The Difference Between You and Me Read online

  “We need to work on this,” Esther asserts, fully energized now. “Jesse and I are starting our own peace and social justice organization and we were looking for a project to collaborate on. This is perfect!”

  “You two have formed an organization?”

  “Not officially,” Jesse says hastily. “Informally.”

  “Jesse has agreed to lend the marketing skills she’s developed as part of NOLAW to help my new organization, SPAN, improve its outreach to the student body.”

  Fran smiles. “I feel a little like I’m at a UN subcommittee meeting and I don’t have my translator headphones on,” she says. “SPAN? NOLAW? Fill me in here, please.”

  “Well, you know NOLAW,” Esther says brightly, “Jesse’s organization that produces the funny manifestos?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. Tell me more.”

  Jesse leans her head back and closes her eyes.

  “You don’t know about Jesse’s hilarious manifestos that she puts up copies of all over school every few weeks?”

  “I do not. But I’m starting to get a sense of why my toner bill has been so astronomical lately.”

  “Jesse, I can’t believe you haven’t shown your mom your manifestos. They’re so wonderful. I’m sure she’d love them.”

  “I’m sure I would.”

  “And SPAN is my organization, Student Peace Action Network, and now Jesse and I are joining forces, and this is just perfect for us. Hey, Jesse, if they’re sponsoring the dance that’s coming up, why don’t we do some kind of action to disrupt that?”

  “I don’t know if a Vander dance is the greatest place for an action,” Jesse says. “I’ve been to one. It was incredibly stupid.”

  Fran raises her eyebrows in surprise. “When did you go to a school dance?”

  “Last year, I went to one for like five minutes, I told you about it.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “I’m sure I told you. Maybe I forgot. Whatever. Dances are totally gender-oppressive and awful.”

  “Well, maybe we don’t have to actually go to the dance to disrupt it, maybe we can just try to prevent StarMart from sponsoring it or something. Why don’t you come over to my house and we can do some research and plan out our strategy?”

  “Great idea!” says Fran overheartily. Jesse gives the back of her head a quizzical look.

  “Sure,” Jesse says.

  “Like, Tuesday? After school?”

  “I can’t Tuesday. What about Saturday?”

  “Yeah, if I don’t have ASP. I probably won’t; I’m not planning any in-school actions this week.”

  “I’ll drive you,” Fran interjects.

  “That’s cool, Mom. I can take the bus or whatever.”

  “Well, I’ll pick you up when you’re done, then.”

  “Thanks, Mom. But chill.”

  When Esther goes to get out of the car, Fran leans over and shakes her hand.

  “I have to say, Esther, it’s been very educational meeting you. I’ve learned so many new things about my daughter in such a short time. Apparently, she goes to dances, runs political organizations—”

  “Yeah, thanks for the vigil,” Jesse says, cutting her mother off. “I’ll see you next Saturday, Esther. Or before that, in school.”

  After Esther has extracted herself and her equipment from the car, made it up the long, narrow concrete steps to her house, and disappeared through her front door, Jesse climbs into the front seat next to her mother. Fran sits there for a moment with the key in the ignition but the Camry turned off.

  “You’re quite the sly one,” she says to Jesse, smirking.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about the toner, I just—”

  “I’m talking about your clever move: ‘Oh I have to go to the peace vigil, I want to become more politically active.’ You like that girl, don’t you!” Fran grins. “You came to the vigil to get closer to her!”

  “Oh my God, no I didn’t!” Jesse howls.

  “I love it! It’s the oldest trick in the book! You’re a chip off the old block, if I may say.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Mother.”

  “Or do I have it all right?” Jesse’s mother looks immensely pleased with herself. “Listen, I’m just delighted that, first of all, I figured this out by myself, and second of all, you picked such a fantastic girl to have a crush on. That Esther is enthusiastic, smart, up on current events—she’s a keeper, I can tell.”

  “Mom—”

  “And you guys obviously make a great team.”

  “Mom, start the car.”

  Fran turns the engine on but keeps the Camry in park.

  “I just want to say for the record,” she says seriously, “that the only thing I want is for you to be happy.”

  “I know—”

  “No, listen, will you listen to me for once in your life? I know you make jokes about me and Daddy being the oppressor, but you do know that we love and accept you exactly the way you are, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Jesse sighs impatiently.

  “We never want you to have to hide anything from us or be secretive about any part of your life. That’s not what we want for you, all right?”

  A slow misery works its way through Jesse’s bloodstream. She nods, and looks out the window at Esther’s small blue house, at its darkened windows. It looks like no one is home. She can’t turn back to look at her mother, or she’s afraid she’ll start to cry.

  “Anytime you want to bring the girl you like home to meet us, we would absolutely love to have her.”

  If I brought home the girl I actually like, Jesse thinks, her heart shrinking at the center of her body, you would be so, so disappointed in me.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Jesse says. “I know.”

