Best-Case Scenario, Act I of Nyra’s Journey
New Adult
Date Published: Nov 2018
Publisher: PhoenixPhyre
More than a year after graduating from college, Nyra is beginning to wonder when her life, professional and personal, gets started. Was it like this for her mother? She doubts it, but things were different, then. Nyra's reality is nothing like her mother's. Each generation confronts its own challenges.
Still, she's tired of feeling like she's wading through waist-deep wet cement. Buried somewhere deep in a future she can sense but not feel, Nyra can hear the siren's song of hope and hypothetical options whispering to her. She's so ready! But is the song she hears hope or just an illusion?
Best Case Scenario is the first act in Nyra Westensee's journey from student to self-aware, fully actualized woman.
Chapter 18—Relentless
Truth
In which Nyra and her brother Kip
discuss their lives and their issues in them, as far as both of them have
gotten, up to this point.
“For what it’s worth, I
feel your pain. I have issues of my own. Different issues, but I have them.”
Kip flashes a self-deprecating smile. “I remember how I felt right after I went
to work up in the bay. For the first time, I wasn’t—”
“The big man on campus?”
Nyra teases.
Kip looks like he’s about
to protest but laughs. “Partly, maybe. But it went way beyond that. It dawned on me how unprepared I was, after
college…not just for my job but life in general.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I first got up to
the bay, I didn’t know anybody. I lived in this dinky little apartment,
furnished with secondhand furniture I picked up at a consignment store in
Oakland. It really was a depressing dump and everybody at work looked through
me…talked around me like I was one of the frickin’ office plants, or something.
“I don’t remember exactly
how long it took me to recognize they weren’t doing it maliciously. I just
wasn’t…part of their reality, yet.” Kip frowns. “It was the first time since I
can remember that I had to make an effort to put myself out there. It was
probably six months before I started making friends. It was really depressing,
for a while.”
“Wow. I didn’t know.”
He shrugs. “I kept it to myself.”
“You didn’t even tell Mom?”
“You’re shitting me, right?” Kip blurts
out. “Especially not Mom!”
Something in Kip’s expression makes Nyra
laugh. He looks like he’s going to sulk, before he joins in. That sets both
them off, laughing like they’ve just pranked someone who still hasn’t caught
on.
“Mom seriously thinks you have it
together, you know,” Nyra confides, still grinning. She shakes her head,
struggling to wrap her mind around the concept of Kip less than cocksure of
anything.
“Exactly
why I couldn’t talk to her about it,” he points out. “You’re the lucky one. Mom
doesn’t have this out-of-control inflated opinion of you.”
“Meaning she doesn’t expect much of me,”
Nyra retorts. “Wow. Thanks a lot, Kip!”
“Not true. You wouldn’t believe how proud
of you she is.” Kip’s expression waxes thoughtful. “But more than anything, you
know what she does expect of you?”
Nyra stares at him. When he doesn’t speak
immediately, her eyebrows go up. “Well?”
“She expects you to be happier than she
has been.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Didn’t have to. She so dotes on you. You know she still calls you Trinket when you’re
not around?”
Nyra smiles and shakes her head, recalling
how long it had taken to get her mother to drop the pet name she thought she’d
outgrown. She’d been in such a hurry then, to grow up. “Can I ask you something
personal?”
“Sure.”
“You said earlier you were depressed at
how unprepared you were for everything.”
Kip nods.
“How long did it take to work through all
that?”
“What makes you think I did?”
“Come on, Kip. I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He shrugs. “I’ve learned to
cope, but the uncertainty never goes away. Not if you’re paying attention.
First, you worry about getting a job, then you worry about keeping it. Then
you’re worried about finding the next one, or balancing the one you have with
the things you really want to do,
assuming you can ever find the time…”
“Stop it, Kip. You’re scaring the shit out
of me!”
“Join the club.”
Nyra stares at him, apprehension coiling
in her gut. “Maybe love helps?”
“Why would it? It’s just another thing you
can lose…”
Nyra can’t hide her strickened look.
“I’m sorry, Ny. But it’s true. As soon as
you think you’ve got one thing worked out, something else comes up.”
