Chapter 3 — Minutes & Miles

September 16, 2024 — 7:06 AM
Location: Tribeca, Elevator 2
Weather: A soft, well‑behaved blue
Mood Meter: 🟢 Focused, with a cautious side of 🟡 (council day)
Sensory Notes: Lobby music 3/10 • Espresso hiss 6/10 • Elevator hum 2/10 • Good shoe squeak 4/10
Coffee of the Day: Iced Brown Sugar Oat Shaken Espresso (reunited, feels correct)
Playlist: “Sky Full of Stars” — Coldplay (too on the nose, but whatever)
Goal: Back Chloe up if the Treasurer pulls his “skip the small stuff” routine

Some Mondays arrive like a list you’re excited to check off.
The sky seems to make room for you; the city quiets its edges; the elevator doors open exactly when you need them to, and the first thing you see is someone who makes the rest of the day sound easier in your head.

Chloe steps in, hair braided like she fought chaos and won, arms full of folders and a pencil case that could organize a minor government. She’s also balancing two coffees, and I’m not saying fate is repetitive, but fate does seem to enjoy a bit of slapstick.

“Good morning, Vice President,” she says, offering the correct cup with a proud flourish. “I labelled the lids this time. I’m maturing.”

“Growth arc unlocked,” I say, taking the espresso. “I’m proud of us.”

The doors close; the elevator floats; our reflection doubles in the brushed steel panel, and for a moment I indulge the ridiculous idea that we’re a competent duo in a heist film, except the only thing we’re stealing is a fog machine line item from the school budget.

“Big agenda,” she says, tapping her folder. “If I go too fast, nudge me.”

“I’ll nudge the Treasurer instead,” I say. “More satisfying per calorie.”

She smiles—slow, approving—and the car dings for the lobby. We step into the morning together.

The Council Room (Transparency, but make it cinematic)

Manhattan Prep’s council room pretends to be ordinary, but the glass, the skyline reflection, the long table, the way voices travel in it—everything conspires to make you act like your thoughts might matter. Ms. Galvez sits at the head with that calm, watchful presence of a person who has already read tomorrow’s emails and survived them.

We take our seats. Chloe lays out the agenda and minutes, aligning every page with satisfying precision. Pens line up like they respect her. The Treasurer, Beaumont (yes, that’s his actual name), arrives late with a smoothie and an aura of unearned confidence.

“Let’s begin,” Ms. Galvez says.

Chloe’s voice fits the room. Clear, steady, not loud, just certain. She moves through last week’s minutes with the same patient attention she gives to meeting me at 7:08 on school days. She doesn’t skip the small items; she places them where they belong—under the big ones, the way good foundations hold up buildings and quiet habits hold up people.

“Do we need all that?” Beaumont interrupts, barely two bullet points in. He gestures with his smoothie as if it has jurisdiction. “I mean, the doorstop fix, the poster tape brand, the stage riser screws—this is micro. We only need macro.”

Chloe doesn’t flinch. She looks down at her page, underlines a line, and continues reading.

“Minutes are a legal record,” she says, not looking at him yet, just at the truth. “We promised transparency to students and faculty at the assembly. Transparency is detail.”

Beaumont scoffs. “People don’t care about the screws.”

I feel my spine warm. “People care when the stage collapses during the disco because someone skipped the screw line item,” I say, keeping my tone even. “Small causes make big effects. That’s the whole point of minutes.”

A soft silence follows, not empty, just resetting. Ms. Galvez tilts her head in that way adults do when teenagers behave like their faith wasn’t misplaced.

“Let Chloe finish,” she says. “Then we’ll discuss.”

Chloe nods once, a tiny thanks. She reads on: custodial hours, hall pass trial, a quiet note about adding blue‑light filters to the computer lab at the request of two students who get migraines. She includes everything. She makes everything belong.

When the vote comes to accept the minutes, hands go up around the table. Beaumont hesitates, then raises his like the room talked him into growing up for thirty seconds.

“Accepted,” Ms. Galvez says, and the word lands with that light, satisfying weight of something that went the way it was supposed to.

Budget Skirmish (Fog vs. Oxygen)

We move to Budget. Beaumont launches his pitch for “FX Enhancements,” also known as The Fog Machine From Hell.

“Ambience drives attendance,” he says, clicking to a slide that literally says Vibes = Value. “We’d recoup the cost in ticket sales.”

