First (Wrong) Impressions: A Modern Pride & Prejudice by Krista D Ball Read Free Book Online Page B

other facilities in the city. If they grope you or hit on you or threaten to rape you, I have to kick them out. Harassing and threatening volunteers can get a person banned for three months minimum. I don’t want to be put in that situation when all you have to do is wear a different shirt for a couple of hours.”
    Darcy said, “We’re guests here. We should follow the rules.”
    Lizzy blinked at him. “Thank you.”
    “Fine,” Caroline said. “Whatever.”
    Lizzy went through their roles for the evening. Darcy agreed to wash dishes and Charles agreed to garbage detail. Caroline signed up to help Jane in the coffee bar.
    Lizzy did her new volunteer spiel: no touching, no giving out money or items, no getting involved in confrontations, and so on. She pointed out the four staff members working on shift besides herself, and how two worked at the door, one in the kitchen, and one on the main floor with her.
    “Do fights break out here?” Charles asked.
    “No.” Lizzy considered that answer. “Well, almost never. You have to realize that fighting inside is a really big deal. You get banned, for one thing. I’ll call the cops if I can’t break it up. That’s only happened a couple of times because mostly clients will pull apart a fight if I can’t stop it. They don’t want the place to get shut down.”
    “Do people ever hit staff?” Darcy asked and Lizzy detected a lot of weight in the question. It was a common one, though. She got it every time she had new volunteers.
    “Hitting a staff member gets you a minimum one-year ban. Depending upon your behavior during that year, you might get back in afterwards. Hitting staff is…it happens, sure, but I’ve been here since my teens. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually been hit. Think about that. It’s pretty rare.”
    “So, we’re safe here?” Caroline asked.
    “Oh sure,” Lizzy said. “We don’t let volunteers walk to their cars alone. We have radios. And we’re trained to deal with nearly anything that comes up. You just need to follow the rules. It’s the breaking of the rules that causes the most trouble because people see it as unfair, which can cause conflicts.”
    “If you walk a volunteer to their car,” Darcy said slowly, “who walks you back?”
    “No one,” she said. “It’s a little different for the staff. Plus, we have the radios and we let everyone know where we are. But, honestly, don’t worry. I live two blocks from here. All of these people know where I live, yet I feel perfectly safe.”
    They had no more questions, so Lizzy got up and did a final check on the kitchen crew. They were heating up leftover chili that The Mustard Seed had dropped off from their monthly freezer clean up. Thank the Lord for their leftovers. Aria, the health inspector, was fine with this temporary solution, since the Seed had a fully equipped—and inspected—kitchen.
    The doors opened and the crowd entered. Lizzy greeted people and laughed and asked questions. She maintained the professional detachment of knowing names and knowing stories, but sharing very little of herself. That was the way of things. They were in survival mode when they walked into The Faith. In many ways, so was she.
    Rob’s Sue walked in with heavy, lidded eyes. Damn. She’d been clean for a month, too. Lizzy didn’t say anything and let her get in line for supper.
    People asked for bus tickets, which were handed out at eight and ten; for use of the phone, which had to be the payphone; for food, which was handed at out at eight and ten; for blankets, which were handed out… she repeated the same lines over and over to people who came every single night The Faith was open. But she understood: for people whose lives had no stability, there was comfort in knowing her rules stayed the same and the schedule was consistent.
    She liked to think it helped them build their own schedule, since The Faith did not operate in crisis mode. But some days, she just