A guy about her age sat behind the front desk doing some paperwork. He clearly hadn’t heard CJ arrive over the music. His shaggy brown hair fell over his face as he worked. CJ said hello in her most professional voice.
When he looked up, CJ found that she was staring into a pair of brown eyes that were more mature than the shaggy brown hair suggested.
“Hi,” he said over the music. “Alexa, turn it down.” The music continued blasting. “Alexa. Shut up!” This time the music stopped. “Sorry. I’m working on an inspirational playlist. Is the Rocky theme too obvious?”
Totally too obvious. Instead of telling him that, CJ put out her hand and said, “Sorry to interrupt. I’m CJ Jacobson.” He stared at her outstretched hand as if confused. He was definitely cute, but he was also definitely giving her generation a bad name. She had been taught that when someone puts out a hand, you stand and shake it.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked.
Still holding herself in her professional posture, CJ consulted the details of the e-mail that she’d been sent in response to her application. “I have a four o’clock interview with… Wyatt.” She checked the e-mail again. “I’m sorry. No last name was provided.”
“I’m Wyatt No Last Name Provided,” said the guy who was giving her generation a bad name.
“You’re him?”
“I am he.”
There had to be more than one Wyatt.
“Wyatt the volunteer coordinator?”
“Wyatt No Last Name Provided. Wyatt the Volunteer Coordinator. I answer to either. But I’m confused. I have a meeting with…” He turned to his e-mail as if challenging hers. “Clarke Jacobson.”
“I am she.”
“Huh,” he said, looking her up and down. She knew from experience what this up-down look meant. He wasn’t checking her out. He was registering the fact that she wasn’t a dude. “I thought you were…”
“A guy. Yeah. I get that a lot. I’m not.”
“Evidently.”
She felt flustered. It was his smile. It was incredibly disarming. Not in that way. It’s just that this interview was not going well and she needed it to go well.
“My legal name is Clarke. But everybody calls me CJ.”
CJ was the fourth child, and with three older sisters, she was her father’s last chance for a boy he could name after himself. When CJ came out all feisty and tough, he decided to give her his name anyway.
Wyatt pulled out her résumé from a stack of other résumés. It made her heart sink a little. She didn’t like thinking about the competition.
“Your résumé is impressive, Clarke,” he said. Either forgetting or not caring that she went by CJ.
“Thank you.”
“But I was really looking to hire a guy.”
“Pardon?” she said. Because obviously she’d heard him wrong.
“I was hoping to hire a guy.”
It’s not like she was naïve. She knew the world hadn’t changed so much that misogyny didn’t still exist, but she certainly thought it had changed enough that nobody would be dumb enough to come right out and admit it. CJ was ready to call the ACLU right then and there but not before giving him a piece of her mind.
“Well, Wyatt. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but not only are your hiring practices completely illegal, they are also totally small-minded, since I assure you that I can do anything a man can.”
Wyatt didn’t seem at all flustered by CJ’s passionate speech. His smile had shifted a little bit, but it was still there on his face. It made him look… She wasn’t exactly sure how it made him look.
“You can?” he said. “You can do anything a man can?”
“Oh, I can.”
“You can go into the boys’ locker room and help them change?”
Smug. That was the look on his face. He was smug.
“Oh. Uh… oh. Well… I guess not that.”
His smugness shifted to amusement. “I’m not sexist. But the locker room thing is a concern. We have more boys than girls in the program. It’s probably still technically illegal for me not to hire you because of your gender, but it’s an unpaid position, so…”
It was a fair point. While suing a nonprofit organization that empowered kids in wheelchairs would certainly be something that colleges would notice, she guessed that it wasn’t quite the kind of experience that Stanford was looking for. So she politely and somewhat sheepishly thanked Wyatt No Last Name Provided for his time and turned to leave.
“Nice meeting you, Clarke,” he said when she reached the exit. “Sorry that we weren’t meant to be.”
She put her hand on the door but paused before opening it. “Hey. Why do you have more boys than girls? In the program?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. This is the first month. Well, of the expanded program. It used to only run once a month on a weekend. So we had kids coming from all over the state. But I talked my bosses into letting me try out a weekday version. I just feel like the kids deserve more than once a month, you know?”
CJ nodded.
“But that means it’s only been the local kids. And so far it’s mostly boys. We do have one girl, though.”
CJ couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry, it’s just… that’s your ‘more boys than girls’ breakdown? You’ve got one girl?”
“It’s a start. Hey. I’m just happy kids are showing up.”
“Boy kids.”
“And one girl.”
CJ shot him a look.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “I know I can do better. And honestly,” he added, “I don’t think the one girl is having a very good time.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because every time she comes, she tells me how much she hates it.”
CJ nodded. It would seem she wasn’t having a good time, then. CJ had been on coed teams before, but they had always had a pretty close gender balance. She’d never been the only girl. She wondered what that would feel like.
“A female leader could help,” CJ told him. “It would probably be less weird and more fun for her if she wasn’t the only girl in the room.”
Wyatt looked up. She could tell that he was considering what she’d just said.
“I’m just saying, if you’re really committed to expanding this program, it would help to have a female role model.”
“And you would be that female?”
She’d found herself an opening. That was all she needed. Now she just had to close this. Shoulders back, head high, Hermione Granger, and…
“Look, I work hard, I’m enthusiastic. I’m a people person.”
Wyatt seemed to be considering. “Go on.”
“I’ve played sports all my life, so I know what it takes to be a good coach.”
She was thinking of her best coach now. Ms. Chandran. She had been CJ’s cross-country coach. CJ wasn’t the best girl on the team, not by a mile. Sometimes literally. She felt clumsy and huge next to the other girls who looked like sleek greyhounds in their tiny track shorts. CJ possessed the kind of body that people politely called “stocky.” It wasn’t built for distance, and she opted to stick to the shorter runs. She would never forget the day that Ms. Chandran unceremoniously told her that she was going to compete in the long course. CJ shook her head. Her legs couldn’t go that far. Ms. Chandran assured her that they would. CJ assured her that they wouldn’t. This went on for several rounds until Ms. Chandran finally rested her hands on CJ’s shoulders, looked her in her terrified green eyes, and said, Your legs aren’t what’s holding you back, CJ.