in Pink) and Jake Ryan (Sixteen Candles) all wrapped up in one perfect specimen.
I eye my old high school diary with a reaction bordering on fear. I decide to disregard it in favor of daydreaming about seeing Davis at work today. I get so lost in the possibility that I wind up walking out my front door five minutes later than normal. At my car, I hear someone yell, “Catch!” I look up in time to see Sammy as she hurls an apple at me. I grab it before it hits me in the face, running it over my sweater to remove any dust before taking a bite.
“You coming over tonight?” she calls. “I thought we could watch Bridesmaids.”
“Can’t,” I answer. “I’m working at Shuckie’s.”
She shakes her head and changes course, trotting in my direction. “Why are you working yourself so hard? Girl, you need to take a break and enjoy life.”
Sammy is forty-two, making her twelve years older than me. She was my mom’s best friend, when she was still alive, and our neighbor at Shady Acres Trailer Park for fifteen years.
“You know why,” I tell her. “I’m not going to live here forever, and I’m not moving until I have enough saved for a down payment on a house.”
“You could rent something really nice, now,” she tells me.
“I could, but then I wouldn’t be able to save as fast.” I don’t share that I already have more than the twenty percent I need for the down payment on a house of my own. Once I say goodbye to trailer park life, it’s going to be forever, which is why I’m staying here until I have a solid thirty percent, if not more.
“You’re working at the home all day, then going straight to the restaurant?” she asks. “When do you have time for a social life? A gal your age needs to have some fun.” She absently runs her hands through her short spiky blonde hair. The pink tips make her look like a punk rock dinosaur.
Sammy knows me well enough to know that fun is not a driving force in my life. My mom liked to have fun and because of that she never moved up the ladder in life. She’d had brief moments of motivation only to succumb to the sweet call of a party after pulling five straight shifts. I don’t blame her. She had a lot to overcome, but I do not want to follow in her footsteps.
“I like my life,” I tell my friend. “I work with nice people, I make decent money, and my savings are growing. There’s no downside to what I’m doing.”
She rolls her eyes. “That’s because you don’t know what fun is. You need to go out and get yourself a fella.”
That’s another area of life my mom never made look appealing. She had a chain of part-timers and hook-ups with a couple longer-term boyfriends mixed in. None of them lasted. None of them were prizes, either. I’m not going to settle for the bottom of the barrel like she did. I’m holding out until I meet a quality man who’s ready for a real commitment. We’re talking white picket fence, mini-van, 401(k) kind of devotion.
“I’ll date when I find someone worthy,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. “You’re not in high school anymore, Ash. You can’t keep letting those losers rule your life.”
“I’m over all of that,” I lie. “Just keeping my eye on the ball, is all.” Then I add, “I’m off Wednesday night if you can wait on Bridesmaids until then.”
“I can. I just started binge-watching this new show on Netflix about these three gals who hold up a grocery store and get into money laundering. I’m learning so much, I think I might have found my new retirement plan.”
I laugh. As long as Sammy has enough money coming in to make her rent every month, she’s content. She’s a lot like my mom was, always thinking things will miraculously change on their own with no real plan being set into motion.
On my way to my day job at Millersville Meadow—the nursing home where I work—I think back to Chad Adkinson and his lame attempt to connect my name to the word fellatio on my very first day of school. From that moment forward, most of the popular boys in my class called me FelAshleyO. They thought they were so clever. I expect they didn’t once consider or care that they were destroying my life. I wanted