Sarah is about to shit her pants.
She is in the middle of a phone interview with an oil and gas company based out of Texas and Oklahoma and North Dakota, a few of those Midwest states that she has never seen, let alone would she be able to map out the difference between Wyoming and Wisconsin – those are two different states, right? Something about tumbleweed and deserts.
It has been over forty minutes into their conversation and her sweaty hand grips the sides of her favorite black G-2 Pilot pen as she scribbles down notes that Megan, her recruiter, has been telling her (a question here, an off-hand comment there), her dark hair is in a frenzy – or in as much of a frenzy as Chinese straight-black hair could possibly go when someone is nervous –, and her pajamas have a desperately gaping hole fit for a hamster’s hideout that Sarah has ignored for the last six months.
“If you had a million dollars,” Megan began, “And didn’t have to worry about money, or time, or anything, what would you do?”
Sarah finishes up her last bites of the white fish she’s never known the English or Chinese name for, but has always loved, and stuffs down her favorite tofu and yellow bean dish, dripping some pieces onto her T-shirt. It’s her last night in Brooklyn with her family, a home of eight – her parents, her brother, and her two sets of grandparents, before she heads back to college for her senior year. The dishes served that night – and really, every rare night that Sarah is home in time for dinner, always specially catered to their most absent daughter – are Sarah’s childhood favorites. The table, now clean of rice and soy sauce and the plastic wrap that protected the brilliant but age-old salmon-and-kelly green sheets under it, holds fast the chicken soup in several little bowls as Sarah, her mother, and her mother’s mother sit around the table, laughing at Sarah’s poor Chinese as she continues to justify that, “I’m only five!” is the perfect excuse to her occasional irresponsibility.
“When are you heading back to school, Sarah?” asks her grandmother, a lovely short and squat woman who never fails to be the first to look for her granddaughter when Sarah comes home. She is preparing yet another twenty-dollar bill to pass into Sarah’s unwilling hands.
“Tomorrow,” Sarah replies with a sad smile. “I’m a little scared though.”
“Don’t be,” her mother says while laughing, eyes twinkling the entire time. Sarah shares her mother’s small nose. “You’ll be just fine. Just look at how much you’ve accomplished this summer. We’re already so proud of you.” Her grandmother nods, raising up her right thumb in approval, her way of saying, “You’re my number one.”
Sarah’s throat tightens as she tries to speak, but instead, she makes steady eye contact with one piece of a rather yellow bean in her soup. “I haven’t done anything of the sort,” she insists. She moves her chopsticks to the other side of her bowl, and then moves them onto the table beside it. “Don’t say things like that. I barely got paid.”
“Don’t be silly. Also, your dad’s going to bring you to Port Authority tomorrow.”
Sarah finishes her soup and walks up to her mother to give her a hug, who simply says, “Alright, alright,” and pats her back, and does the same for her grandmother, who slips the twenty into Sarah’s pocket. She thanks them for the dinner, and walks upstairs to chat with her little brother.
“Are you doing UE this year?”
It is late November in 2013 when Garland asks her. They are in the middle of an AstroTurf field in Brooklyn, the fifth annual Stuyvesant Alumni Ultimate Frisbee tournament, where all of the graduates from years past return to New York City once more and show off new skills and catch up with one another. Garland had been one of her mentors back in 2008 when she first joined the volunteer program, and had taught the sport both to and before her. Post-graduation in 2011, he had moved to Washington, D.C. to work and is finally coming back to the city next spring, and participating in the program again.
Sarah shifts a little as the wind picks up, and jams her slowly-freezing hands into the soft, dark-blue hoodie she borrowed from a friend earlier that day. She looks down, up, and then back at Garland, who is simply smiling, his broad figure always a source of comfort to her. She was glad that he had taken a liking to her and kept her under his wing all these years, checking in on her every so often.
“I’ll have to see,” she begins to recite the same general response that she had perfected over the past three years to avoid the question. “I don’t know where I’ll be next summer.”
He complies with her answer before she can change her mind, so she asks him, “What will you be doing in UE? Teach Ultimate Frisbee again?”
Garland laughs and says, “Probably. But you know how I teach.” And she smiles, because she does remember. While he loves teaching and is patient, he was very strict in past years, and the age group has since expanded to include 7 – 8 year olds who can’t exactly hold a Frisbee, let alone throw it.
“You’ll be fine,” Sarah says, and then adds quickly, “And maybe we can teach together,” before she could hold her tongue. “And we can have lunches now instead of seeing each other once a year.” She bites her lower lip, and cringes.
“Yep,” he pats her on the back, “It’ll be fun,” and Sarah watches him saunter off to talk with other alumni, hands still jammed tight in her hoodie, before slowly shuffling over to another old classmate to ask about her new job out in California.
Sarah takes a breath, puts down her notepad, swings her hair behind her head, and sits up straight in her chair.
“I would first put away enough money for my parents to stop working, and buy houses for them and for my grandparents near a beach somewhere.” She pauses, and Megan keeps quiet on the other line, the silence edging Sarah on. “I’d put away money for my little brother’s college career. I would continue to play Ultimate. I would work,” and she blushes brilliantly, ears burning up by her side as she says this next line with as much confidence as she can muster as her cheeks sweat into the phone, “as a high school chemistry teacher. Anywhere. To teach the kids a subject that I love and has gotten me this far,” and with a sharp breath, as if the money were running low, “And I would travel. I would travel everywhere I possibly can.”
