**Amanda**

Behind schedule and unprepared for her video chat with Delta, Amanda leapt out of her car with her laptop bag flung over her shoulder and sprinted to her condo. Seattle had upheld its position as one of the worst cities for traffic in the country today, making the trip home from Alki beach much longer than anticipated.

Out of breath due to nervousness and forced exercise, Amanda fumbled with her keys at the front door. "C'mon!" she yelled at the door's lock, anxiety pulsing through her core. "I don't have time for this!"

When the lock finally released it's hold, Amanda pushed the door wide open and threw her laptop bag on a nearby chair. While she was turning to secure the entryway's barrier, she watched in horrified slow motion as a ball of fur dashed for fresh air and freedom.

"Winnie!"

Amanda chased her roly-poly feline roommate down a city sidewalk for a block or two, cringing each time a car passed. Having lived indoors her entire life, the cat wasn't exactly equipped with a fur-year degree in street smarts. In fact, the only thing Winnie excelled at was treats and farts. "Winnie! Come here! NOW!"

Winnie froze for a split second on a street corner, her wide eyes frantically looking in every direction as she hovered mere centimeters from the ground. The loud rumbling of a city bus startled her, sending her darting in the opposite direction down an alley.

Gasping for air, Amanda rounded the corner of the alley just in time to witness Winnie shuffling her pudgy mass under a garbage dumpster.

"Winnie," Amanda scolded. "You little shit! Come here. I mean it! Come here."

Amanda cringed when she approached the dumpster. Puddles of water and pools of decaying mysteries surrounded the large steel container on every side.

"This isn't happening," Amanda whispered, scouting for the least disgusting patch of ground to kneel down on so she could peek under the trash bin. "Why is this happening?"

As she slowly crouched onto her knees, Amanda felt the cold moisture of toxic liquid pollution seeping through her jeans. "You're an asshole," she reprimanded, despite being unable to see the cat. "This is what I get for falling in love with an asshole--a bacterial infection."

A scared meow sound escaped the underside of the dumpster. Amanda exhaled and surveyed the small space between the bottom of the steel container and the ground. "How in the hell am I supposed to get under there?"

When a solution for outsmarting impossible crawling spaces failed to manifest itself, her eyes redirected their attention to globs of decaying food matter and spatters of slimy--whatever--on the pavement. Amanda's upper lip curled upward to block the passage of garbage stench into her nostrils. Getting any lower to the ground's surface repelled her, like trying to connect the wrong ends of two magnets.

Amanda glanced at the Fitbit on her wrist. She swiped past the screen warning her she showed symptoms of cardiac arrest and stopped on the screen displaying the time. Wattpad Headquarters would be calling in less than ten minutes.

"Winnie! I can't do this right now!" Amanda's chest tightened as a mixture of emotions pressed their way up her esophagus and triggered a wave of moisture across her eyes. It had been a long time since someone beyond her small group of friends had taken any interest in her thoughts and ideas. She was looking forward to discussing with Delta why she thought stories could change the world. In fact, Amanda hoped the mere act of speaking about the importance of fiction would give her the motivation needed to continue writing that novel she kept abandoning.

Go! Amanda screamed inside her head.

Now!

Without thinking.

Now or face endless regret later.

Taking a deep breath, Amanda lowered her body even further towards the pavement so her stomach laid flat against the ground--a disgusting sensation seeping through her shirt as though she'd fallen onto a yogurt covered Slip-N-Slide. Pushing thoughts of having to get a tetanus shot out of her head, she pressed her cheek against the slimy asphalt so she could see into the darkness under the dumpster.

Winnie was pressed against the wall on the opposite side, shivering due to wet fur and fear.

Amanda stretched her arm out towards the feline, her hand nowhere near where it needed to be to grab her. "Winnie," she begged. "Come here."

Scooting herself farther away from Amanda's hand, Winnie sank her back end down and securely planted her front legs as though bracing to resist any rescue attempts.

Stretching her arm as far as it would go--fingers splayed--Amanda pressed her body into the sharp metal edge of the dumpster's underside. Pain pinched her shoulder. Pain dug into the side of her face. Pain squeezed her chest. Pain gripped her heart. Pain clouded her mind.

"Winnie," she pleaded, a tear dripping onto the already moist pavement. "Please."

She was trapped under a mountain of trash, reaching for something that didn't want what she had to offer while simultaneously turning her back on a call holding unknown possibilities. This moment was like a snapshot of her entire existence.

Amanda's hand dropped and laid lifelessly on the ground. Her whole body went limp. She desperately wanted to be available for the interview with Wattpad Headquarters, but she couldn't abandon her furry companion to do it. Tears invaded the surface of her eyes and blurred her vision. She held her breath as though trapped under a frozen lake without a hole broken in the ice to escape. When her lungs demanded breath or death, she gasped for air. As she exhaled this unconscious choice for life, Amanda whispered, "I surrender. You win. I surrender."

Defeat.

Silence.

Nothingness.

All evidence of life, as experienced through the five senses, vanished from Amanda's dumpster surroundings--except for a slight tickling on the tips of her fingers.

