Chapter 21: Too Perfect
I didn't want for Castiel to feel left out, so I asked if he wanted to sit in during the Student Council meeting on Friday afternoon, to which he replied: "I would rather gouge my eyes out with a guitar pick." So, needless to say, he did not accompany Lysander and I as we made our way to the student Council Room.
We were the first to arrive, so we helped Nathaniel arrange the tables and chairs into a horseshoe formation.
Melody came next. Just for the occasion, she had baked sugar cookies and iced them in green, white, and blue to look like little globes. ("We still don't know which country they picked, so I made the whole world!")
A few at a time, other Council members came in and took their seats, chatting amongst themselves, Melody's cookies staining their teeth and tongues blue-green. Peggy dented the doorway with the cumbrous 1970's microphone box thing she always carried with her. She complemented Melody on her creativity, but didn't eat a cookie. ("I won't eat it if it has unborn baby chickens in it," she explained loudly.)
It turned out that Lysander and I were up against Melody, Peggy, and Nathaniel for the Loving Arms internship. I had honestly expected a larger turnout.
"How do you like our chances?" I texted to Lysander, even though he was sitting right next to me.
He read my text, then looked around the room skeptically. "I'm not so sure," he answered honestly. He didn't mean it as an insult to me; the truth of the matter was that we were up against Sweet Amoris' best and brightest. "Who do you want?" he asked in another text. I knew he meant: Who do want to get chosen besides you and me?
"Nath," I answered.
His unenthusiastic reply came in the form on a smiley with a lopsided backslash mouth.
"He needs to get away," I reasoned, "and besides, he has the best chance of getting it." Nathaniel's résumé listed extracurricular activities in overabundance; he probably volunteered in his sleep. More importantly, if he got it, it would mean a three-week head start on detoxing for the new year. I wanted for him to have that chance, even if it meant I couldn't.
"...Peggy?" Lysander texted back cryptically.
"What about Peggy?" I honestly had no idea what he meant. Peggy the newsmonger was at the bottom of my list, below even Melody, whose perfection was as annoying as it was intimidating.
When there were about a dozen of us in total, Nathaniel took his place at the podium. "Okay, it looks like everyone's here, so let's get started. We'll start with old business. Melody, could you read back the minutes from last week?"
"Well..." She flipped through her detailed notes and tucked a lock of long chestnut hair back behind her ear. She had the poise and posture of a storybook princess. It made me want to punch her in the face. "In the first thirteen minutes of the meeting, we voted on what color sweatshirts we should order."
"Yes, that's right," said Nathaniel, remembering. "Did we ever come to a decision?"
"Unfortunately, no. It's still a bitter stalemate between heather gray and red," Melody announced somberly.
Lysander sent me another text. "Kill me."
"You kill me first," I responded. "Murder-suicide."
Nathaniel had caught on to our pattern of texting, giggling, then texting again. He was put off by my refusal to take the sweatshirt issue seriously.
"Then," Melody continued, "in the twenty minutes that followed, we listened as Peggy brought the matter of the vending machines' snack selection before the Council - or, erm, the lack of vegetarian and vegan items therein -"
"Almost all of the candy," Peggy interjected, blinking her violet eyes, "has gelatin in it - gelatin made from the bones of slaughtered cows." She seemed to enjoy the sound her own voice made as it injected drama into every syllable. "You can read all about it in the exposé I'm working on for next week's edition of the newspaper. It's called Gummy Bears: Secretly Care Bear Embryos? … It's a working title," she explained to the room of dumbfounded stares.
"Okay, moving right along to new business..." Nathaniel took over. "For those of us who applied to study abroad over winter break, the moment we've all been waiting for has finally arrived! Loving Arms contacted Frau Becker earlier today confirming the location of the winter internship. They told her in an email that the hostel that could use our help the most is the one located in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia."
Dake.
Hope formed in my chest as involuntarily as a blood clot and similarly made me weak and short of breath. I had no right to have this much hope. All I knew was a first name and a continent, and that wasn't really much to go on at all - but even that was enough for the hope that incapacitated me at that moment.
Meanwhile, Melody and Peggy squealed with excitement, for reasons that were entirely their own.
"I hear it's summer all year round!" sang Melody.
"I hear there are more koalas than people!" chirped Peggy.
"Alright, alright, that's enough," barked Nathaniel, trying to regain order. "Our applications have been submitted to the manager of the Brisbane Loving Arms branch for final review. We could hear back from her with the winners as early as next week. That doesn't give us a whole lot of time before winter break to get passports and paperwork ready..."
Anything he said after that fell on deaf ears. I was too far gone to be roped back down.