Scholarship Hours

Scholarship Hours





         Andy wished it wasn’t summertime. Dressing in these formal “volunteering clothes,” the button-up dress shirt and slacks, made the city streets feel like a sauna.
         Plus, he had to comb his hair.
         The Martin Youngblood Center for Education and Study was located near the heart of downtown, a few blocks from the tallest skyscrapers and behind the steakhouse where the hobos would trade shoes for drugs. The center was strangely among the ugliest of the buildings, a pieced-together collection of dirty brown and red bricks that most businessman and street urchins wandered by on a daily basis. Most of them probably wondered what was inside
         Andy was one of the few downtown citizens with an actual obligation to enter. Though he realized he could be doing much harder work for community service hours, there were some things about the Martin Youngblood Center for Education and Study that he found irritating. First of which was the name. Why did volunteer centers always manage to receive the most pretentious of names? Naming a center after some rich donor was a nice representation to the government that “good things” were happening. Andy would probably be among one of the many asking what these “good things” were if it wasn’t for the fifty hours he needed to pick up. Fifty hours serving as a glorified babysitter for some kids with learning disabilities.
         He walked inside and to the back, where Judy the secretary sat at her makeshift desk made from a dinner table. Judy was more or less the office paperweight, a chubby and rather unintelligent dolt with thin-rimmed glasses who spent more time smacking her gum than answering the phone.
         “Welcome back!” Her excitement to see volunteers always sounded fake, though it was what the bosses paid her the big bucks to do.
         “You working with older kids again today?” He saw Tracy, one of the teachers, chasing a screaming five-year old down the hallway. That made up his mind for him.
         “Yeah, I think I get along with them better.” He grabbed the clipboard hanging down from the secretarial desk and scribbled his vitals. Andy Rogers, four hours, signature.
         “You know,” Judy smacked, “Rachel says that Jordan boy really seems to like you. Talks about you all the time you ain’t here. He’ll be happy to see you came in today.”
         “I’m sure he will,” he muttered. He did find it somewhat nice to know he was appreciated, but didn’t really want to get too attached to anyone. A few weeks and he’d be back at school, out of sight and out of mind for these kids. A few weeks from now some other chump needing scholarship hours would be in to take his place. Better to let his successor become attached.
         “Only twenty more hours ‘til you get your scholarship!” Andy had never bothered to tell poor Judy that his working there hardly guaranteed him any money. Instead he waved goodbye and she went back to her gum. It smelled like citrus today, and it really didn’t help her bad breath.
         The computer lab/classroom was to the left of Judy down the main corridor, the second door on the right. The inside of the center was thankfully much nicer than the outside, except for the fact it felt like a nursing home with the smell that something was gradually rotting. The white walls were occasionally decorated with colorful posters, mainly to make the kids feel better about being locked up when they could be playing outside. The only other portraits were of course of the Youngblood family, the man of great “generosity” who gave .01% of his overall wealth to fund the place.
         He walked up to the front door, reading the green construction-paper sign: “Emerald class.” There was a little window inside the wooden door, and Andy noticed through a quick glance that Jordan, with his chubby belly nearly sticking out of his red t-shirt, was already inside looking at something on the computer. He couldn’t tell what until he opened the door, only to hear the sound of two women moaning in orgasm.
         “Shit. Jordan, get off of that!”
         A fifteen-year old student with mental retardation really wasn’t supposed to be watching girls masturbate to the tune of elevator music. The moment the supervisors saw that kind of crap on a computer monitor his time at the center would be over.
         As to the boy’s innocence, he really didn’t care. Fifteen was an appropriate age to start seeing breasts, anyway.
         “Jordan, turn that stuff off! I’m serious!”
         He didn’t listen, his mind still fixated on the sight of greased-up naked women grinding on a sofa.
         “Jordan!”
         Andy finally yanked the mouse out of his hand and closed out the twenty-plus windows he loaded to get to the porno site. It looked like he just randomly clicked everywhere until the site finally pulled up.
         Andy was about to give Jordan a good yelling about using the computers wisely when he noticed his face. He looked practically on the verge of tears.
