why are you worried about that?”
“I’m asking for classroom space to augment the outdoor space we already have. And even if the university helps with that, there will be a million other things to do. We’ll have to find the instructors, coordinate with them to come up with classes…”
“Okay, Lexi.” Caroline holds up her hands. “Slow down. You’re right. This is a huge undertaking. Why didn’t you tell me more about it before now?”
“I wanted to sort out the details in my head first.”
“I see what you mean about there not being much time. It’s already the end of February. If you’re going to implement the program this summer, you needed to have it in place, like yesterday.”
“I know.”
“So why not hold off a year?”
“Because what if there’s one kid we can help this year, and he slips through the cracks just because I didn’t want to work too hard?”
“Oh, Lexi.” Caroline sets down her notebook and pulls me into a big hug. “You have such a big heart, but you need to remember that you can’t save them all.”
“You try to,” I say.
She grins. “Fair enough. But this is a huge task that will take months to organize. There probably isn’t enough time.”
I stiffen.
She squeezes me again. “But you know that I of all people understand. Let me help.”
“And me too,” Sylvia says.
Tears sting my eyes. I’m blessed to have such amazing friends.
Chapter Two
Ben
My eyes sink closed and my cheek falls out of my open palm, jerking me awake. I look around to see if anyone notices, but I’m in the back row and the professor is looking at her notes. I sit up straighter, trying to shake off my drowsiness, but it hangs on like a whore to a rich john.
I glance down at my notes and up at the graph projected on the wall, wondering how much of the lecture I’ve missed. This might just be an intro course, but I hate history, which is part of the reason I put it off until the final semester of my senior year. The combination of the class’s nine a.m. start time, my shift ending at two a.m. at the bar, and my strong dislike of the subject matter means I tend to nap in here a lot. But whether or not I like Intro to American History, at fourteen hundred dollars per fucking credit hour, I hate to miss a single minute. I estimate I just pissed away fifty bucks with that nap and I didn’t even get a wet dream out of it.