“But where are you headed? Is there even anything open right now?”
He looks down, his face expressionless.
“I’m going to the food bank, Brit,” Joey says in a quiet voice. “We usually go Tuesdays, but I want to start going twice a week because food is getting scarce. A lot of people are hurting, and I want to get there early before things run out.”
My heart swoops and then plummets.
“Oh yeah,” I say quietly. “Of course.”
With that, my brother leaves without another word, his rangy form going down the stairs to our old, rusted truck. He gets into the car, waves goodbye at me through the windshield, and then pulls away.
I stare at the quiet trailer park for a moment. The first rays of the sun are coming out, casting the landscape in pink and yellow rays. The dried grass is a gleaming golden color, and birds chirp merrily, even if most of the trailers are rusty and decrepit. How did we get to this place? How do we get ourselves out?
Shaking my head, I go back inside, my heart heavy. I grab a glass of water and bring it to the coffee table in the living room. Coffee would be nice, but it’s a luxury we haven’t been able to afford in a while. As a result, I’ll be making do with good old H2O in the meantime.
My ancient laptop sits on the coffee table, and it makes a loud whirring sound when I pick it up. It was my mom’s and it’s probably four years old now, which is ancient in laptop years. But I have no choice but to use it for my remote-learning classes.
Luckily for me, my neighbor, Sunny McDougal, has wifi that isn’t locked. The connection isn’t great, but it works, and I log into her sunnyday wifi without a password. Good. I think she knows that I’m bumming off of her connection, but she’s too nice to say anything about it.
I click into my school’s portal, and look over the updates. Since it’s the last semester of my senior year, I’m only taking four classes. It’s manageable, and I’m able to get through my assignments pretty quickly. Plus, now that I’m doing school at home, I go at my own pace. On a normal day, it takes maybe three hours for me to finish my assignments. Sometimes, even less if there are no distractions and today is one of those days. I speed through my work while remaining diligent, and soon, everything’s done.
I look up. It’s almost noon, but Joey’s not back yet. Oh shit. That probably means that the line at the food bank was long. These days, there are horrifying photos of ginormous parking lots filled with cars just waiting for the food bank to open. If they’re rationing supplies, it’ll probably take even longer.
My heart heavy, I upload my assignments and put my laptop back on the table where it belongs. Now that I’m done, there’s nothing to occupy my mind, and I feel utterly useless. How can I help my family? How can I relieve some of the burden from my brother’s shoulders?
It’s not like there’s much I can do, though. I’m an eighteen-year-old high school student without any marketable skills. Sure, I’m artistic and I love painting and pottery, but those skills aren’t going to translate into something useful in the next two days.
Could I grow flowers to sell? Vegetables to eat? We don’t have a garden, but there is some unused land in back of the trailer park. Maybe no one would mind if I dug around there and started a vegetable patch. Weren’t homegrown veggies called victory gardens back during World War I?
Then again, it would likely take months for any veggies to actually sprout. Plus, where would I get seeds? We can’t even afford coffee right now, much less seeds for a garden that may or may not be successful.
Distraught, I sit back on the couch to think. I have to be able to do something. It’s not fair for my brother to shoulder this burden on his own. As if on cue, my stomach growls, and I force myself to sit still with my eyes closed. Maybe if I don’t move, the hunger pains will go away.
It does feel better after a few minutes, and my eyes flick open again. I have to do something because Joey and I can’t live like this. Resolute, I get up and march to my room before throwing the closet open. I need a job. I need to make money so that we can buy food. I don’t know what kind of position I could get, but there has to be something. Some store has to be hiring, right? Grimly, I flip through the clothes in my closet. I’m going to march downtown and find myself a position, come hell or high water.