Susane Colasanti - Something Like Fate Excerpt

I’m all frustrated about what happened in swimming yesterday. Why don’t I just admit that I’m never going to learn how to swim? Forget diving and all that fancy stuff. Never going to happen. I’m obviously destined to drown in some freak boating accident.

I should just accept my fate and call it a life.

We have a new salad bar in the cafeteria. Which should be good news. Except that it’s seriously lame. Idiots are throwing stuff in. The lettuce looks like it’s been sitting there for a really long time. Even the carrot shreds are trying to jump ship. So I’m avoiding the salad bar, sliding my tray along the railing. I frown at the lunch selection. I’ve narrowed my choices down to two: bad or worse.

Someone comes up behind me and bumps their tray into mine. I spin around, annoyed. Then I realize it’s Jason.

He’s like, “Hey.”

“Oh! I didn’t know it was you.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Or. Maybe not.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Not especially.”

“That’s cool.”

We push our trays forward.

“So who do you sit with?” he says.

“Um . . .” I glance over at my table. “Some friends from One World.”

“Oh, nice.”

We push our trays some more.

“We have a variety of delectable selections this afternoon.” Jason makes a sweeping gesture over the food case. “Appetizers include suspicious-looking potato things, an array of crumbly apple slices, and some green stuff over there.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“Absolutely. Moving on to the main course selections . . . uh . . . yeah, I don’t know what any of that is. But there’s some questionable Jell-O-like substance for dessert, which could be a plus.”

“Yay.”

“That’s exactly what I said when I saw it.”

Five minutes ago I felt horrible. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. Now I’m laughing like nothing was ever wrong.

When we get to the end of the line, Jason takes my lunch card.

“It’s on me.” He hands our cards to the cashier. She swipes them, less than impressed.

“Big spender,” I tell him.

“I know, right?”

And then we’re just there with our trays.

“Anyway,” Jason goes.

“Well, see you later,” I say.

“Yeah.”

I have this giddy, nervous feeling. I sit down at my table.

“Hey, Lani,” Danielle says. “Did you get my note?”

“Yeah. It was hilarious.” Danielle knows I’ve been in a skank mood all day. Sometimes when she wants to cheer me up, she writes me funny notes and slips them in my locker. They usually have parts of conversations she overheard that she knows I’d like. This one was about how some senior smokes so much pot that he only has like six brain cells left. And how he’s clinging to his six brain cells.

I can’t eat anything.

Danielle’s like, “Can you even brush your teeth with only six brain cells left?”

“I don’t think you can recognize your toothbrush,” I say. I’m not really paying attention, though. I keep looking over at Jason’s table. He’s laughing with the Golden kids every time I look.

“Oh, I finally got Good to Go on board.” Danielle and I have been working on an initiative to get delis and fast-food places to stop automatically dumping a pile of napkins and stuff in every to-go bag. We’ve already gotten a few places to agree to ask if you want anything extra.

“That’s awesome,” I say.

“Yeah, but we still have a lot of places to contact.”

When lunch is almost over, I get up to throw out my garbage. Jason gets up with his tray at the same exact time.

I’m separating my regular garbage from the things to recycle, but Jason doesn’t do that. He just tosses everything into the garbage can.

I go, “Uh, excuse me?”

“Hi.”

“What are you doing?”

“Throwing out my garbage. Unless, do you want it, or—”

“Ring ring! Clue phone!”

Jason stares at me.

“The clue phone is ringing! It’s for you!”

“Oh, right. Uh . . . hello?”

“Hi. Is Jason there?”

“Speaking.”

“Are you aware that you’re supposed to put your empty water bottle in the blue recycling bin?”

“This one?” Jason points to the bin. “Oh, sorry, I forgot you can’t see me. I’m currently pointing to the blue recycling bin.”

“You mean the one marked bottles and cans?”

“That would be the one, yes.”

I wait.

“So I guess I should take my water bottle out of the trash,” he concludes.

“That would be a start.”

Jason peers into the gross garbage can. “It has noodles on it.”

“Do you want to be responsible for completely destroying the only planet you can possibly live on?”

Jason crinkles up his nose. He slowly extends his arm down into the garbage can. He picks up the bottle and shakes some noodles off.

“See?” I go. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“It kind of was.”

“How can you not recycle?”

“Oh, I recycle.”

“Yeah? Then what about that bottle?”

“Okay. See I recycle? But just not every single thing every single time.”

“Did you know that landfills produce thirty-six percent of all methane emissions?”

“I did not know that.”

“And that methane is a major greenhouse gas? Twenty times more powerful than carbon dioxide?”

“That I knew.”

“So when you throw something in the garbage that could have been recycled and it becomes part of the landfill mass, you’re contributing to human-forced global warming and, ultimately, environmental demise.”

Jason considers this. “Tell you what. You convince me that recycling this bottle would make that much of a difference, and I’ll promise to recycle everything recyclable for the rest of the year.”

“The rest of the school year?”

“Yup.”

“But that’s only two more months.”

“Exactly!” And then he smiles like he just solved the global-warming problem all by himself.

“How about for the rest of your life?”

“Whoa. Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“Less extreme than destroying the Earth.”

“Hmm. Okay. You’re on.”

“Great.” I put my tray on the rack and head back to my table.

“Hey!”

I spin around. “Yes?”

“What about convincing me?”

“I’ll have it ready for you soon.”

“Why can’t you just tell me?”

“How lame would that be? No, I’m doing graphs and charts and whatnot. It’ll provide a much more compelling argument.”

This will be fun. Here’s a chance to show Jason what I know. And maybe even change his life.