*
The next day is Saturday, which means I basically get a four-day weekend, if you include the fabulous ER visit. But it also means that my mom’s home and is on guard to make sure that I do nothing but rest. I have to watch Wild Kratts with Mila while my mom studies at the dining room table. There she is, stressing about her classes, all the while watching over me like the hawk that Mila’s obsessed with on her program.
At noon, I get a text from Sammie telling me to come upstairs, that she has news—“big, big news!”
My mom lets me go so long as I promise “no reading, no studying.”
It takes me thirty-eight seconds to reach Sammie’s apartment via the emergency stairwell. She’s standing at the door, jumping and smiling and clapping her hands.
“What’s up?”
“You’re going to work with me this summer!” She yells this, and her mom tells her to close the door, that she’s going to wake up the entire building.
“What are you talking about?”
“I got you a job.”
The building we live in is part of this microcosm of a neighborhood called Bennett Village, which isn’t really a village, not like the small town outside of Kiev where my mom grew up. Bennett Village is just a five-block stretch of land in the middle of Chicago where four identical high-rises are separated by overpriced town houses and courtyards that have more concrete than plant life. It was built fifty years ago and was part of this idyllic postwar desire to achieve the American dream, according to my dad, who knows these things. Our building towers over a private Olympic-size outdoor pool on the ground floor, where Sammie worked last summer. Even if you live in the village, you still have to pay a hefty fee to the condo association in order to use the pool.
As it turns out, Mrs. Salazar is in with Mr. Bautista, the head of Bennett Village maintenance. Sammie’s Filipina, and she has a huge family who live all over Chicago, including Mr. Bautista, who’s her dad’s second cousin through marriage. He trusts Sammie’s mom, so he agreed to hire me without even a pretend interview.
“My mom’s not going to approve,” I say. “She wants me to sit and do nothing.”
“You will be doing nothing, though. You’ll be sitting around, with me, getting paid to just hang out!”
Sammie is absolutely elated. She has extremely high hopes for the summer. “I’m telling you,” she says. “It will be awesome, the summer of our lives. Sun, water, hot guys, free days at the pool. What more could you want?”
“To go to the Illinois Design and Engineering Summer Academy.”
“I get that. But that’s not happening, obviously. And anyway, don’t you want to spend the summer with me?”
I think about it. It is a tempting option. At least a job will look better on college applications than saying I stayed home all summer doing nothing. And it will still give me time to study for my SATs, which I need to retake in the fall. “Yes, of course I do,” I say. “But my mom’s not going to like it. She wants to keep a close eye on me.”
“How is she going to keep an eye on you? She’s going to be in class.”
“She’s going to force me to stay home.”
“Let’s go talk to her.” Sammie convinces me to let her go back downstairs with me to tell my mom.
My mom’s annoyed—first, that Sammie’s involving herself in my recovery, and, even worse, that it’s thwarting her plan to force me to rest, which is to say her plan to force me to stay at home so she can keep a close eye on me. “I don’t want her wearing herself out again.”
“Mr. Bautista said we could share a lot of our shifts. We’ll mostly just be sitting around together. It’ll be great. And very relaxing for Vivi.”
“So, total inertia?” I ask.
“I don’t know what that means,” she says. Sammie’s good at many things—English, history, Drama Club, choir, and secret fashion blogging (1,428 IG followers, and if her mom knew, she’d kill her)—but one of her many things is not science. I’m not a science genius either, but I’ve absorbed enough to recite the basics.
“Like in physics,” I say. “One definition of inertia is the tendency to remain at rest. To resist movement.”
“Yes. Like that. I want Viviana to resist all movement. I want her to ‘remain at rest.’” My mom echoes me. “And to stop thinking so much.”
“We will absolutely resist all movement,” Sammie says. “And we’ll be right downstairs, only fifteen floors away. We will sit at the front desk and do nothing but check IDs and listen to music.”
“That is all? No lifeguarding? No swimming, running, all of that?”
“No, Ms. Rabinovich. None of that.”
“And you’ll be right downstairs?”
“Yes. Right downstairs.”
Mila whines from the couch. “No, please no! If Vivi goes to work, then that means I have to go to Camp Sportz.”
I ignore Mila and offer my counterargument: “Instead of costing money,” I say, “I’ll actually be making money.” I know she likes a good argument, and I hope it works.