         “You don’t even know what you’re doing wrong, do you?”
         “I was watching them boobies.” His voice quavered, proving he knew that whatever it is he had done, it was wrong and likely going to get him into gigantic amounts of trouble.
         However, Jordan started to call down when he rotated his chair, realizing the identity of the supposedly mean man who was taking time away from his precious videos.
         “Andy, it’s you! I’ve been telling everybody you still coming and they didn’t believe me! Good seein’ you again.”
         “You too, Jordan.” Andy noticed the sheet of yellow paper lying next to the computer. His brother’s handwriting as usual, this time instructing him how to log onto these dirty sites for a good time. Last week it was online gambling, the week before rap videos. Jordan’s brother was about Andy’s age, but worked for wages at the Kroger a few miles away. He always dropped his little brother off ridiculously early, and also managed to teach him the best ways to wreck havoc in the classroom. It was one of those times Andy wished the kid had never been taught to use the internet.
         “Don’t keep doing what your brother tells you to. You say you want to get a girlfriend, right?”
         “Yeah, nice girl like ones on pictures.”
         “I thought you liked Holly.” Holly was the only girl in the class outside of Miss Rachel, the teacher. She had a severe form of dyslexia along with slight mental retardation, which typically meant one of the fellow students would often volunteer to help her with reading or fixing her chicken-scratch handwriting. Jordan volunteered the most, though he generally wasn’t a whole a lot of help. He did try, which was probably more than Andy could say.
         “Girls don’t like it when guys look at other girl’s boobies. Makes them mad.” He put his hand down on Jordan’s shoulder, watching as it relaxed him from his near-hyperventilation phase of moaning loudly and clutching his curly hair with his hands.
         “You wouldn’t like it if Holly looked at pictures of naked guys, would you?”
         “No, I want Holly to look at me.”
         “Then you can’t look at naked girls. It’s only fair.” He patted him on the back, telling him to turn off the computer before Miss Rachel showed up.
         Jordan stared with his bug-like eyes.
         “What if Holly’s the naked girl?
         Andy stopped himself before answering with some sort of snide and inappropriate comment. At this point the center would want him to politely change the subject.
         “So do you still like baseball?”
         “Yep. My brother say we’ll be going to a game next week.” Jordan smiled, and he didn’t want to disappoint him by reminding him such a game was promised every week to no avail.
         Andy continued to chat with the kid while the waited for the others to show up. Talking to Jordan always made his character more and more apparent. He was an eight-year old trapped in a teenager’s body, innately curious, had a crazy imagination, but lacked any sort of common sense needed to survive. He had an IQ of 70, well below the national average but still with the ability to look up porn on the internet. Rachel said he’d be able to get a simple job one day, one that didn’t require much skill. That’s what Andy’s dad told him when he recommended the place, that the Martin Youngblood Center for Education and Study was built to get people like Jordan steady jobs.
         Rachel entered when she had the two other students, Holly and Pete, behind her, who she picked up as always in her pretty blue sedan on the way to the center.
         “Jordan! Good to see you’re here and ready to go!”
         Jordan nodded as if he’d only been there for thirty seconds as opposed to an hour.
         “Yep, me and Andy just been talkin. I told you he come back, Miss Rachel.”
         “Looks like you were right then,” she said, patting Jordan and the back. Then she looked directly at Andy, who gave her a half-wave alongside a sheepish grin. “All right, how about everybody has a seat for a minute while I talk to Andy outside. Pete, you’re in charge.”
         The students took their seats by the computers and waited. Pete wheeled over in his wheelchair to the center of the room, mainly watching Jordan to make sure he didn’t misbehave. Though if he did Andy sincerely doubted there’d be any way for Pete to stop him.

         Andy patted his hands against the wall in drum-beat while Rachel flashed her pearly whites at him. He had been curious about her for the past month he’d been at the center, for he could never understand why a girl as pretty as she was would decide to shut herself off all day in a building no one knew existed. She was tall, likely a few years older, as in mid-to-late 20s and dressed in her typical outfit of a tight pink blouse and black pants. He hated it when girls dressed in those sexy little outfits, the ones that screamed both “professional” and “do me” at the same time. His eyes were wandering more than usual, too; it had only been three weeks since he broke up with his girlfriend of six months. He didn’t know much about her other than that she was nice to the kids. She did wear a cheap engagement ring on her finger, but really didn’t talk much about the fiancée.
