The Rest of the Story. Sarah Dessen

needs it.”

      “Yeah, but have you ever actually held a job?”

      I’m only seventeen, I wanted to say. Just as I thought this, though, I realized she’d probably been working for years. Things were different here. Out loud I said, “I can help you, if you’ll let me. It’s up to you.”

      She looked at me for a second, and I leveled my gaze back at her. Finally she said, “Go by the office and tell Mimi you need the keys to room ten. Then go let Tom in. Don’t give her a choice.”

      “Okay,” I said, surprised at how victorious I felt. “Then what?”

      “You need something else?”

      “What I need is to not feel I’m just sitting around doing nothing while she’s working on her bad knee,” I told her. “That’s something I’m pretty sure my mom wouldn’t have wanted.”

      She glanced out the door, toward the office. “Okay. Come back here after. I’ll show you how to do the beds.”

      I nodded, then started down the sidewalk. Of course she hadn’t denied not liking me, not that I really expected her to. But I’d take her offer. Since arriving, I’d felt like not family and not a guest, the sole inhabitant of this weird place in between. It felt good to have a job and task at hand. Like the chaos that was this trip could actually get a bit more organized, and I might just find my place in it.