Crash

CHAPTER ONE: EVIE

According to one of my business school professors, internships are supposedly like planting strawberries. You nestle the seeds in the ground, diligently water the sprouts, welcome the sunshine, then eventually, enjoy the delicious, ripe fruit that bursts with flavor.

"It's like love," she'd say. "Cultivate, nurture, then reap the benefits."

Now, I know nothing about love, and I'm only starting to be a halfway decent gardener. But this is my third internship, so I'm pretty knowledgeable in that department.

In reality, internships are like potatoes. After cultivating the plant, you dig into the earth, get messy, and eventually find a dirty, lumpy vegetable. Then you have to put in more time, and more work, before it turns into something edible. And even then, you might burn the spud to an inedible crisp while frying it in boiling oil.

My thoughts drift to french fries and my stomach growls, a Pavlovian response to my hunger. I shove aside a company brochure, check my phone, sigh. It's close to seven, and I should be home. Instead, I'm glued to my uncomfortable gray office chair on the third floor of the Jenkins Corporation office in downtown Atlanta, staring at a stack of files on my desk.

For a second, I rest my head on my forearms in the hushed office, trying to will away the hunger and, yeah, the boredom. The sooner I finish proofreading these memos, the sooner I can get home.

Thanks, Josephine, I mutter. Way to pile on in the last week of my internship. Normally I proofread marketing copy, the kinds of blurbs and snippets that showcase the company's charitable side. Charity is in short supply on the intern level, though. Even though I'm only making twelve an hour, the company treats me more like a junior public relations executive. All work and very little pay, for the opportunity to be considered for one of the few PR jobs that come open each year.

But my manager has already said there are no new junior PR positions this quarter, which means I'm out of luck. She'd assured me if there were available jobs, I'd be a shoo-in. But that and a dollar will get me a Beefy Potato-Rito on the value menu at Taco Bell.

Groaning, I lift my head and thumb through the files, my eyes feeling dry and scratchy from the harsh overhead fluorescent light. I'll never get home in time to make dinner. And I'll totally be too tired to work on that newsletter for the community garden in my neighborhood. Why did I volunteer to do that, anyway?

I pick up my cell and wearily tap out a text to my sister, Sabrina.

You're on your own for dinner tonight.

She calls me five seconds later. Unlike the rest of her generation, my little sister loves to chat on the phone, probably because she enjoys hearing herself talk.

"I have to, like, cook?" Her tone is dubious.

"Sabrina, I'm going to be late. You're on your own for food. There's one of those microwave pizzas in the freezer, I think." I cradle my cell between my ear and shoulder, opening the cover of one of the files.

"Let me check." I hear her open the freezer door. "Oh, look at that. There are two pizzas. Want me to heat one up for you, Evie?"

My sister's melodic southern accent soothes my mood. It sometimes baffles me that we're related. I have an accent as flat and dry as Florida, the state where I was born. My sister is pure Georgia, where our family moved after Dad got a sales job here in Atlanta at the world's most famous soda company.

"No, I'll deal with it when I get home. Eat yours. Microwave only on medium. Four minutes. You good? And hey? No friends over tonight. You need to study for finals."

"But whyyyyy?" Sabrina's high-pitched whine fills my ear.

I don't have time for this tonight and I snap at her. "Stop it. No guests."