
This story is either truth or fiction – you decide!
“I guess it was a nice run,” Julie said closing the laptop and caressing the silver Q engrained on the lid.
“That’s it? You’re done?”
If the last eight years of experience with Julie taught Nathan anything, it was don’t allow her to stew for too long.
Julie turned first looking down at the floor, then, raising her head to glare him straight in the eye, “What choice do I have?”
“Plenty! Just because things aren’t going the way you planned doesn’t mean you should just give up.”
Nathan’s anger grew. After all, he paid for the classes, allowed her to purchase a new laptop, and then there was the ink, the paper, the files, the new filing cabinet, the two-sided printer and the books.
Oh God — the books, he thought. Hundreds of dollars spent on writing books, market publications, and magazines all about the “craft” as she called it. All things she promised would make her better at what she did. Now, she wanted to give it up. All he could think was what a waste of money. Money they would need very soon. His anger was justified.
Tears welled up on the lower lids of Julie’s eyes, “You don’t understand.”
Nathan didn’t allow her self-pity and anger to faze him. He knew something she didn’t. He knew his job would soon end.
Secretly he counted on her selling one of her books although he never told her. He hoped she could help make the ends meet or at least replace the money they spent on her writing courses. He trusted her, but now second-guessed his decision.
He tried to maintain his composure while the anger boiled in his belly, “Then explain it to me,” he said surprised by the amount of compassion in his voice.
Julie sighed and tried to explain.
Then, the floodgates opened and emotion spilled out and down her face. She collapsed over the desk clinging to the laptop like a life raft. “Because, I’m just not good enough,” she whispered through sobbing breath.
“Is that what this is all about? You don’t think you’re good enough?” He thought that maybe she had lost interest. It wouldn’t be the first time. However, this was different.
His heart cracked open and he understood. “Julie,” he said, turning off the Television and rising from the recliner to stand next to her slumping pile of sadness, “You are much better than you think.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed feeling the tension residing in her neck. How long had this plagued her? Why didn’t he see it before?
Preoccupied with his job and the prospect of losing it, he hadn’t paid much attention to her. Obviously, it affected her all along.
Julie raised her head, “I’m not good enough and I don’t have anything to write about anyway.”
She grabbed the files and the neatly stacked manuscript on the corner of her desk, flinging the papers across the room. They watched the pages rain down on the carpet at their feet.
“No one wants to read this crap. The only way to make money is to write news articles and nonfiction. I’m not an expert at anything. What do I have to write about?”
Her sobs rose, forcing her head back to the desk. Her arms clutched the laptop again and her unmanaged hair buried her face. The scene was surreal, as if she were trying to hide inside the safety of her electronic world.
Compassion grew in Nathans voice. He suddenly realized she knew.
“But you don’t have to support us. I never asked you to do that.” He hadn’t hid the secret well and with the big announcement on TV the secret was out, he would be losing his job soon.
Julie raised her head and wiping the wet grief from atop the computer asked, “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know sweetie. But you let me worry about that,” Nathan said stoking her hair with one hand and squeezed her wedding ring and finger with the other twisting her ring slowly as he always did.
Julie pressed her face firmly against his stomach, “I’m sorry I failed you,” she said.
“You haven’t failed me. You have never failed me,” Nathan said with a smile. “Look at the bright side. We won’t be paying taxes for a while!”
He felt a small chuckle rise through her back pulling back from her death grip he looked down at the paper littered across the floor. “Now let’s pick up this mess. Boy I hope you numbered all these pages.”
Julie suddenly realized they were going to be okay and tears made way for laughter as she squeezed Nathan so hard he could barely breathe. That’s when the idea occurred. She would chronicle the death of the space program and the impact it would have on her life, her friends and her community.
“I could write about it couldn’t I,” she asked. “Posey said it may only be 6000 jobs lost at the Kennedy Space Center, but the true number was 30,000 more at the community level.”
“That’s true. Brevard County is going to get hit real hard. There will be many people, just like us, out of work and losing their homes,” Nathan said stopping to collect the pile of paper on the floor. “We will have to leave the area if I’m going to find work.”
A world of possibilities sat before her to document the long-term effects on the local economy. All for a partially funded train track between two metropolitan tourist areas for tourist who can’t afford to take a vacation anymore. Fifty years of medical and technological advancement spurred by the space program – replaced by a train for no one. She laughed at the irony of it all.
“You have to let me stay long enough to write about it,” she pleaded. “Promise me we will stay for a little while.”
“We’ll see. I can’t promise. I’m not going to let you stay if it is not safe. Crime is going to rise through the roof and I won’t put you in that situation for the sake of a story.”
Julie understood and pressed the issue no further. But suddenly found she had much to write about that only someone living the horror could do justice in telling.
She would tell the stories of the average space workers, once middle class taxpayers who would soon be the new wave of social program benefactors. They were soon to be unemployed, uninsured and unwillingly forced to ride the train of social and economic reform.
And if a few of their friends were lucky enough to get a job building that 60 minute express train from Tampa to Orlando over on the other side of the state, she would document their journey and their struggle to adjust from middle class to laborers.
Yes, Julie found something to write about and she opened her laptop recording and writing her ideas until dawn. As the sun rose, she opened a new work document and started to write tomorrow’s headline…
Billions in space funding leaves the U.S. for Russia—The mouse gets a ride to the gardens.
Julie smiled. She found her voice.