Chloe taps her pen once. “Or we buy safer lighting and commit to a ventilation plan that won’t make half the student body leave after two songs.”

“The fog won’t hurt anyone,” Beaumont insists.

“My brother has asthma,” a sophomore reps says from the end of the table, small voice, big fact.

Chloe nods to her. “Thank you. Minutes will reflect that.”

Beaumont shifts. “Fine. What about a smaller unit? Less fog.”

I lean forward. “What about no fog and a great playlist?”

Half the table laughs. The other half nods. Chloe glances at me with this look that sends a clear message through air: Thank you for saying the thing I wanted to say without having to say it.

We vote. Fog loses to lights by a clean margin. The disco survives, and so do lungs.

I didn’t realize until that moment how much I wanted to see Chloe’s idea of a dance floor come to life: light warm as honey, songs with honest choruses, time built in for water and outside air. A room that understands people the way she does.

Between Periods (Pockets of Quiet)

Hallway noise does what it does—swells, swallows, swirls. We walk together toward Business. She hands me a tiny square of paper torn from the margin of her agenda.

Thanks for the backup. Transparency: 1, Fog: 0.
— C.

Beneath it, in smaller handwriting, as if the paper might be shy:

Also, good point about screws.

I grin, fold the note, and tuck it into the phone case behind my ID. I have exactly three pieces there now: a photo‑booth strip from when I was twelve and still had a haircut that says I cut this myself with a butter knife, a thin silver guitar pick, and Chloe’s note. That arrangement feels like it means something; I let it mean it.

Business (The Case for The Small Things)

We run a case study on a mid‑size brand that tanked because it ignored customer messages for months while rolling out a splashy launch. The class divides into teams to diagnose the failure. Our group writes LISTEN in the center of the whiteboard, then draws a web around it: reply, record, show work, close the loop.

“Minutes,” Chloe says under her breath, a smile in the corner of her mouth.

“Receipts,” I say back, and she bumps my shoulder with hers, a quiet punctuation mark.

When groups present, our board looks plain compared to the others—no neon arrows, no meme screenshots. But it makes the teacher stop and say, “Exactly,” in a way that feels like we did something radical by pointing out the obvious. The small things aren’t small if they’re the bridge to the big ones. I know this about sound and light and shoes and benches; Chloe knows it about paper and meetings and people.

Psychology (Attention, Overload, Anchor)

Psych is a perfect storm today: a substitute who loves worksheets, a window that won’t close, a heater that thinks it’s percussion. Pencils tap at different tempos; bags unzip like tiny zippers are arguing; someone plays a video on their phone with the volume at one bar—still too much.

My chest tightens in that old, familiar way—like a hand is trying to adjust my breathing with imprecise tools. I reach into my pocket for my earplugs, roll one between finger and thumb. It helps, but not enough yet.

Chloe slides her water bottle across again, same movement as last week—consistent, quiet, no fuss. She doesn’t look at me; she just makes the gesture small enough that it doesn’t collect attention and big enough that I can hold onto it.

I take a breath. Then another. Then the four‑in, six‑out pattern I know will build me a window if I give it a minute. She keeps her eyes on her notes like the best magic trick is pretending you didn’t do one.

When the worksheet asks for “one personal strategy for attention management,” I write: create anchors. I don’t write be Chloe, but my brain does.

After School (Miles Between Floors, None Between Us)

By the last bell, the day has stretched in the good way: long but not heavy. We do the familiar walk home, softer this time—less commentary, more quiet. I like that we can do both.

In the lobby, Mr. Luis looks up from whatever crossword he is absolutely crushing.

“Council looked victorious,” he observes.

“We declared independence from fog,” I say.

He nods, approving. “A bold nation.”

Elevator ride. Dings. We step into the small, private air of that box and don’t fill it with words. We don’t need to.

On her floor she hesitates, like maybe the elevator is a conversation we’re not done having. “Playlist meeting later?” she asks. “For the disco?”

I should say yes immediately, but my brain tries to open all the tabs at once—homework, dinner, Dad’s calendar, my own noise level—and I short‑circuit briefly.

“Can we do it on the roof?” I say after a beat. “There’s more… oxygen up there.”

She smiles like this isn’t an odd thing to say. “I like oxygen. Seven‑thirty?”