         Andy just assumed he was an asshole.
         “So how you doing? I expected you to be here Wednesday.”
         “I was expecting to be here, too. Some stuff just happened to come up with the family.” Of course “the family” his all-day sci-fi marathon, which he was sure he stopped at one moment to talk to the family. The Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule really didn’t work well for him, so he usually assigned one of his three “work days” as time to stay at home and be lazy.
         “So what’re we going to be up to today? Typical writing and reading?” The last part came across as a bit sarcastic, and Rachel rolled her green eyes accordingly. Maybe she named the classroom after the eyes.
         “The reason I missed you on Wednesday was because we found out about Holly’s test results. You remember what happened to Holly?” Andy knew she was testing him. He searched his mind for any piece of information obtained in between daydreaming and staring at her ass.
“She was getting some kind of migraines, right?”
“She has a brain tumor, and it turns out her chances for survival are very slim. After talking to her parents we decided the best thing to do for her was to send her away to a research center in Colorado.”
         Rachel seemed pretty upset, but he didn’t let it faze him. He felt bad for the girl, but not enough to show up three times a week.
He did at least try to rectify the issue by acting interested.
“So did you tell the class?”
         “No. I thought about it, but the admins told me it would be better not to bring it up, just to lie and say that she’s going away for a while. ”
         “They’re not going to buy that.”
         “Yeah, they will. You forget they believe everything I say.” It was kind of sexy how Rachel concluded the sentence with sarcasm, but he could tell she was genuinely upset.
“Look, Andy, if I tell Jordan and Pete the truth it’s going to destroy them. They’re riding on so little as it is.”
         “You know Jordan is practically in love with her, right?”
         “I know he’s fond of her, but he wouldn’t be able to understand that she probably won’t be coming back. Whatever research they do will probably be for the benefit of the future. Better to just let him forget about her.” Andy faked some anger just to stir up emotion, but didn’t talk.
         “It’s not my decision, Andy. Let’s just forget about it and try to get through the day. We’re going to have a big send-off party for her this afternoon. I already ordered the cake.” One of the younger classes walked by and “oohed” at the sound of cake, only to be rushed into their classroom by Tracy.
         Rachel attempted another smile and hurried off back inside the classroom.

         The three students inside looked about as ready to work as they’d ever be. Jordan was spinning his desk chair around in a circle while Holly sang a commercial jingle in her squeaky voice. Andy wasn’t really sure what Pete was doing.
         Rachel walked up to the row of computers and snapped her fingers. Jordan kept spinning until Andy grabbed the chair, the momentum nearly toppling him over. Rachel spoke with little of the frustration she showed outside, talking in a sweet voice worthy of lullabies.
         “So what did you guys do yesterday afternoon? Jordan, you start.”
         “I went shopping for food, and watch TV. My brother keep letting me watch his scary movies and boy, do they make me jump!”
         “Do you really think you should be watching them, then?” She patted her hands against her pants, treating the kids as if they were her own. Andy wondered sometimes if they saw Rachel as a mother, especially Jordan. His mom took off when he was little, and he never talked about her beyond a sentence or two.
         “Yeah I like watching them scary movies. It was cool Miss Rachel, especially when the bad guy came out with the guns and shot BANG!”
         “All right Jordan, watch them if you think you can handle them. What about you, Pete?”
         Pete had scooted his wheelchair back to his computer desk, but didn’t respond as he was busy typing furiously into his computer.
         “Pete!” she yelled, loud but not loud enough to send anyone running into the room.
         “Sorry,” he mumbled while continuing to type. “What’s going on?”
         At sixteen Pete was the oldest student, but also the most physically handicapped. He had Asperger Disorder at birth, which inhibited his concentration and social skills. One task was typically all he could handle at a time, and it often took a good shout to turn his attention onto something else. A physical deformity in his legs had also kept him in his bottom-dollar wheelchair for most of his life.
