Page 245 of Across His Line

What do I actually know how to do?

I don’t write anything fancy. I just write what’s true. Find things that are worth more than they cost. Look something up fast and know if it’s real. Know the difference between what people ask and what people pay. Take a picture that makes somebody want something. Write a listing. Pack something so it doesn’t break. Ship it for less. Know when something isn’t worth the time. Notice patterns before other people do. Explain why something will sell. Make forty dollars last a week.

That last one, I look at for a while. I keep going. It’s a long list. It goes down the page and onto the next one. I didn’t know it was going to be this long. I didn’t know I knew this much. And somewhere around the second page, it hits me.

None of these are eBay. They’re things I learned on eBay, at the Goodwill on Route 9, in the post office on Main. But none of them are the actual thing. They’re the stuff under it. Eyes and hands and knowing. They’d work anywhere.

Reselling was the first thing I built. That doesn’t mean it’s the only thing.

I don’t stop there. I write my qualities, what life has taught me, and where I want to go. I write what I want to feel in life, not what I want to accomplish. I don’t stop until I hear Rafe’s voice.

“What’re you writing?” Rafe asks.

I look up. He’s looking at the road, but he’s looking at it sideways.

I tip the notebook toward my door. “Nothing.”

“You’ve been writing for twenty minutes.” He glances at me. “It looks serious.”

I turn back to my notebook and reread my last sentence. “I’m making it too complicated.”

“How?” Rafe asks.

I shift in my seat, aware of the three people behind us who are quiet and probably listening. I speak my truth anyway.

“I’m thinking too big too fast. There isn’t such thing as an overnight success, and I feel myself imagining the one thing like it has to be it. And now I have a hundred questions rumbling around in my mind, like how do you get your products in stores, where do you source things to be made, how much money does all of this take––who invented the microwave and now every house has one.” I stop and Rafe glances at me. I chuckle. “It’s crazy.”

“It is crazy,” Koda says.

“Yeah,” Kylie agrees.

Koda adds, “There’s a lot of stuff in the world, but there’s room for more.”

I roll my head towards the back, but really I’m just looking at Rafe. “If you have no capital, how do you start a business?”

Nobody answers.

“I’m starting at the bottom,” I mutter, “which is fine because I have many ways I can take this.” I lift my journal. “I’m going back to writing.”

“You should write,” Kylie says. “You’re always writing in your journals.”

Rafe’s eyes flick down at the journal, then my face. He drives, and I put my pen back to my notebook and write: I’m always writing.

Rafe parks in his spot behind Corvin Hall. Woodbury looks exactly the same.

I sit there for a second in the passenger seat after he turns the car off with my notebook in my lap and the book on top of it, looking at the back door of the building. It’s the same door. The same steps I’ve come up a hundred times with my arms full of mailers. The same light over it.

I’m the one who’s different.

I don’t know how to explain that in the little amount of time I was gone, I’m coming back with Rafe’s father’s book in my hand, a refunded bus ticket, no contact with my mom, and I’m coming back with not just Rafe but his friends and my roommate.

The back seat erupts, reminding me of them. Nash gets out and stretches. Kylie’s already at the trunk, pulling. Koda is looking at his phone.

Rafe ignores them and steps out. He opens my door for me. I thank him with a smile and a touch on his shoulder, then we go to the trunk and pull out our bags. Rafe grabs mine for me.

“I can carry that,” I say.

“I know,” he says and keeps carrying it.