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    What About Today
    What About Today
    What About Today
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    What About Today

    By Dawn Lanuza

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Aiden's stuck working for his family's amusement park, Funtastic World, for the whole summer. Nothing amuses him, until he met this terrified girl.
    Gemma's stuck in Funtastic World thinking she could handle the park's rides. She couldn't. Good thing she met someone to guide her.
    As the day comes to a close, Aiden and Gemma ask themselves if one day is ever enough to decide if they were better off as friends or strangers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDawn Lanuza
    Release dateFeb 8, 2016
    ISBN9781310253829
    What About Today

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      Book preview

      What About Today - Dawn Lanuza

      cover-image, WHAT ABOUT TODAY - Dawn Lanuza (June 2019)

      WHAT ABOUT TODAY

      Dawn Lanuza

      About What About Today

      Aiden's stuck working for his family's amusement park, Funtastic World , for the whole summer. Nothing amuses him, until he met this terrified girl.

      Gemma's stuck in Funtastic World thinking she could handle the park's rides. She couldn't. Good thing she met someone to guide her.

      As the day comes to a close, Aiden and Gemma ask themselves if one day is ever enough to decide if they were better off as friends or strangers.

      What About Today

      Dawn Lanuza

      Copyright © 2015 Dawn Lanuza

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Contact the author:

      dawn.lanuza@gmail.com

      Cover design by Reginald Lapid ( http://society6.com/reglapid ).

      What About Today

      ONE

      TWO

      THREE

      FOUR

      FIVE

      SIX

      SEVEN

      ABOUT Dawn Lanuza

      To Ilia, A + G’s biggest cheerleader,

      Maan for the ride

      ONE

      Aiden’s only doing this for that wildlife trek he’s signed up for. He’d been dying to wake up to a different view. If it wasn’t for the fact that Happy Adventure Land opened this year, people wouldn’t be freaking out so much.

      Life before was so much better: no one asked him to work at Funtastic World ’s office for the summer. No one required him to punch in and out of the office, Mondays to Fridays, 8am-5pm. More importantly, no one sent him emails with the subject Pls Complete This TODAY.

      He hated e-mails. E-mails are the worst. He couldn’t see the point of them when there were chat threads. Video messages, even. It’s faster to say things that way. It could go as quick as this:

      Alec: Pls complete this TODAY

      Aiden: No

      But that was what life was like for Aiden that summer. Three weeks in and he’s still not used to waking up early. So yes, he punched in at 9:30 instead, wore slacks and leather shoes, long sleeved shirts and ridiculous ties. He tried to make it fun by buying cartoon character neckties but he got a memo for that.

      So yeah, plain neckties it was.

      That day, he wore a plain white long sleeved shirt with a red necktie and whatever slacks. He’s sure it’s from some tailor but whatever, he just picked it up from his brother’s closet. Aiden didn’t really own much of those kinds of clothes. It’s not like he went to school looking like he came from the set of Mad Men . That’s what he loved about his school; they didn’t have to wear a uniform so Aiden pretty much comes to class wearing plain shirts, cargo shorts or jeans, and his sneakers. So he’s not planning to get a job that would require him to wear anything but that too.

      He had 389 unread e-mails. Most of them were spam. Some were newsletters from all the apps he’d downloaded on his phone. He didn’t read them, much as he didn’t want to read the e-mail that would require him to actually work on something today.

      Aiden leaned forward to stare at his monitor, checked other e-mails that didn’t come from Alec, but nothing registered. He braced himself and finally clicked that e-mail, and held his breath.

      Aiden,

      I’ve already reminded you of the fireworks situation. We’re running out of stock, and you’re in charge of following up the orders. I don’t want you to leave this task to someone else before you go on your trip. This is a fairly easy task.

      Please don’t let me call Pa. We are not kids anymore.

      DO THIS TODAY. We’re down to one set.

      Thanks,

      Alec

      Aiden pushed his chair back and let his chair swivel. He felt squeamish just reading that e-mail. " Please don’t let me call Pa "? He wished Alec would actually call their father, so he’d know what a complete shit that summer gig had been. Maris, a middle-aged woman who sat next to his desk, threw him a glance.

      He straightened his back, Have you had breakfast yet?

      She nodded. Aiden frowned. Maris had been in this office since they opened. That’s a good and solid decade. Sometimes he pictured her feet growing roots into the floor. She never left her desk. She ate lunch on her desk. That may have looked like dedication to some, but in reality, it’s just an extreme addiction to Minesweeper and Solitaire.

      He should probably have told her that she could download other games in her computer. Then he wouldn’t have been so bored watching her play her boring games.

      I’m gonna get muffins, Aiden sprang out of his chair. Do you want some?

      No.

      He pouted, You sure? They’re banana flavored.

      Maris ate bananas during lunch breaks. Aiden watched her eat next to him on his first week in the office.

      Maris just opened a window. Solitaire. Aiden winced, Okay. So I’ll be right back.

      She scoffed as she dragged a Four of Cloves next to a Five of Diamonds. She learned not to care about the vacant seat next to her as much as he learned that no amount of computer games could entertain him in this office.

      ***

      She’s seventeen, and it was not looking well for her. Was it because she had high expectations? When Gemma was a child, one of her first favorite songs was from an artist named Janis Ian. She released a song named At Seventeen back in 1975.

      Since learning that song, Gemma’s grown what one could say as an unrealistic expectation for her seventeenth year of existence. Clearly, she didn’t understand that song well. But no matter, there were other songs about being seventeen that made her think that it’d be the pinnacle of her life.

      There was The Beatles with I Saw Her Standing There and ABBA with Dancing Queen.

      But so far, seventeen wasn’t boding well for Gemma.

      For starters, her best friend Jane was slipping away from her. Ever since Jane auditioned and made it as a member of that all-girl band The Maria Claras , it’s all she’s talked about. It’s where she’s been mostly that summer.

      Secondly, she’s stuck in Funtastic World . But that wasn’t the worst part. It’s actually the fact that she did this to herself. Voluntarily. Willingly. Purposely. She dragged herself out of bed to endure a 2-hour bus ride to get to this amusement park, which frankly, did not look like the park she had in mind anymore.

      It’s looking a little rusty. But she was seven when she came here first. She decided that everything was just bigger and more impressive for her then.

      She thought: she’s seventeen, she can handle being alone. She’s an only child. Her parents both

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