         Now attentive, Rachel repeated the question for him.
         “Oh, I am sorry.” Pete’s vocabulary was not large, but he chose his words as if speaking before Congress: extremely slow, and very meticulous. “I spent most of the evening writing my Mario story.”
         “Mario again?” One of Pete’s few obsessions was with Nintendo games, about the only part of the kid’s personality Andy could relate to.
“Did he defeat Bowser yet?” Andy asked the question, hoping that Rachel recognized the attentiveness.
         “I have not written that far yet. Maybe tomorrow.” Pete stopped, turning his head back to the computer. He never seemed to like Andy. In fact, he was probably the only one of the three that questioned why a college guy was there and taking attention away from the teacher.
         Rachel didn’t bother continuing with Pete.
         “Okay. Holly?”
         Holly adjusted her blue blouse up on her shoulders. It looked uncomfortable, like she was still getting used to the fabric. Something else seemed to be bothering her, but no effort was made to find out.
         “I just went and bought some clothes for my trip.”
         Rachel interrupted, likely getting the inclination to move on.
“Fantastic. Why don’t we get on to this morning’s exercise?” She patted her hands on her pants again and smiled. Andy wished she didn’t smile. It made him want to stare.

         Watching at a distance was one of Andy’s preferred methods of teaching. He didn’t really want to talk unless forced to or if Rachel was watching.
He first concentrated on Pete to the far right, who was staring down at the sheet of paper handed out. It was written in large black font to make it easy on their eyes.
         “What do you see yourself doing in five years?” He read it aloud three times, making sure he had it right. Then he probably thought of it as out of third-grade teacher’s lesson plan.
         It was tough to figure out a thought process of a guy like Pete, a guy he hardly new. Andy had a strong inkling of what the paper would sound like. It would involve Mario battling Goombas and Bowser. Pete thought of himself as a good writer, but never wrote anything directly mentioning himself.
         Pete spent a moment or two thinking, then started typing. Andy listened to him talk out loud.
         “When Mario was walking in Mushroom Kingdom…”
         “Hey Pete, how’s it going?”
         “Fine.”
         “Is your writing coming along okay?”
         “Just fine.”
         “Can I read it when you’re done?”
         “No.”
         “Fuck this, then.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. Just get to work.” He made sure to mumble the first part so no one could hear it. There was probably some rulebook out there explaining how to talk to stubborn children, but Andy never bothered to read it. Even after a month of working, Andy still couldn’t understand how anyone carried on a conversation with the guy. He shrugged it off and walked towards Holly.
         “Is that better, sweetie?” She must have been warm (as usual), so she had Rachel turn down the temperature.
         “Yeah, thanks.”
         Rachel walked back over to Pete, more than likely noticing how effective he was in communicating.
         Andy didn’t say much to Holly while he watched her work on her narrative. So instead his mind wandered to what Rachel told him earlier. It seemed unreal that she was sick enough to leave the center. She didn’t look necessarily ill as much as uncomfortable. All he could even figure out from her mood was that she didn’t like to type. She wasn’t really very good at it.
         He looked to the left of Jordan’s computer, which so far contained about three sentences. At about this point as usual he got bored, and started poking his crush in her side with his index finger. He either didn’t notice Andy standing there or didn’t really care about it.
         “How it doing, Holly?”
         “Okay. Just trying to write stuff.” Jordan smiled. It’d taken a few years of training to even get her to use the processor, so writing “stuff” was an accomplishment in itself.
Holly knew Jordan liked her (at least Andy thought she did), but nobody really knew the origin of such feelings. He probably just liked her being the only girl that would actually talk to him. Every day he would incessantly poke her, talk to her, say something about her hair. Sometimes he tried to touch her and she’d scream.
         It appeared she did like him, but as a brother more than an actual crush. He was always curious about the simplest things, and sometimes his questions (“what color are your socks?”) came across as creepy.
         “Holly?”
         “Yeah?”
         “My story gonna be good.”
         Miss Rachel caught on to the conversation and told Jordan to start back into his own work. Andy exchanged a glance with her and took the moment to try talking to Jordan again.
