Potential

Mandy told herself twenty seven was still young, as much as she told herself she should just forget about the application.

The application that hadn’t moved from her computer screen in five days. The application that waited for her when she woke up, got home, and ate dinner.

When she had first begun to fill it out, it all looked so wrong. Her name. Her age. A year older than last year when she had opened the college website.

“Like literally there’s five people who are Dad’s age in my class.” Devin had told her, “It’s not like the 80s or something. People go back to school all the time.”

Yeah sure, but the key phrase was ‘go back’. Not ‘go for the first time’ or simply ‘go’.

Ten years ago, her name would have looked right. Maybe even three years ago. How has all this time passed?

How had she gone from driving past the college campus, and feeling envy for the students; to feeling empty?

Not even old, just like something was missing. A step on a ladder that had been sawn off. A step that she had given to Devin.

How had “Maybe next year” never come?

Mandy laid down on the couch, out of sight of her laptop. Trading for a smaller screen. But it seemed even the internet was against her. Ads for student loans, for online classes, for universities.

Bright pictures of adults older than her. Kids younger than her. All receiving the education they had always wanted.

None that were her age specifically. None who looked working class, who had the marks of a youth wasted.

Wasted in a hardware store. Wasted to chemical imbalances. Who watched people that were full of zest come in and buy screwdrivers.

Who had conversations amongst themselves about a party, and deck for a pool they were building, or future road trips.

She scrolled. Scrolled some more. Videos.

People younger than her wearing clothes she liked, but couldn’t fit into. Cooking with ingredients that she couldn’t afford, and in places she’d never see.

“Manders, you know what your problem is?” Devin’s voice rang clear as she set her phone down. “You literally just need to do it. Okay? Don’t you deserve to live? To have fun? Even if it’s not school, just something. You keep whining about it, just do it.”

Easy for him to say.

Devin, who was newly eighteen and at the start of his life. Devin, who had never had to miss a day of high school because Daddy was in the hospital, and someone needed to watch the store.

Devin who had so much time. Time and potential.

Did she really have that? Looking at people who “made it” at older ages was well and good, but they had a spring board.

Did she? Maybe not for journalism like she once hoped, but, maybe something else?

“You seem chipper today.” Daddy smiled from his place at the counter. “I got that coffee you like.”

“Thanks.” She kissed his cheek. “I’ve been doing some thinking.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She went to the rack to get her apron, “And I’m going to go to a seminar.”

When Daddy didn’t answer, she kept talking. Headed to the coffee bar, keeping her hands moving.

“I was looking through stuff last night, you know, surfing the web.”

She used his term, hoping that would bring him around, added a small laugh. But there was still silence as she kept on talking.

“It’s a workshop. For uh, mental wellness.” It was advertised as self-esteem and discovery. Freeing your inner child. “You know, like getting to the root of depression.”

“Isn’t that what your Lexapro is for?” Daddy turned towards her. His head leaned to the side to peer at her around the slight corner.

“Well yeah. I mean the meds help me function but this is suppose to, like make me feel better.”

“I thought you were feeling better?”

“I mean better in a way that…” She looked for the words. “That, that gives me permission.”

“Permission?”

She nodded, “Permission to feel better. To feel like…” Like she wasn’t past her prime.

Like she wasn’t sentenced to be the old lady that never did anything. That she wasn’t irrelevant in the grand scheme of life.

“Like you have a purpose?” Daddy’s white eyebrows knitted together. “Manders your life has a purpose. We talked about this…”

“I know. I know it does, this is just something I have to do. And I’m paying for it myself, and it's only a weekend, and it's just the town over. Devin’s on spring break so he can cover for me, and you said you wanted to get that boy in the shop, and learn some responsibility.”

He agreed. He had said that.

Dad and Devin were the same in this way. They didn’t seem to get, or understand what it was like to miss out.

To fall behind. To be irrelevant. To be the background character.

Dad had built his store. Dad’s worries were connected to the goals he had met, and they drove him. Gave him direction.

He had made the store accommodate the times. He had learned how to build his own website, he had arranged a delivery option for supplies, he had moved to Apple pay. And all on his own. He even installed an ice cream machine inside for the summer.

He had stayed relevant.

He didn’t know what it was like for time to move, and to not be ahead of the crowd.

The retreat was marketed as a self discovery writing workshop. Two days in a hotel with other uninspired people, listening to motivational speakers, then writing your thoughts down, and how you are relevant to them.

Changes you can make in your life, what in your life has caused you to hold yourself back.

In all honesty, it had sounded pretty shady to Mandy. And she had never been the kind to put any stock into those kinds of speakers. But it was a start. And maybe it will be like a snake pit.

Maybe she’d be surrounded by so many sad, and pathetic people; she’d be scared out of her sadness, and patheticness.

Maybe she could finally be Mandy. Whoever Mandy was supposed to be at twenty-seven.

Was twenty-seven year old Mandy Ellis, the kind of person who went to self-discovery workshops she heard about on Instagram?