Amanda blinked to redistribute her tears so she could see again. When her surroundings gradually focused, she saw Winnie licking her fingers and gently rubbing the side of her whiskered face on her hand.

Carefully securing her fingers around the scruff of Winnie's neck, Amanda tenderly pulled her furry friend from under the garbage heap. Sitting up, she cradled the cat in her arms and buried her nose in Winnie's fur. A spring of emotions welled up inside her. Vulnerability. Relief. Surrender.

Clutching Winnie to her chest, Amanda rolled onto her knees--then her feet--and ran back to her condo. Gasping for air as she crossed her home's threshold, she secured the front door before placing Winnie on the floor. Without a moment's delay, she ripped open her computer bag and flung the laptop on the table.

Her hands shook.

Her body shivered.

Amanda plugged in the electronic device and logged into her Google Hangouts account. It appeared Delta had not tried to contact her--yet.

She placed her palms across her chest as a sign of relief. Her shirt's sticky texture triggered a warning to her conscious mind she probably looked like a hot mess. Glancing in a mirror, Amanda's concerns were verified. "Gross."

Without thinking, she shimmied out of the outfit stuck to her body and scooped the potentially disease-infested clothes into her arms and darted towards the washing machine located in her bathroom. When the washing machine was loaded and rolling, Amanda quickly wiped herself down with a wash cloth.

Ring

The laptop. Amanda immediately switched to panic mode as she stood half naked in her bathroom with nothing but a wash cloth in her hand. Her attention immediately snapped to a pair or gray sweats and faded t-shirt sitting next to the washing machine. Laundry day clothes!

Ring

With no time to think things through, Amanda jumped into the sweats and the New Kids on the Block t-shirt from 1988, then sprinted to her computer.

Ring

Snatching her glasses off the table and throwing them on her face, Amanda accepted Delta's request for a video chat--dropping breathlessly into the chair. As the computers connected, she pulled a rubber band out of her wind-blown hair and knotted it in a messy bun on top of her head.

Did I manage the perfect messy bun, Amanda thought? Side glancing her reflection in the glass of a nearby picture frame, she sighed. Nope. Not today.

A woman with a perfect ponytail held in place by an orange scarf filled Amanda's screen. Flicking an orange ostrich feather pen, the woman beamed through the laptop's monitor with a warm and welcoming smile.

[[Delta] "Amanda?"]

Amanda's fingers subconsciously reached up to touch her not-so-perfect hair, a pointless last-minute effort to fix her first impression. "Yes. That's me."

[[Delta] "Hi! My name's Delta. I touched base with you briefly on the website?"]

Straightening up in her chair, Amanda placed her elbows on the table--leaning in closer to the laptop to get in a better conversation range. "Yes. You mentioned something about research? Something about asking people how they thought stories could change the world--or something like that?"

[[Delta] Nodding for verification, Delta replied, "Precisely. Wattpad believes both words and stories are extremely powerful. That being said, we're trying to pinpoint different ways we can present these powerful words and stories to our users to make the most positive impact possible. But before we can do that, we need a better understanding of how and why certain stories impact a person's life--both as a writer and reader."]

Feelings of imposter syndrome swelled from nowhere within Amanda's gut. Aside from an open love letter to a Wattpad engineer, the only thing she'd published on the story sharing site branded with an orange W was a poem about a caterpillar and snake. Clearly changing the world with words was not a movement she was actively part of.

"I need to confess," Amanda admitted. "I'm not entirely sure why you chose me for this interview. I wouldn't say I'm--changing the world with words."

[[Delta] Staring at something on her monitor, Delta smiled. "You'd be surprised." Redirecting her focus into to the camera, she added, "You don't need to write award winning novels to impact the world. A word. A phrase. A sentence. They've all impacted our history--and lives."]

"I suppose." Amanda nervously picked at her fingertips with her fingernails.

[[Delta] "And surely you've been changed by something you've read?"]

Adjusting her glasses so they sat more squarely on her face, Amanda replied, "Of course. Definitely."

[[Delta] Gently tapping her cheek with the ostrich feather as though in deep thought, Delta said, "Let me pull up your Wattpad profile--as a talking point for this interview."]

Amanda coughed, her eyes wide with concern. Her mouth gaped open for a moment as she watched Delta type, unsure what to say. "I--I've got some random stuff on there. I'm--I'm not sure it's reflective of--."

[[Delta] Setting her feather pen on the table and propping her head up on her palm, Delta appeared to be reading something. The edges of her lips subtly turned upward into a smirk. "Which Wattpad engineer is this about?"]

Amanda slipped into involuntary paralyzation. She stared at her monitor in mortified silence as Delta clicked on what was surely her open letter to Ian--the 500 word expression of love titled, There's This Engineer At Wattpad.

[[Delta] Delta put her hand up to her mouth to cover a grin. Scooting herself closer to the computer's camera, Delta whispered, "I see 500 words here trying to change something in the world." She winked, then added, "So let's start over, shall we? How do you think words can change the world?"]