Today's Reading
CHAPTER ONE
I was not always a liar. I mean, sure, white lies were inevitable. I told them all the time. My habit of lying started with a simple "Yes, that beaded key chain 'is' really pretty" to my best friend, Joanna, when we were fifteen. It was a vomit-green "lizard," and it was an insult to lizards everywhere. The key chain looked demented, all lumpy with gaps where beads should've been, but I lied through my teeth. What was I supposed to do? Tell her the truth and have her stop beading altogether? I couldn't do that to her. My little fib meant a lot to her, and I realized my words had an impact when she gifted the key chain to me that same Christmas with a little note that read, Thank you for believing in me.
That ugly little lizard, in all its garish glory, still lived on my key ring. It was so ugly, I was convinced that it could ward off evil; it was my little lucky charm and my most prized possession. Joanna ended up finding success with her beadwork. As the years went on, her ambitious designs served as a stable source of income, so I'd argue that my first white lie was a good one.
Sometimes, I lied because it was just easier. Who had time to get into the weeds of things? Just a teensy, tiny fib to save someone's feelings, or hide my own, did a lot to keep my sanity. I wasn't a pathological liar by any stretch of the imagination—it wasn't like I would lie and say I was someone that I wasn't, and not everything I said was a whopper. I wasn't a con artist trying to pull one over on people. I was just Ember Lee Cardinal, a sometimes liar, but mostly an overall good person.
But this lying business did get out of hand, I recognized that. I want to say for the record that if faced with the choice between plunging the toilets of an old and dingy (but well-loved) bowling alley for the rest of your life and the opportunity to dramatically change your circumstances with a few cleverly crafted lies, you would do it too. If an itty-bitty fabrication was the difference between barely keeping a roof over your head or having a stable career with growth—it was a no-brainer. I wasn't going to be slaving away disinfecting fifteen-year-old rental bowling shoes forever. Nope. I was changing my destiny.
I was going to be an accountant! Not like the "accountants" going viral on TikTok, but a real number-crunching, invoice-consolidating, checkbook-balancing accountant for a company—with a high salary! Not some job that paid $7.25 an hour but a salary. With benefits. No one in my family had ever had a salary before, and when we were sick, we would have to take a whole day off work and wait in line at the clinic, missing an entire day's pay. Private health insurance was on the table. Who was I? An accountant, that's who.
Kind of. Accountant adjacent? I took an intro to accounting class at the community college. It was enough to get an entry-level job, I knew that, and somehow, I still couldn't land any job interviews. I'd put in so many applications and gotten zilch in return. That was how I ended up here—desperation makes good people do bad things.
"Order nineteen," I yelled over the crashing sound of the bowling balls rolling down the freshly waxed pine lanes, knocking down pins.
"Not a single interview request?" Joanna, my best friend, roommate, and coworker, asked as she dumped a new jar of pickled jalapeños into the black Cambro for our patrons.
I handed the artificial-nacho-cheese-covered chips to two teenagers on a date. It smelled like burnt rubber; we probably should have stopped selling it today, but Bobby Dean was cheap.
"Not since you asked me this morning," I grumbled.
She meant well. Joanna was an artist, and this gig at Bobby Dean's Bowling Alley was perfect for her creative schedule. She made extra cash selling her jewelry, and she was so talented that sometimes people bought her stuff straight off her ears. It didn't hurt that she was smoking hot with her dark hair cropped to her shoulders, with vibrant purple ends standing out against her tanned skin. I, on the other hand, was not artistically inclined. My earning more money would take my leaving this place and getting a real career. I liked numbers and security, so accounting seemed like the best choice.
"How many rejections is that then? Twenty?" She wasn't looking at me as she wiped up some of the jalapeño brine off the counter.
"Thirty-seven," I corrected, and wished to Creator that I was kidding. I had a teacher once who told me if I applied myself, I could go far. I did apply myself. Quite literally, I applied to every job I could find online. I received thirty-seven rejections. All iterations of the same email: We regret to inform you that we have reviewed your application and decided to go with a candidate who would be a better fit.
What did that even mean? These were entry-level jobs that paid a few dollars more an hour than what I was making in the bowling alley. With every rejection, it was getting harder to believe they weren't auto-rejecting my application because I sounded like I came straight off the reservation...
Which I did.
...