Silence settles in, overlaid by the Friday
night traffic noise from Lincoln Blvd. She tries to remember a week in her
recent past when she wasn’t bedeviled by uncertainty and can’t remember one.
“Then it’s all bullshit,” she whispers.
“What is?”
“All that touchy-feely crap they fed us in
school. You can be anything, do anything, if you just try hard enough?” She
shakes her head. “It’s all a lie, isn’t it? It’s just what they tell us so…so
they can keep using us?”
Kip frowns. “Not entirely.”
“But you still think most of it’s a crock,
don’t you?” Nyra can’t keep the accusation, the growing resentment out of her
voice.
Kip stares out at the marina lights and
Nyra interprets his silence as confirmation. She’s turning to head back to the
car when he puts a gentle hand on her arm. She stops and meets his eyes.
“It’s not that simple, Sis.”
She folds her arms across her breasts,
hugging herself and leans against the rail. The night chill feels like it’s
creeping under her jacket.
“That said, a lot of what you say is
true.” Kip pauses. “Some of the stuff they fed us in school is a serious load of buffalo shit.” His frown
deepens. “Your guess is as good as mine how much of it they actually believe.
“But what’s the alternative? We’ve gotta
do something. Mom can’t support us
forever…and would we want her to, even if she could?”
Nyra is shivering violently now as night
seeps into her bones. She zips her jacket up to her neck.
“And she’s always hoping, at least, that
we’ll do better, somehow,” Kip continues. “Like it or not, we have to do it for
ourselves, because for most of us, there’s nobody else who can or will.”
Nyra turns and looks out over the lights,
dancing in the waters of the marina. “I hear you. But…what if there’s not
enough to go around? Not everybody makes it. What if I…” Nyra’s voice trails
off, leaving her thought unfinished.
“I don’t know Ny.” The silence stretches
into what seems like eternity. “I get what’s bothering you and for what it’s
worth, I don’t think it’s fair, either. But there aren’t any guarantees, fair
or not.”
Nyra turns back to him, feeling just one
more revelation away from despair. “They should be more honest with us.”
“They?”
“Our teachers. Our parents, our fricking
counselors. Shouldn’t they be straight with us?”
“About?”
“About how most of us are going to wind up
being just…average.”
“Mathematically and by definition,” Kip
agrees, with a grunt.
“Like Mom,” Nyra adds.
Kip’s smile leaks love, understanding and
a maturity Nyra can’t remember ever seeing before—or noticing, anyway. “After
all she’s done for us, do you really
think of her as average?”
“Yes!” A sheepish smile steals across
Nyra’s face. She looks at Kip sidewise, over her shoulder as she leans against
the rail and tears well up in her eyes. “But she’s a pretty goddamned impressive average, all things
considered.”
“I agree. It’s incredible how much she’s
made out of not much.”
Nyra giggles, self-consciously, and buries
her face in her hands. “I’ve been a self-involved little snot, haven’t I?”
“Not really. You’re just sorting things
out, like most of us…on your way to your best you.”
Nyra feels herself going all gooey inside.
“I love you, Kip.”
“I know. Same here. Shall we get our ass
home before Mom starts worrying?”
“Yeah. I’m freezing.” Nyra pushes off the
rail she’s been leaning against, shivering uncontrollably. “Let’s get the hell
outta here.”
About the Author
Dirk’s path to authorship wasn’t quite an accident, but almost. It’s not that he didn’t write. He did. But through two previous careers, first as a Marine officer and subsequently as a corporate trainer, Dirk started way more stories than he finished.” But in the backwash of the 2008 financial meltdown, his employer filed for Chapter 11. Cordially invited to leave and not return, Dirk found himself out of work and excuses.
Since then, Dirk has published West of Tomorrow, Best-Case Scenario and a collection of short fiction entitled, Through the Windshield and Tier Zero, Volume I of The Knolan Cycle, all available from Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats. Works in progress include The Year of Maybe, sequel to Best-Case Scenario, and Eryinath-5, Volume II of the Knolan Cycle.
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