How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

age.
    “Okay.” I put the card in my apron pocket just as Annalee comes toward us, smiling.
    “Sorry to kick you out, but we need to get closing under way.”
    “Right.” He gives her a card, too, and repeats what he told me.
    I follow him to the door to let him out and to lock up. Before he leaves, he turns and, sounding nineteen again, says softly, “Look at the tennis team page. In the yearbook.”
    “Tennis team. Okay.”
    After he’s gone, Annalee says, “What was that all about? Are you trying to get my job?”
    “Ha. No, thank you.”
    “Well, whatever. That is one tall, steamy, delicious chai latte.”
    “Really?” I look at the door Ravi’s just walked through. I guess he looks good. Better than he did two years ago, anyway. “I don’t think you can say that without violating some company policy.”
    “All I mean is he’s my type.”
    “He’s a little young for you,” I say. “But go ahead.”
    I count out my register, mopey and disturbed that I still can’t remember Ravi and what that means about what I remember about me, that I closed early Monday, that Dylan and I can’t figure out what to do about us, that I wasn’t nicer to Mandy after school today, that I can’t seem to talk to my mom anymore.
    Or, for that matter, talk to anyone, be nice to anyone except here at work.
    The sad fact about me and work is that I’m my best self when I’m here.
    I can be human to strangers and coworkers, just not to the people who actually care about me.

Mandy

     
    There’s a daydream I’ve had ever since I was little. I don’t know where it comes from—maybe I saw something like it in a movie or on TV, or maybe I read it in a book. Except I haven’t read very many books so that’s probably not it. Maybe I thought it up all on my own. In it I live in a log cabin by a small lake, and on the other side of the lake is another log cabin, exactly like mine. A perfect square. A man lives in it, and he carves tiny animals out of wood. For me. A bear, a deer, a raccoon. And puts them in a boat to float them to my side of the lake. I can never think what to send back, because I don’t have anything, but I’m never lonely. Every time I walk out of the cabin door and look across my lake, he’s there on his porch, carving. Water and wildflowers between us, but we’re still together.
    The baby will always have Robin. Jill, too, even though now she acts like she doesn’t care. She will. In a way the baby will have me, also. I’ll be like the man in the cabin across the lake, and for once I can be the one sending things across—letters, money, presents—and the baby won’t have to send anything back. I can give and give and give and never have to take, because I won’t really be the mother. We won’t fight like mothers and daughters do. I won’t be able to hurt her or mess up her life with my bad decisions. For instance if I pick the wrong boyfriend, it won’t affect her, and I won’t be able to make her feel bad about herself; she’ll always be protected by the space between us.
    I’ll only send good things across. Starting with Robin and this house.
    This is Thursday. I got here Monday. I’m already feeling at home. I’ve got my favorite end of the couch, and I have the cable set up to record my shows. More and more I think of my room as my room and not as the guest room. Which I think will be the nursery. There’s a routine: Robin gets up early and works in her downstairs office while Jill gets ready for school. Jill leaves, and I get up and shower and set my hair. Jill and Robin don’t have rollers or even a curling iron, and Jill looked at me funny when I asked. “Curlers?” she said. “What is this, 1988?” All I know is how my mother taught me to do my hair. So I’ve been saving toilet paper rolls and in the meantime using bobby pins.
    After my shower, Robin and I have breakfast together and she tells me her schedule for the day. I’m not sure exactly what she does for a living.