  10

  Emily

  It was no picnic figuring out how to fit the NorthStar internship into my schedule this late in the semester. I have work at the library on Tuesdays and student council on Wednesdays, and having me home to help prepare family dinner is really important to my mom on Fridays, so those are all non-negotiables, and Mr. Willette wanted me at least two afternoons a week, so I had no choice but to move my Monday Mandarin lessons (thank God Li Feng was flexible) and regretfully resign from Stonington General Hospital’s prestigious and hard-to-get-into Apprentice Nursing Assistant program, which includes a non-negotiable commitment every Thursday.

  I so dreaded calling Ms. Cheesewright, who runs the program. I was putting it off and putting it off all weekend, but finally my mom was like, “The longer you wait, the worse it’ll be,” and I was like, You’re so right, and then she was like, “Like pulling off a Band-Aid: quick and firm.” So I gathered all my courage and called Ms. Cheesewright and told her quickly and firmly that very unfortunately something non-negotiable had come up and I had to drop out of Apprentice Nursing Assistants. She was not thrilled to hear it. First she was like, “Emily, are you aware of how positively this program is looked upon by college admissions offices? You’ll be doing yourself a tremendous disservice by not participating,” and I was like, I know but I’m sorry, I very unfortunately have to resign, and then she was like, “Emily, are you aware of how many highly qualified young people applied to this program and were turned down? People who would never dream of giving up a spot midway through the semester?” and I was like, Yes I know and I’m really, really sorry but something non-negotiable has come up and I very unfortunately have to seriously resign.

  Afterward I was, like, shaking. For a second, right after I put the phone down, I thought I might throw up. I hate letting people down. It’s my least favorite thing in the world. My mom was so sweet to me about it, though—she made me tea and sat with me on the couch and reminded me that this experience was actually really good practice for me. She said it’s a really important life skill to be able to gracefully tell someone that you can’t do something for them. If you don’t learn how to do it early on, you can get bogged down your whole life doing things for other people that d
on’t benefit you, just because you feel bad telling them no. She said it’s a thing that women in particular have to struggle with. Later on that night, I found an article on my pillow that she had torn out of O, Oprah’s magazine, that’s all about this problem, how women get trapped in what the article calls “Prisons of Good Intentions” and just endlessly do things for other people instead of doing what’s best for them, and how it ruins their lives and makes them angry, resentful people. That’s certainly not the kind of person I want to be.

  And as awful as that phone call and that whole weekend was, after my first day at NorthStar, I can confidently say that it was totally, completely worth it.

  I had an incredible afternoon. First of all, right when I got there, Mr. Willette showed me the desk where I’ll be working, which is in a corner of the reception area outside his and Ms. Rinaldi’s offices, and which is dark mahogany wood grain with a padded, light blue office chair, a desktop computer, and a combination scanner/printer/fax machine I’ll use to assist with NorthStar Enterprises’ corporate communications. There’s a locked drawer in the desk for me to keep my personal belongings in when I’m not in the office, and Mr. Willette gave me the tiny key to it to take with me on my key ring.

  Then he took me on a tour of the entire space. It’s a pretty quiet, serious workplace, not loud and friendly like my dad’s office at Independent Fiduciary Research and Management, where all of the offices are arranged around one big open area, and some of the investment managers have TVs on in their offices to keep track of the markets, and the secretaries all listen to different light FM stations on radios under their desks and yell to each other across the room whenever they see something funny on the Internet.

  The NorthStar office is way smaller, first of all—only about twenty-five people work there total—and it feels more like an underground den, with long, dim, carpeted corridors leading to more long, dim, carpeted corridors and offices and restrooms and supply closets coming off them, and a break room and a conference room with frosted-glass walls. I didn’t get to see inside the conference room because they were having a meeting when we passed it, but Mr. Willette showed me all around the break room. I can put any personal perishables I bring with me in a designated area of the fridge, and they have unlimited coffee, tea, and snacks for the employees, which I’m more than welcome to help myself to anytime I’d like. I didn’t really get time to see what kinds of snacks there were in the little basket on the counter, but I’ll go back on Thursday and check it out—if I can find my way back there! All the corridors at NorthStar look almost exactly the same, and I would have been so lost getting back to my desk from the break room if Mr. Willette hadn’t personally led me there himself.

  The whole office is decorated with this series of beautiful framed posters with photographs of tranquil nature scenes above poetic messages about doing your best work and making the most of your opportunities. The one right above my desk has a picture of three flying geese silhouetted against this huge, violet-colored moon rising over a lake, and underneath the picture it says YOU CAN SOAR ONLY AS HIGH AS YOU BELIEVE THE SKY TO BE. I wrote this down on a Post-it note and stuck it on the inside cover of my homework journal for inspiration.

  It was really just an introductory day for me to get to get my feet wet and start meeting people, Mr. Willette said. Ms. Rinaldi did train me on the large-scale photocopier—which is huger and more complicated than any copier I’ve ever seen, it’s like a tank or a robot hippopotamus or something—and she left me in charge of running off a series of reports in time for a late afternoon meeting, which stressed me out for a second, but which I managed to accomplish just fine. But other than that I didn’t do any real work.