         “You coming along?”
         “I think I be writing good, Andy.”
         “Writing about what?
         “How I wanna be in a big house with Holly and playin baseball all day.” Holly smiled in response, not truly knowing what he meant by “being in a big house” with her.
         “So how are you going to take care of her? Gonna be the next Mickey Mantle?”
         “Who?”
         “You haven’t heard of Mickey Mantle? What kind of baseball fan are you?”
         Rachel literally grabbed the back of Andy’s collar and pulled him back.
         “Don’t make him feel bad just because he doesn’t know everything!” she whispered harshly in his year. “It’s good enough he has an interest in something.”
         “Sorry.” He didn’t really mean it, and it probably came across that way.

         Rachel clapped her hands together in the center of the room. Pete continued to write.
         “Is everybody done?”
         “Miss Rachel, I kinda wanna read mine.”
         “Hold on, Jordan. Since we’re having a party this afternoon for Holly, I thought it would be fun to read our life goals during that time. We’re running out of time this morning.”
         He nodded, resting his head back against the chair. Jordan wasn’t the patient one, as evident by last week’s art presentation. Pete was attempting to showcase some drawings he made of Mario fighting Koopa Troopas, and all Jordan did was yell and shout until Rachel finally covered his mouth. It was always a battle for attention among them, and usually Jordan won.
         “You guys ready to go to the lunch room?” Jordan suddenly lost interest in presenting.
         Pete finally printed, with a little help, and closed out the story upon Rachel’s third reminder. He wheeled up behind Jordan and Holly, who were already organized in a straight line, silly as it was considering the small amount of students. It made for quite a show of elementary-school discipline among teenagers.
         Rachel batted her right eyelash.
         “Andy, would you care to join us?”
         The eyes tempted him, but Andy answered the invitation as he generally did every time.
         “I gotta go pick up some food down the street, but after that I’d be glad to.” He unleashed a smile of his own, though it again probably came more across as the kind of half-grin a serial killer gives before they slash the victim’s throat. Lunchtime was awkward, just like much of his time at The Martin Youngblood Center for Education and Study. The less time he spent around these people, the better. Even Rachel, as gorgeous as she was, seemed too distant to have an actual conversation with.
         Pete sent him a glare while he walked out the front door. Rachel led the class down to the dining area, a tiny lounge at the building’s other end.

         Andy answered the phone without so much as a “hello.”
“So how’s the day been going at the center?”
         His dad always talked much louder than he needed to, like he expected everyone else to be as hard-of-hearing as he was. Either that or talking loud just made him feel important. Maybe to a select few his dad was important, possibly to Rachel and some of the others at the center. After all, it was generally him these kids went to after graduation, so he could run his little lab-rat tests and find them suitable jobs. He was a savior to all the world’s disabled, while Andy was just the kind saying half-ass remarks about the job under his breath.
         The line at the Sub Shack was long as usual, stretching almost out of the store. Unfortunately all the damn businessmen had the same idea he did: try to lose weight over the summer when you’re not as busy. It wasn’t really working, since all Andy ever ordered were turkey bacon clubs with provolone. Good stuff, but not so low on fat.
         “Work’s been going all right I guess,” Andy continued. “We’ve just been working on everyone’s favorite assignment: what you wanna be when you grow up.” He never really knew what to talk to his dad about, since so often their conversations boiled down to incoherent small talk. Their interests just didn’t match. His dad cared about horror flicks and video games about as much as Andy cared about the chromosome layout of Down Syndrome.
         He was about to give up and hang up the phone, but then he remembered Rachel’s announcement earlier in the morning, something the two of them might be able to click on.
         “Hey…have you heard about Holly yet?”
         “No I haven’t,” his dad said matter-of-factly. Andy ordered the clerk to make his fatty turkey-bacon and handed him a twenty.
         “She has a brain tumor. Youngblood himself is paying to ship her to Denver for research.”
         “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
         “So in other words, she’ll probably just be a guinea pig for future people with tumors. How much effort are they going to put into saving a girl who doesn’t really matter?” Andy stopped himself at the end of his sentence. Why was he talking so much about this? Holly wasn’t important enough for him to have come to the center on Wednesday, yet now he actually cared about her survival. Maybe he was starting to let these people get to him, and he couldn’t allow that.
