Chapter 1
Harper
I’m holding my favorite iced latte when I find out my vacation plans are canceled. I’ve just taken my first sip, the caffeine buzzing through me like a bolt of excitement, when my good mood shatters.
“What?” I say, staring back at my roommate.
Her face scrunches into an apologetic smile. She reaches out to clean up a small puddle from my latte that splashed out when she told me the news.
“I got offered my dream job, so I won’t be able to go to Iceland next week.” She blots at the spill, her eyes glued to the stained napkin so she doesn’t have to look at me.
My grip is still loose on my drink, so I set it down. “You can’t delay your start date by just one week?” Ava and I have been planning this trip for months. I knew she’d been applying to jobs, but I assumed if she got one, they’d let her start after the trip.
“They have onboarding once a month for new hires. It’s mandatory.”
I frown before catching myself. Ava’s dream is to be a socialworker. It’s all she’s ever talked about for her future since we met in a sociology class junior year of college. She’s one of those rare people whose only goal in life is to do better. She doesn’t care how much she makes—she just wants to make other people’s lives better.
Ava’s new job will involve working in a hospital with patients and giving them guidance on programs that can make living with their health conditions easier. It’s a role I didn’t even know existed until Ava found the job opening a few weeks ago and told me about it.
“It’s fine,” I say, trying not to look upset for her sake. “I’m glad you got it.”
Ava gives a shy smile. “Thanks, Harper. It’s nothing fancy, but it’ll be fun. It’s a starting point, but then eventually I can work one-on-one with patients.” Her mood shifts, and I realize how much of her excitement she’s been holding back for my sake.
I try to quell my despair. My dream of finding a hot spring nested in the mountains feels ridiculous now.
Ava talks about the job, and I want to be excited with her, but the longer her enthusiasm grows, the more my mood drops. Ava may have only been planning the trip for a few weeks, but it’s been on my bucket list since middle school when I did a report on the northern lights. I was obsessed as a kid, but living in Massachusetts, the chances of seeing them were slim. I begged my parents to take me to Alaska, Iceland, or Norway to see them, but they always told me how expensive it would be.
They weren’t wrong. As soon as I got a job in high school, I started a northern lights fund. Every week, I’d add in fifty dollars with the idea that one day I’d make it to Iceland, though I wasn’t always able to consistently contribute to the fund, and I was guilty of dipping into it when emergencies popped up. I splurged almost five hundred dollars when I started college and desperately wanted a cool dorm room. I learned just how quickly money disappeared once I gave myself thepermission to spend it.
Now I’m out of college, working a job that I thought I would love but actually hate. In college, I loved learning about the hospitality industry, but in practice, it involves sitting at a desk doing paperwork and marketing for a country club with guests who make more in a year than I’ll probably make in a lifetime.
I have my own office at the country club, which felt like a huge deal when I first started. I used to buy lunch at the country club’s restaurant on my shifts, because the food tastes amazing. While eating delectable shrimp salads and tiramisu, I would overhear the guests talk about their latest trips to France, Germany, and Morocco. Their talk about how they’re spending their riches only made me more aware of how tiny my paycheck was in comparison. Eventually, I decided to pack my lunches and save my money to go on an epic trip myself, rather than sitting back to listen to stories about everyone else’s trips.
That’s a perk of being an adult, right? If I want to book a trip to Iceland, I can.
The reality is that my office is barely big enough for my desk and has started to feel like a windowless closet lately, and my paycheck feels like pennies after I get through all my expenses for the month. I find myself counting down the hours until I can leave work. I feel like I just shuffle paperwork and do nothing to add real value to the country club. If I quit, the only impact is that the guests won’t get their weekly newsletter update on the next gala event.
More than ever, I want to leave my job, but I have no idea what to do instead. If working at a luxurious country club feels like torture, what’s a better alternative?
Feeling desperate for a vacation as a reward for surviving my first year out of college, I convinced Ava to go to Iceland with me, mostly because she’s my roommate, but also because she seemed excited when I told her about the trip.
“So, what will happen with Iceland?” Ava asks with a wistful smile. “Will you lose out on everything you’ve paid for?”
Ava’s words bring me back to my unfortunate situation. We paid for our flights, hotels, Airbnbs, and the rental car weeks ago. I’d been toying with the idea of going to Iceland since I got my job at the country club—finally, I would have enough of a paycheck to go on a lavish vacation. That proved to be incorrect, though, given how expensive airfare was. A solo trip would have cost my entire savings. If Ava can’t go and can’t get a refund, does she expect me to pay her half?
“Um,” I say, pulling out my phone. “I don’t think we can get a refund. Since it’s next week, the window for a partial refund would have passed.” I pull up the reservations, but it feels like I’m just going through the motions. One reservation after another, after another—no refunds. The dates have passed.
When I bought everything, I didn’t get travel insurance because I was so dead set on going on the trip. Nothing was going to stop me. Even if I were sick, I would have dragged myself on that plane to go to Iceland. Ava didn’t have the same mindset, but she’d left me in charge of booking everything.
“Did you get trip insurance?” Ava asks. “I was able to cancel my flight and get a full refund.”
I can feel the color drain from my face as I pull up the reservation for a tiny house we rented through Airbnb. The deadline to get fifty percent back was last week.
“I didn’t get insurance,” I say, my voice so quiet I’m not even sure if she can hear me.
“Oh,” Ava says.
She’s always been so practical. She’d never plan a trip without getting every type of insurance. Me, on the other hand? Stupid. So stupid.
