Jenny Reason

fiction.

“Jenny Reason, 25.” I was practicing introductions all morning. “Jenny Reason, age 25.” No matter how I phrased it, my name still sounded like “any reason,” like it was the punch line to a dorky pun.

The job fair was starting in ten minutes and I had to decide how I would greet the dozens of employers trolling for graduate students as interns. Why my age needed to be part of it seemed silly to me, but today is my birthday and I’m fighting to own my adulthood.

People hear that I am a graduate student and they assume I’m really smart – a national merit scholar or a high school valedictorian. But that hasn’t been my path. Orphaned at age twelve with no suitable guardians in sight, I was placed in foster care and bounced from house to house like there wasn’t any reason to keep me. At 15 I had had enough and I ran away from drudgery to find my home in terror.

By 21 I found respite in a mentor and a GED program. Made it through state school, and now I’m studying to be a child psychologist.

Today, my birthday is my every reason to break into the field. I smiled at the St. Mary’s Mental Health sign above me and shook a hand.

“Hi. I’m Jennifer.”