Saltwater Secrets - Amelia Addler Page 0,26

money, they also had a ton of people show up and get excited for their plan! Throughout the course of the night, the party attracted at least a few hundred people. The earlier crowd came with kids, but later on a different crowd filtered in – a younger group that Jade thought would be hard to reach. But they came! And they were excited!

Somehow they managed not to run out of food – though it was close. And thanks to her mom’s very dedicated baking, they didn’t even come close to running out of desserts.

It was a huge success, and Jade refused to allow this coward to scare her. Not when they were finally making progress.

The rest of the week was packed with activities. On Monday, Jade took a break during her workday to go to the local news station. She’d tried reaching them by email, but never got a response. When she actually showed up at the station, she realized why – they didn’t exactly have a ton of people running the operation.

She spoke to someone named Cindy who was quite nice and very happy to air their video for Proposition 16. Jade also managed to get a link to the video on the county website – so if anyone was looking for more information about the vote, they would find it right away.

On her way home, Jade stopped by her mom’s house to say hello, but there was no answer when she knocked on the door. It was disappointing, but she didn’t want to bug her mom – maybe she was buying supplies to repaint the barn?

Jade went home and finished creating a fundraising website for their project that she’d been working on. On Tuesday, she took a half day from work so she could go to Orcas and Lopez Islands to spread the word about the project; she wanted to get some opinions from the residents there as well, and she was excited to see that more than fifty people came to each event.

It was important to get as many opinions as possible. She spoke to someone from the parks department at the fundraiser, and he said that if the county got to keep the land, they could turn it into another park. They had a little bit of money in the budget for some new development, and he said that they could also apply for a grant to build something.

She was open to any and all possibilities. She couldn’t believe how much they’d raised already – but at the same time, she knew that actually getting something built would cost a lot more than twenty-six thousand dollars.

On Wednesday, the committee met – minus Matthew – and went over the wording for the ballot. Angie recommended that they include a section in the proposition that said it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers anything to have this land remain in control of the county.

“But that’s not really true, is it?” asked Jade. “Because if we do build something here – like a park or some sort of a recreation center – won’t the county have to maintain it?”

Morgan waved a hand. “Don’t worry about that. All people care about is that their taxes aren’t going to go up.”

“It’s not like we’re proposing a tax increase.”

“Exactly. And don’t make this too long, or no one’s going to read it.”

“True,” said Jade. “It seems like everyone that I talked to is really excited about it, though.”

“Sure. But think of the people who will just show up on voting day and not even know about it. I think we need to write it for them.”

Luke agreed. “She’s right, you know. I’ve had to explain this to my roommates like three times and they still don’t really get it.”

Jade laughed. “Good point.”

It would’ve been nice to have Matthew’s help on this, but he had some excuse as to why he couldn’t come to the meeting; he said that he had to work. But was that even true? Maybe he was sick of wasting his evenings on this project and wanted to spend time with someone else…like Laura.

Maybe he felt like he couldn’t bring Laura around. She did come to some things – like the fundraiser. Though throughout the whole evening, they didn’t talk much and when they did, Jade felt nervous because Morgan wavered between completely ignoring Laura and being openly hostile.

Jade begged her to just act normally, explaining that she didn’t want to lose Matthew as a friend. All Morgan had to