by Erin Ajello
“Coffee is life when you’re a student, overworked employee, or a writer. There are other drinks, sure. Like energy drinks, right? You think of people who want to stay awake and get work done, and your thoughts turn toward Monster and Red Bull but they actually tend to have half the caffeine of a plain old cup o’ joe. I know, I know, it’s crazy. There’s also tea (still less caffeine than coffee) and oh yeah, soda. News flash—soda is crap. It’s pure sugar, except not. There’s chemical crap too. Ever do that old, easy grade, science experiment? You pour out little cups of soda and leave a penny in each one. Take a picture of it every day for about three weeks and you can see your one cent dissolve. But if you want my two cents, anything that has so much acid it can bite through metal does not go into this engine!”
A small, but far larger than deserved, patter of laughter goes up around the room. A room in which I, and about five other kids, are sitting with our parents, all glancing up at the one clock in the room as often as possible without seeming overly rude. All the chatter is coming from the man at the front of the room. Seated at the only actual chair in the room, you would think Mr. Andrews would have a little more, er, decorum. But no, he’s leaning the chair so far back that the only interesting thing to do is wait for him to tip himself over while the rest of us are shoved into the damn chair and desk combinations that our school decided every classroom needed.
When I first entered the room, I had actually been excited. Well, as excited as a kid can be for a mandatory career day fair. The fair was the culmination of an entire week where teachers and staff pushed attendance and made sure we all knew that skipping would result in detention. While I had not at all expected this to be fun, I had expected more of, well, an actual fair. Like tables set up and flyers and all that crap. Instead, our school had decided to run it more like a tour, where every room had a different quasi-professional who told you about their daily tasks and gave you plenty of brochures.
This should have been the most exciting room for me. I should be sitting here, leaning forward, jotting down notes, and maybe even asking questions. That is entirely what I planned to do. I mean, I want to be a writer more than anything. Hell, I want it enough to deal with my parents’ constant complaints about their only son going into something as “problematic” and “unrealistic” as writing. And this is indeed the writer’s room. Granted, I’ve checked the sign on the door a few times since we came in here, since I still can’t quite believe that this is the best writer my school could round up for the night.
Mr. Andrews is actually said to be a decent writer, don’t get me wrong. He works at the only newspaper our small town has, and they let him cover the important pieces. Like that article last week confirming that we will soon have the privilege of shopping at Whole Foods, which will be opening in just a few short years.
But that’s the thing–—he writes for a newspaper. He’s a journalist. That, last I checked, was a pretty specific kind of writing. A factual reporting kind of writing. Not the kind of writing that I, fantasy nerd extraordinaire, want to spend my lifetime and career working on. Actually, no one I know in this room except Libby actually wants to be a journalist. Elizabeth is in here because she wants to be a poet, Neil fancies himself to be the next Stephen King, and Alison is oddly into historical fiction.
Our school, however, had us fill out forms yesterday about what we were interested in. We were supposed to all put our desired future jobs down, and then the school had the secretaries assign everyone a room. The most filled one was the “College Prep Advice” room, even though that was not a job. This was followed by “Management,” for those of us who knew we would be merely taking over our parent’s store in fifteen years. There was a “Medical Professionals” room, an “Office Staff” room, and random other broadly labeled ones. Then there was this, the so-called “Writers” room, where we had been listening to good ol’ Mr. Andrews ramble for twenty minutes.
I actually already knew Mr. Andrews. His son had been my soccer coach a few years back. That son was now living in the city, having decided to go to college hundreds of miles away and stay there. Every once in a while, he would post on Facebook about his fraternity. Not a bad guy, and his dad wasn’t either. Mr. Andrews was just…well, small. He lived in this town and grew up to do the job his dad had done, and his grandfather before him. He seemed happy enough, sitting in front of the room, laughing about old shenanigans at the paper, or something.
But I didn’t want that. I actually did want to go to college, to get a degree in creative writing, before trying to write a series. I already had a general plan for about a four or five book series that I’d been working on for years. I even had some full chapters done. Yet I knew I actually needed advice and practice before I would be anywhere near good enough to get published. Even then, I would have to actually somehow get the attention of a publisher and hope to high heavens that they liked my ideas.
With a sigh, I doodled in the margins of the notebook that would not be receiving any actual notes today. I glanced at the clock and realized with some surprise and disappointment that this hour long panel was not yet halfway over. Well, if I had to sit here, I guess I would be better off not wasting any of my time. I focused, trying to clear my head of any fears about forever living in this town. I pushed away the dull anger inside of me that came from my school not even trying to understand what it meant to five kids when they said they wanted to be writers. I ignored the ever-present, rather shrill voice inside me that insisted I would never, could never, make a career out of what I already loved. Head cleared, pen ready, notebook open, I smiled for the first time since I walked into the room as I began to write.
