Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson Page B

with a quick smile before rolling to a stop at a stop sign, that he’d gotten past my comment and wanted to move on as well, “your mother has requested some fresh corn for dinner tonight. I need to pick up the mail. And…” He paused for a moment, then looked back at the road. “I thought you might want to stop by the Clubhouse. Maybe apply for a job.”
    “Oh,” I said. “A job.” I looked out the window, feeling embarrassment wash over me. So he’d noticed that, unlike Warren and Gelsey, I had no talents to occupy my time with. Unfortunately, I also had no work experience—I’d spent the most recent summers doing things like service projects, language immersions, and going to camps in which I had to dissect things.
    “You certainly don’t have to,” he said as we got closer to Lake Phoenix’s main street—called, creatively, Main Street. “It was just a thought.”
    I nodded, and as my dad made the right turn onto Main and swung into a parking spot, I turned over his words in my head. I knew I couldn’t just keep hanging out at home with nothing to do. And, frankly, I didn’t see many other options. “Okay,” I said, shouldering my bag as we got out of the car. I shut my door and I tipped my head toward the Clubhouse building, where the Lake Phoenix administrative offices were. “I’ll give it a shot.”
    My father smiled at me. “That’s my girl,” he said. I smiled back, but even as I did, I could feel an immediate, almost panicky reaction. I wanted to freeze this moment, keep it from moving on, dip it in amber somehow. But just as I thought this, my dad was already looking away, starting to walk up the street. “Shall we reconnoiter in thirty?” he asked.
    I glanced down at my watch. Back home, I almost never wore one, because I always had my phone with me. But aside from a few awkward text exchanges with acquaintances that I’d resorted to in extreme loneliness, my cell had been quiet. And since I hadn’t felt I needed constant proof that nobody was calling me, I’d taken to leaving it in my room, which meant that I needed some other way to tell the time. “Thirty,” I echoed. “Sure.” My dad gave me a nod before walking up the street to Henson’s Produce, no doubt on a mission to get my mother her corn.
    I turned and headed toward the Clubhouse building, wishing that I’d straightened myself up a little more that morning. I waswearing what had, after only a few days, become my de facto summer uniform—cutoff jean shorts and a tank top. I was worried that this outfit, coupled with the fact that I had never held a job before, might seriously impair my chances of getting hired. But as I stood in front of the wood-paneled building, with the painted Lake Phoenix design (a phoenix rising from the lake, water dripping from its wings while the sun rose—or set—behind it) on the window, I realized that there was nothing to do but to give it a try. So I straightened my shoulders and pulled open the door.
    Fifteen minutes later, I had a job. I stepped back out into the sunlight, blinking at it before I slipped my sunglasses back on, feeling a little bit dazed. I now had three white Lake Phoenix employee T-shirts (the cost of which would come out of my first paycheck), an employee handbook, and instructions to show up for work at the beach in three days. Jillian, the woman who was in charge of the hiring, had told me repeatedly, even as she looked over my application and scrolled through the options on her computer, that I was much too late in the application process to expect anything great—or, for that matter, anything at all.
    The Lake Phoenix administrative offices were bigger than I’d expected—I’d never spent much time in the Clubhouse, except for when we’d occasionally gone for brunch on Sundays, Warren and I staying put for what felt like hours before getting permission toleave and running for the beach. I finally located the employment office, which placed the teenagers