Page 10 of Fortuity
“Sounds greattome.”
“The Caprese salad, please Steven. And a few minutes to peruse the menu for our lunchselections.”
“Yes,ma’am.”
She waited until he walked away to complain, “A ‘Mrs. Montgomery’ and a ‘Ma’am’ all in the span of a few minutes. Is it any wonder Ifeelold?”
Since I’d pictured someone much older when the publicity director had told me I was meeting with a big donor, it was easy to say, “You definitely don’tlookit.”
“Thank you, that’s sweet of youtosay.”
We chatted about nothing important for a couple of minutes before the waiter returned with our drinks and theappetizer.
“Are you sure you don’t want something else to drink? An iced tea? A Coke?” she asked after he took our lunchorder.
“No, thank you. I don’t really do caffeine veryoften.”
“A college student who isn’t addicted to coffee? You’re even more unique than Ithought.”
The reason I mostly avoided it was definitely unique for college students. It was important for me to stay hydrated, and caffeine was a diuretic. But I wasn’t one to volunteer personal information to people I didn’t really know—or even those I did. “That’s me. I like to be anoriginal.”
“Well, you’ve certainly accomplished your goal then”—she spooned some tomatoes and mozzarella onto her plate and then nudged the appetizer my way—“since I don’t know any other college student who has accomplished as much with their volunteer work as you’ve done. Most of my son’s friends only know what volunteer work is because it was a requirement in highschool.”
“I didn’t really think of it as volunteering since it started out with me just calling my old high school and a couple ones nearby and asking if I could come in and talk to any students they had who were in the foster system,” I answered as I served myself. “Something my caseworker had said to me, about not hearing her when she talked to me about the state paying for me to go to college, really stuck with me and I thought maybe I could do something to help other kids in the samesituation.”
“How did it snowball from there into more than a hundred students enrolled as freshmenthisyear?”
“That’s harder to answer.” I paused to take a sip of my water while I gathered my thoughts. “I think most of us didn’t hear the information about the programs available to us once we graduated high school because we were focused on surviving each day instead of looking towards the future. Or at least that’s what I assumed since that’s how it wasforme.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, but you must have come a long way since then to be where you’re attoday.”
I knew I was part of the story, but I didn’t want the focus to remain on me or exactly how far I’d come from the day my mom overdosed. “I figured I could talk to them about what going to college meant to me as a foster kid who had aged out of the system. About the opportunities it presented and the doors it opened. The future it would allow me to have—and them too if they were willing to give college achance.”
“I’m assuming they were more receptive to hearing it from you rather than other figures ofauthority?”
I nodded. “Apparently foster kids are way more open to listening to someone like me than their caseworker because a group of the ones I talked to at the high schools from my old school district signed up to take the SAT and applied for school. When I was a freshman, there were only about ten of us on campus. There were almost twice that many the next year. Word somehow spread between guidance offices, and it wasn’t long before I got calls asking me to visit more schools. Things just took on a life of its own from there, and now there’s a hundred and two coming in the incoming classthisyear.”
“I have a feeling you’re being overlymodest.”
My cheeks heated as I shrugged and stuffed some tomatoes and mozzarella into my mouth because I didn’t know what to say to that. Elaine got the hint, and we polished off the appetizer before the waiter reappeared with our entrees. We talked a little bit about the students I’d worked with who were getting ready to move onto campus the following weekend and what kinds of things foster kids might need that wasn’t covered by the tuition waiver and stipend programs. By the time I finished my chicken Caesar salad, Elaine had come up with a plan for what she wantedtodo.
“I’d like to do some fundraising for the kids; set up a fund where they’ll get gift cards and a little extra cash everymonth.”
I’d been hoping for a little help for the group as they moved into the dorms, and her offer of continued support was more than I expected. “Making the transition from a foster or group home to the college campus can be difficult, so that soundsamazing.”
“It wouldn’t just be for the freshman class. I’d like to do it for all the foster kids oncampus.”
“Allofthem?”
“Yes, it doesn’t seem fair for the kids who came before the ones mentioned in the article to be left out just because they’re a little older,” sheexplained.
Whoa.It was hard for me to wrap my head around the kind of money it would take to do what she was talking about for a group that big. “I can’t tell you how much I’d appreciate it, and so would all the students. You’d be making a huge difference in a lot oflives.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” She waved off my compliment as we got up to leave the restaurant. “I’m just raising a little bit of money. You did all the hard work to help get them on campus in the firstplace.”
“It might not seem like much to you, but I can tell you from experience that having some extra cash in your pocket or a gift card to buy a pizza will be a big deal tothesekids.”
“It won’t be much,” shewarned.