         His dad spoke again with little emotion, almost surprising for a typically upbeat guy.
         “She’ll probably be gone in a few months, then. Look, I’m going to lunch with Workforce Education. I just wanted to make sure you were holding out okay.”
         “Thanks.”
         “And Andy, try being nice to the little girl. Somebody needs to be.”
         He hung up the phone, and the clerk wrapped his sandwich and gave him a cup for his soda. He needed the Mountain Dew today: enough caffeine to get him through the afternoon.
         As for Andy’s dad, they would probably have the same conversation at dinner. He sat down at one of the tables by the window. Though his lunch break was almost over, he took his time eating.

         The lunch break was past over about the time Andy made it back into the center. Rachel was leading the group back into the classroom, all smiles and ready for what was to be a party for the ages, or at least the party of the week.
         “Oh Andy, sorry to see you couldn’t make it back in time. I went ahead and told the kids about what’s going on with Holly.”
“That she’s sick?”
“Yeah, but I made it sound like she’d be okay. Would’ve been nice to have someone else there as a comfort.” She was still carrying a sarcastic tone in her voice from earlier, so he shrugged it off as bitchiness and started walking into the classroom. Then he felt a slight tug at his pants leg.
“Mr. Andy?”
“Yeah?” He looked down to see Holly’s big brown eyes staring back up at him. They were already glossed over with tears.
“I’m nervous.”
Andy seriously took his time thinking of the right words to say. He was terrible at making people feel better, and talking with Holly was a bit different than blowing off Rachel. She was a scared little girl, completely helpless and likely unaware of her own chances for survival. He decided to at least try to be nice.
“About what, the party?”
“Yeah, that and leaving. I don’t wanna leave Miss Rachel.” She was really shaken up now, barely able to talk. Andy crouched down and she ran up to embrace him.
“Hey, everything’s gonna be all right! If you do go away for a while, just remember that everyone will be here when you get back.”
An outline of a smile gradually appeared on her face.
“Will you be back?”
He was about so reply with some long elaborate answer about “not being sure” and “we’ll wait and see what happens” when Rachel walked back out.
“Hurry up you two, the party’s waiting!”
Holly whispered a “thank you” to Andy, and they walked their way into the class. He didn’t know why she looked for comfort in him of all people.

         While they were away, Judy and some of the other office paperweights had apparently set up a makeshift party in the computer lab. A banner on the wall screamed “GOOD LUCK HOLLY.” The white table was draped in a coat of red and decorated with glitter, making a suitable backdrop for the white-and-red vanilla cake that rested for all to see. It looked store-bought.
         Andy watched as the kids looked at the cake like it was a 5-star meal. Rachel already had everyone’s attention as she swayed into the room. Judy was giving her a jealous look.
         “All right guys, I told you Wednesday that Holly was going to be going away for a little while, so I thought it would be nice to have a little party for her!” Mass applause, mainly from Jordan who was clapping and hooting at the same time. “While we were eating Miss Judy and the others decorated the place, so be sure to tell them thank you.”
         “Thank you!” The praise poured onto Judy and her two lady-helpers as they appeared in the doorway from virtually nowhere. Some of the other kids were starting to be lead in from the other classrooms. Tracy had the youngest, while Randy brought in the 8-12 crowd. The Emerald Gang were easily the brightest of the bunch.
         Once the room became pretty damn crowded (with people and with noise), Rachel took the opportunity to continue.
         “So while we eat and celebrate, why don’t we read out writing exercises from earlier? Holly wants to know what you guys are planning on doing in the future.”
         “Pete, you want to go first?”
         He clutched his printed sheet of paper from his station, and started reading. His voice was flat, almost computerized as he articulated the words. His mind was focused on nothing but the words on the page.

         “One day Super Mario was stomping on Goombas in the forest when his brother Luigi walked up to him. Luigi said “Mario, how long will you stomp Goombas? You can’t do it your whole life.” Mario was not upset until later when he got home.
