Cry Until You Bleed

39- Notes

*There's a CBJ game tonight but if (when) they win, I'm not going to post a bonus chapter tonight because I don't like posting two chapters in one day so I'll post the extra update tomorrow*

“If I make one more of these stupid stars, my hands are going to fall right off,” Mia grumbles on Sunday when we’re working in the meeting room to fold our little messages into stars.

“Seriously, how’d we get stuck with the grunt work?” Katie wonders, glancing over at Desiree as if she has all of the answers as to why we got stuck on star duty.

“It’s not grunt work,” Desiree shakes her head. “It’s kind of fun and it was just the next job on the list when we finished the sign so it’s what we got assigned.”

“Well, it sucks,” Mia says. “I’d much rather be painting a sign than folding a billion tiny papers into motivational stars.”

“Sure but think about all of the happy people there are going to be after they open up these tiny stars,” Desiree adds, tossing another folded up star into the bucket that we’re using to hold all of the finished stars.

“They better be ecstatic,” Renée sighs, obviously joking. “Because I have never had finger cramps until today. Can you get Charlie horses in your fingers because I think that might be happening right now.”

“We’re almost done,” I encourage her as I toss a purple star into the bucket. Just five more minutes until we should start cleaning up and calling it a day for today so I think we’ll survive it. Especially me considering I know that Niles is out in the common area waiting for me to finish up in here so that we can hang out for a while before he has to go home and work on homework from his first week of classes. Speaking of Niles, I grab a larger piece of paper that doesn’t have any writing on it yet and then scribble down a message unlike any of the other ones that I’d written and then I quickly fold it into a star but I don’t put it in the bucket, I sit it on my lap under the table before anybody says anything about it.

“At least we don’t have that job,” Katie motions towards three people who are fixing up a pile of old clothes, organizing them and hanging them up on a rack if they are usable. Some people here don’t have a way of getting a fancy outfit for the dance- or an outfit at all- so the facility uses donated clothes or stuff from the thrift shop so that everybody who wants to go can go to the dance can get dressed up. The people that we’re now looking at have the job of sorting through all of those donations to make sure that they’re usable. “It sounds so gross to have to sort through other peoples’ clothes.”

“I think I’d barf,” Renée comments.

“Where is your spirit, you guys?” Desiree wonders with a small incredulous laugh. “Cheer up. We only have about a month before this dance and then, when it’s finally here, it’s going to be amazing. Not just for us, but for everybody. We’re going to make everybody here so happy.”

I force a smile to show her that it excites me but it really doesn’t. It isn’t my job to make other people happy, it is my job to make me happy. I know that it sounds selfish but everybody here needs to have their priorities straight. Everybody needs to worry about themselves first before they start wishing for other’s happiness. How can you give other people happiness if you are not happy yourself? That’s like a homeless man giving away money to charity. However, I don’t say that out loud, I just nod and then continue to work.

“I just want this to be over,” Katie sighs, tossing a star into the bucket.

“Why’d you join the club if you don’t like it?” Renée wonders, cocking her head to the side with curiosity.