“Seven‑thirty,” I echo.

The doors close. Two floors rise. My chest stores enough air for the rest of the afternoon.

Dad, Drones, Dinner (AeroJets at Cruise Altitude)

By the time I’m in the kitchen, Dad is on a call, sleeves rolled, tie loosened—the uniform of a man who hasn’t stopped working since the last century. He gestures me into a side hug mid‑sentence, then mutes.

“How was it?” he asks. “Council. Business of democracy.”

“Good,” I say. “We killed fog.”

“Tragic for fog,” he says, smiling. “Proud of you. I have to run to the AeroJets hangar in Newark—prototype demo for Helix and Nova Flight. Back by nine. Dinner’s in the warmer.”

He un‑mutes, slides back into CEO cadence like a pilot clicks a throttle. I grab a plate; the city leans orange in the windows like it’s posing for us.

I eat. I practice the breathing thing, not because I’m panicked, just because I like the window it gives me. At 7:22, I head to the roof with a hoodie and a playlist draft that needs to be braver.

Rooftop, 7:30 (Minutes Turn Into Music)

The garden is small and deliberate: boxwood in clean lines, strands of warm fairy lights, a pair of chairs that face the Empire State like it’s a lighthouse for people instead of boats. The air carries that early‑autumn bite—the kind that tells you to be grateful for every warm pocket left.

Chloe arrives exactly on time, because of course she does, with a folder and a Bluetooth speaker. She looks at the view, then at me, then at the view again, as if she’s decided to love both equally.

“Okay,” she says, businesslike but soft. “We need to build a dance that doesn’t forget that people are people.”

“No fog,” I say, grinning.

“No fog,” she repeats, mock‑solemn.

We test songs. We argue playfully about tempo. We agree that three slow dances is the maximum before someone cries for no reason, and that the last song should feel like a group hug, not a breakup.

Somewhere between “Treasure” and “home to another one,” the conversation slips away from playlists and lands on the minutes again—the detail, the completeness, the kindness of recording reality faithfully so nobody feels gaslit by their own day.

“It’s not just paper,” she says, looking at her notes like they might look back. “It’s proof that we tried.”

I watch the city flicker and think about screws and bottles of water that slide quietly and umbrella jokes and how proof, in my life, has usually been kept in silence—in how I recover from noise, how I leave a room to breathe, how I count things to build a shape I can stand inside. Transparency is the version of proof you can show other people. Chloe writes that version for all of us.

“Thank you,” I say, and it sounds too small for what I mean.

“For what?”

“For doing the small things like they matter,” I say, and then I surprise myself. “And for asking me if I need air before I know I do.”

She doesn’t reply right away. She just turns the volume down a notch, which is the kindest sentence anyone can say.

We sit there until the lights come on one by one across the skyline, like the city is remembering itself apartment by apartment. She starts a new page in her notebook and writes DISCO: DRAFT 1 at the top. I open a new note and type Ask her soon. Use normal words. Then I delete it, because I don’t need the reminder. My chest knows.

Night Texts (Receipts of Truth)

8:43 :Chloe: minutes finalised, playlist draft attached :)

8:45 :Ryder: i hereby certify that “Treasure” is scientifically required

8:47 :Chloe: transparency requires Bruno Mars

8:49 :Ryder: also thanks for today

8:50 :Chloe: for what?

8:52 :Ryder: screws. water. oxygen. you know.

8:53 :Chloe: i do know. goodnight, VP

8:55 :Ryder: night, Secretary

Night Log — 10:41 PM

• Minutes accepted; transparency anchored.
• Fog defeated by light and logic (and a sophomore with asthma, hero).
• Business class: small things are bridges. Psych: anchors matter.
• Rooftop oxygen improves decision‑making by 18% (estimated, but I stand by it).
• Crush status: quietly audible. Still refusing to panic.
• Action item: The Ask → soon. Plain words. Rooftop or lobby. No spreadsheets.

Addendum: If Dad asks about my day at 11 PM when he gets back, I will say: “We saved the disco from the weather.” If he says “What weather?” I will say “Fog,” and then I will watch him laugh, and I will think about how Chloe laughed first.

Addendum 2: Put a spare earplug set in the disco emergency kit. Also, water. Also, a place to breathe. Also, songs that forgive people.

Some days are miles.
Today was minutes.
They both count.