         “He started to think about what Luigi said. He should stop stomping Goombas and do something new! He wanted to tell Princess Peach so he visited her in the castle. She said she was going away for a while. He was really sad, since Princess Peach was his best friend. But he was also happy because he could do something new, and when Peach came back he could make her happy with what he learned.
         “So she left and Mario tried really hard to make her happy. The end.”
         
         Everyone applauded politely, though it seemed Jordan and Holly didn’t really know what to make of it. Andy was surprised more than anything that Pete would refer to his classmate as a “princess.” It had always been Jordan who frequently harassed her. Pete usually didn’t even bat an eye.
         Rachel had a sly grin on her face, probably since she just found out something she never knew about one of her students.
         “Jordan, since you were so ready to talk about it earlier, why don’t you go ahead?”
         Andy listened, keeping his expectations low as not to be disappointed. Jordan typically read slow and stuttered.

         “When I grow up by Jordan Daniels. When I grow up be much older than now I wanna be famous! I wanna have a big house by Elm Park that I like to play at cause I guess my kids like to play at it too.
         “I wanna be a baseball player, best one in history of the galaxy! Get lots of home runs with lots of people cheering. I also wanna get lots of money so I can have lots of friends and help lots of people get better like this place help me get better.”

         “That’s sweet, Jordan,” Rachel encouraged. “Do you have any more?”
         “Yup! Once I’m famous I gonna find Holly again and get her to marry me and we can have lots of kids and be very very happy. And then…” Jordan paused, leaving everyone waiting for some more words, some continuation. All that came was a “the end” alongside polite applause and a deep blush from Holly. She looked sick from all the attention she’d been getting.
         “Okay Holly, since this party’s yours, why don’t you read your entry?”
         “I—I don’t know if I can. You know I gots trouble reading stuff.” Holly’s body was shaking, her black hair bouncing up and down on her head.
         “You know usually I don’t allow this, but considering the circumstances I guess I can read it for you.” Rachel took the paper from her soft hand and read it aloud.
         “I don’t know where I’m gonna be in the future. I just want to be not sick anymore and with all of my friends. My mommy tells me God will make me better and I believe her. I’ll miss so many people. Miss Rachel always helps me when I’m in trouble, last week she helped me finish my stuff, and Pete and Jordan are both funny and make me laugh a lot even though they don’t know it.”
         Apparently that was all she had written down on the sheet of paper, but Holly spoke up quickly before the crowd could begin applauding. She spoke with more vigor and excitement than outside the classroom, when she seemed constantly on the verge of sobbing.
         “Wait, Miss Rachel! I also wanted to say I’ll miss my mommy, daddy, my cat Snowflake, and Mr. Andy. He’s goofy and makes me feel better.” There were a few chuckles among the students, whereas Judy and the other helpers were sniffling in the corner, knowing she was likely not returning to the class. Rachel’s near-permanent smile even faded for a split second.
         Then the applause erupted again, louder and more welcoming than ever. Nobody wanted to cry for very long in front of the poor girl.
         Andy, however, was in a complete and total state of shock. Why would she? He was a jerk, doing this for scholarship hours. He didn’t deserve to be up there with “mommy” and “daddy.” He slowly joined in on the smiling and clapping, doing so willingly and enthusiastically for the first time since arriving at the center.
         “Andy,” Rachel said suddenly, breaking up his chain of thought. “I know you didn’t write anything up, but where do you see yourself five years from now?”
         Five years? He thought it was awfully specific, but he saw what she was doing. She was helping him, noticing he finally was willing to communicate with these people. So he obliged.
         “I think I’d like to be a filmmaker. I love movies, I watch them all the time. If other people can make good movies, then why can’t I? I think I’d also like a good-sized house, maybe even near Jordan’s so I can watch him play baseball.” Jordan laughed.
         “So you gonna show us the movie once it gets made?”
         “Sure, why not? I’ll find everybody and make them watch it. Even you, Miss Rachel.” The last part probably came across as a bit more flirty than he wanted.