Was twenty-seven Mandy Ellis the kind of person who had so rarely been in a hotel, that the one of North Falls seemed so impossibly big, and wonderful, but was perhaps very ordinary to everyone else?

Was twenty-seven year old Mandy, the kind of person who enjoyed talking about Turner Classic Movies with the old people in the conference hall, and reveal right off the bat her preteen crush on Cary Grant, while everyone else was in love with Orlando Bloom?

Was she the kind of person, who listened to a short, stocky, and greasy man in a headset, who admitted first thing that his day job was selling car insurance? And yet, still liked how he spoke, and what he was saying?

Was she someone who actually enjoyed the writing assignments, and instead of writing about having to look after the hardware shop for her father during his health crisis; she wrote about her mother.

About how she missed her. And knew Mama would miss seeing her life. Miss hearing about where she’d go, and what she’d do, and who she loved.

How on the day she fell, time stopped for so long. And when it started up again, no one in the ER seemed to look at them.

Was twenty-seven year old Mandy Ellis, the kind of person, who could tell that story for the first time to strangers, and not cry?

And feel something in her open? As she walked the town of North Falls, seeing people younger than her in trendy clothes, trendy hairstyles, and little sunglasses; and perhaps not feel shame, at wanting to wear them herself?

Could she get the front strands of her hair dyed, and not think “there goes the old woman, trying to keep with the times.” And instead, feel excited to be seen?

Was she really still young? And could she be someone else? Could she enter the world now, and be in line with everyone else’s steps?

“I think it looks nice.” The short greasy man, Gus, said to her at lunch on sunday. The red dye in her black hair was vibrant and in her room the mirror had made it seem too red. Almost neon.

“Thanks.” She blushed. A hand reflexively reached up, but then she remembered the dust from her vinegar chips, and put it back down. “I never dyed my hair before, and I thought…well you know it’s in style, I guess.”

“Yeah, my daughter did the same, except green. I like red better, it really suits you.”

“I don’t look sad?”

“Sad?” Gus’ eyebrows knitted together, and Mandy’s face warmed more.

“Yeah like…like you know. “Mid-life crisesy”?”

“No.” Gus laughed. “How could you have a midlife crisis at your age? Maybe quarter life, but no you look very cool.”

“I just…I almost felt too old for this kind of thing. Like I was trying too hard to stay with the times.”

“Oh, well, that I understand.” Gus sat down. “I mean, feeling left behind. Irrelevant to the rest of the world as time moved on. I swear it was like I was nineteen and then all of a sudden everyone was married with kids and a house, and I was still bussin’ tables.”

“Yeah! Like time moved on without you. Opportunities and well, everything.”

“What kind of opportunities?”

“Oh well.” Mandy wiped her hands on her jeans and sighed. “Just everything. Like, college, a career, clubbing, like all the usual stuff you’re suppose to do in your early twenties…Adventures.”

“You always have the opportunity for adventures.” Gus shrugged.

“Well yeah but like, you don’t see…” She was about to say you don’t see people make storytimes about an adventure to a self-discovery seminar, but bit her tongue.

“You see certain types of adventures on TV, and on the internet. Fomo does a number on you.”

“Yeah.” She chuckled. “Yeah, guess its obvious why I ended up here then.”

Gus smiled. “It’s hard, keeping up with time. It’s not a fair race.”

“No…I have a younger brother, right? He’s in college, and he talks about all this stuff he’s doing, and the equipment he’s using, like stuff that wasn’t even around when I was his age, that I never heard of. And I talk to his friends and they just seem so with things. They’re kids of today…and it's like a door closed. Like I missed my chance to be in it.”

“And how old are you?”

She told him, and could tell he was fighting telling her how old he was. But she appreciated it.

“Mandy, you’re breathing aren’t you? You’re human? You dyed your hair on a whim, you laid your heart out to strangers. You’re very relevant.”

She could have cried then. Not so much at what he said, but the way the words filled her heart.

Unexpected, and they didn’t sound empty. They weren’t from people who by biological nature were meant to love her. It was from a stranger.

Someone she would only know that weekend. Only see a last time, as she went to check out. Who she could tell her father about, who she could name as someone who liked her hair.

Was Mandy Ellis, twenty-seven-years-old, the kind of person who got permission to live, and enter the current world, from a short car insurance salesman?

If she was there was no way in hell she was going to tell anyone.

Even if that weekend hadn’t given her what she wanted, maybe it had been something.

Maybe it had been enough.

Listening to others stories, about time freezing, time never being right, and time moving too fast.

Stories about hesitation that got in the way of love, of having children, of saying goodbye, and saying hello.

Her story, where the clock moved on without her. But the one in her, the clock with her name on it, moved just a little. The little hand moved an inch, and the dust fell away.

It could start with her hair. Then maybe with some jeans that went high enough to cover her belly.

Maybe by summer, it could be a roadtrip across the state. Maybe by fall, it could be community college.

Maybe it could just be more time. Maybe it could just be her. Mandy Ellis. A new adult. Young, and ready to jump into life again.