  Still. Even though I wasn’t completing any specific tasks, just being there I felt like I was doing something real. I don’t even know how to explain it, but everywhere you go in that office, even when you can’t see anyone working, you can feel that people are getting things done. People are making decisions. They’re making things happen. Mr. Willette reminded me today that it may look like a small operation over there, but I am now working at the regional corporate headquarters of the third-largest retail company in the world. The mission of the company is to bring affordable, high-quality products to people who might not otherwise be able to get them, all over the planet. Every day, 163 million people from all different faiths, nationalities, creeds, and colors walk through the doors of a NorthStar Enterprises store. The decisions people make in this one office, in this one town, in this one state, could go on to affect 163 million people. It’s so overwhelming, I can barely get my mind around it. It fills me with a crazy kind of pride.

  Not that it’s the same, but it reminds me a little bit of the time when I proposed the format change at the student council meetings. Before the change, there wasn’t any kind of order for how the meetings ran, people just raised their hands and brought up whatever topics occurred to them—complaints or proposals or comments or whatever. It was fine, but it felt like we could never tackle anything big, because as soon as we’d start to really dig into a problem, someone would raise their hand and take us off on some random tangent and we’d never get back to the issue we started with. I proposed a new system where we began every meeting with a typed-up agenda of action items, so that we could go down the list in order and really make sure every item got addressed before we moved on to the next one. It seems like such a simple thing, but that small change made such a huge difference in the way student council meetings ran. The energy got totally efficient, and even though we were getting way more things done, our meetings actually went down from two hours to an hour and a half, on average. And every minute we were in that room together, it felt like something was actually happening. It feels like that in the NorthStar offices, but, like, 163 million times more.

  I called Michael after I got home, and he picked me up to go celebrate my first day with ice cream at Twin Teddies Drive-In. Michael’s favorite thing in the world is soft-serve and it’s almost the end of the season and he won’t be able to get it anymore for six months, so that’s why I suggested Twin Teddies for our celebration. Personally, I’d always prefer Beverly Coffee or Panera at the mall, but I wanted to make Michael happy—he’s done so much to make me happy. And he was totally happy. He got an extra-large twist cone with rainbow sprinkles, as tall and big around as a thermos, and ate the whole thing in, like, four monster bites. While he was eating, I told him everything about the afternoon at NorthStar, and the thing about the 163 million people across the globe. I told him that pretty soon I could be helping with decisions that will make it possible for people in, like, Bangladesh or Honduras to buy products that will improve their quality of life in ways they never imagined. And he gave me the sweetest look, not like his usual sweet look but a new, more bashful look, like he was just meeting me for the first time and was too nervous even to look me in the eye. He told me super-seriously that I am an inspiration to him. He said he’s never known anyone else who cared as much as I do about making a difference. He said he felt lucky to be the one who loves me.

  Sometimes that boy is so sweet, I swear, it makes my heart ache. It makes my stomach feel queasy. It makes me feel a little like I’m coming down with something.

  That night I had the most vivid dream, the kind that leaves you surrounded by a fog of feeling for hours after you wake up out of it. I dreamt that it was the end of the day and I was leaving my job at NorthStar, which I had had for a long time in the dream, and I was incredibly psyched because I had made some really important decision about the company that day and everybody was really excited about it. And I drove home to my house (which turned out to be a sort of giant pumpkin with windows on stilts, but whatever), and as I was driving I thought, I can’t wait to tell Michael about the important decision! But when I pulled into the driveway, it was Jesse waiting for me there on the porch, wearing only Michael’s green-plaid bathrobe that his brother brought him home from UPenn and these fuzzy pink socks. In the d
ream, I realized that we lived there together, in the pumpkin house. I was so excited to see her that I jumped out of the car and ran toward her, leaving the car door open behind me. I couldn’t wait to have my arms around her. As I was running I called out to her, like, almost crying with happiness, “I’m so glad you got rid of those boots!” And she laughed out loud, which she almost never does in real life, and said, “I did it because I love you.”

  And then I woke up. It was only 5:10 a.m., but I couldn’t get back to sleep. My heart was racing. I just lay there wide awake for forty-five minutes feeling the thrill of running toward her move through me. I lay there listening to her voice in my mind, saying over and over again: I love you. I love you.

  When I saw her in the hallway between third and fourth periods—we sometimes pass each other when she’s coming from Spanish at one end of the junior hall and I’m coming from chem at the other end—I felt the dream flood through me again, and without even thinking about it, totally unconsciously, I called out, “Jesse!” But she rushed right past me. She didn’t even look my way.

  To be fair, we don’t usually make eye contact at school. I guess she wasn’t used to hearing me use her name.

  It was just as well she didn’t stop, because I was walking with Grace Gerena and Kimmie Hersh and I only got away with it because they were busy comparing their chem quizzes right then. If they hadn’t been distracted, what would I have done? What would I have done if Jesse had stopped? What did I think I was going to do, right there in the middle of passing period, right there in front of everybody? Tell her that I loved her, too?

  11

  Jesse

  When Esther opens her front door on Saturday morning, the first thing that hits Jesse is the smell. It smells like a pet store or a zoo: the yeasty, sawdusty odor of a caged animal and the nest it lives in. Involuntarily, Jesse backs up a step on the narrow porch to escape it, but Esther smiles her wide smile and says, “Hey, come in.”