         “I won’t be hard to find me, Andy, because in five years I’ll probably still be here.” Tears started to trail across her face. “I remember playing Connect Four with Jordan, drawing with Pete, reading stories to…Holly. You know, my dad used to tell me to be a doctor or a lawyer, to do something important with my college degree. But you know what? I’m kind of happy with you guys. At least for now.” A smile formed again against the tears, and Andy started to see her as something other than eye-candy for him to watch when he was bored. Maybe she was an actual human being.
         The party continued for another half hour with stories, and laughter. Jordan smashed cake all across his face, and even Pete managed to keep a steady conversation going with Andy for two minutes (that is, before he got distracted watching a pigeon outside the window).
         At one point, a few minutes before the end of the class day, Holly walked up to him again.
         “Mr. Andy, I have another question.”
“Okay, go for it.”
“Do you think I’ll be back soon?”
He gave her a goofy grin, since apparently that was what she thought of him as. “Do you believe you’ll be back soon?”
         “Yep!”
         “Then I bet you’ll be back before you even know it.”
         She walked away, but apparently Rachel heard the conversation from across the room. After Jordan was picked up by his brother and the group departed the Martin Youngblood Center of Education and Study that afternoon, she poked him on the stomach while he held the door open.
         “So are you ever going to tell me why you didn’t come in Wednesday?”
         For a split-second he thought she was aiming for another verbal attack, but he quickly realized it was a set-up. So he told the truth, pathetic as it was.
         “There was a marathon on the Sci-Fi channel. Lots of good space movies.”
         “You’re such a jerk. If it wasn’t for how I saw you talk to Holly today I just might have to fire you.”
         “Can you really fire a volunteer?”
         “I don’t know, but I would’ve given it a try.” She giggled lightly as they walked out into the street, taking their time so Pete and Holly, who were talking quietly, could follow.
         He pointed in the direction of the bus station.
         “This is where I head out.”
         “All right. I’ll be seeing you on Monday.” She smiled.
         “Thanks, Rachel.”
         “That’s Miss Rachel!” she yelled back.
         Andy worked his way across the dirty street, hopping on the nearest bus and starting his quiet journey home. As he watched the city streets fade away to suburbia, the strangest thought entered his mind. Maybe Rachel named the classroom “emeralds” because she thought all of her students were like little precious jewels.
         It sounded like something Rachel would do.

         He stayed on board with the center for another three weeks before school started back. At the time there was little word on Holly, but he promised Rachel he would keep in contact with the phone list she handed out.
         Of course, promises wear thin over time, and between all of the homework and game parties with his Japanese class he started to forget about his times at the center. He accumulated all the hours for his application, but it turns out it didn’t even matter. He didn’t even get past the first stage of the scholarship application due to a lack of “extracurricular activities.” He figured it was just because he wasn’t in athletics or didn’t get a perfect score on his ACT.
         One afternoon in mid-October, a few weeks after his nineteenth birthday, he was watching his favorite Joss Whedon flick when his cell rang. He recognized the number immediately.
         “Hey dad.”
         “Hi.” Usually it was Andy’s mom who called him while he was at school, so he figured it must have been something significant.
         “How’s school?”
         “Okay…did you need something?”
         “Yeah. I was just going to tell you I got a call from Judy over at the Youngblood Center. Turns out Holly didn’t make it, died this morning.”
         It took him a minute to register who Holly even was, then he remembered the cute little raven-haired girl and how she held him in such high regard.
         His voice stuttered. “That’s terrible.” All the memories rushed back at once: the studies, the conversations with the students.
         “Just thought you would want to know.” His dad ended the conversation before he had the opportunity to even ask anything else.
         The thought of Holly’s death bothered him more than he thought it would. Certainly people die, often by the minute. He remembered the pain it caused the family when his grandfather shot himself, or when his former 1st-grade teacher slowly withered away in her bed. Those deaths were horrifying, but at least those people had already left their impression on the world. What kind of impression does a fourteen year-old girl have to leave? She did teach him not to be so cold-hearted, but he felt like there should’ve been more.
         He then thought about the others. Jordan would be devastated if he was even allowed to find out. The same would be said for Pete. To Rachel losing Holly must’ve been like losing a child.
         He let the television run. He knew he had that phone list somewhere.