The Internship [Stuart Twombly]

[0.2] The Team Lyle

"Welcome to day two. I am Sid, eighth-year Googler. You guys are new Googlers; thus you're... Nooglers. Okay. Now, this place is all about community and collaboration. So you'll be working in teams from here on out. All right." Sid started as we all sat on the intern area.

I again was next to beanie boy, our beanbags almost side by side. I am not sure how I always seem to be next to him but I prefer it to the rest of them. I noticed Chetty quickly approaching a non-stop talking Sid.

"You have five minutes. Pick your teams." Chetty spoke after ripping the mic away from Sid.

People immediately started moving around, looking for people. I rolled my eyes instead, not having the energy to move, looking down at my phone. Trying to distract myself from all the noise and buzzing, I attempted to take some deep, shaky breaths to lesson my anxiety. A slight nudge on my left caught my attention. I glanced up to once again meet eyes with beanie boy. He held up his phone, showing me a simple search YouTube video on how to take deep breaths. It distracted me long enough to forget about all the noise and instead, throw an annoyed glance his way.

"You weren't doing it right." Beanie boy shrugged, simply continuing to scroll through his phone.

"Um, Mr.Chetty, I don't have a team." A guy with glasses spoke, snapping me away from beanie boys attention.

"You'll mentor the leftovers. Which, it would seem, would include your two charity cases." Chetty told him.

I glanced around to realize that the only ones left were Nick and Billy, a pretty girl, an Asian boy, beanie boy and myself. Internally groaning, I tried to look back at my phone and ignore it all.

"Nice." He muttered, "Yo, Billy and Nick?"

"Hey." Billy spoke awkwardly.

"Hi." Nick said, standing besides Billy.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Lyle, one of the team managers. Pound me." Lyle smiled and held out his fist.

I glanced to beanie boy who shot me a look as well. Both of us looking away from our phones.

"Oh, normally, just putting the-the fist out without the words is all that's necessary." Nick said, taken aback by Lyle's terms.

Lyle only had a cheeky grin, still holding his fist out. "Come on, bro, fist me; get up in there."

I squinted my eyes at his words, sharing another knowing look with beanie boy.

"Yeah, that's definitely not right. I... I'm sorry, you said you were a-a manager?" Nick questioned him.

"How old are you?" Billy asked after Nick.

"I'm 23, but no worries, fellas. I'm an old soul." Lyle said, nodding his head.

Beanie boy and I shook our heads, looking back down at our phone screens.

"Yeah, that's great. Um, yeah, well, the thing about it is, pal, is that, um, we don't have a... well, we have two... me and... me and Nick... but we don't have the rest of our team. We didn't...But we figured..." Nick and Billy said quietly.

"Correction: you didn't have a team, but you got one now, son. 'Cause I got a few outliers." Lyle began, catching my attention once more as he pointed out the rest of us. "Buh-bam, ker-plash, zshaw, kepowa!"

"And we about to get it all good up in this hood, right? Outliers? Outliers, 'cause I just dropped a little G-well on you. 'Cause Malcolm's my dog, Malcolm's my dog. What you say... Malcolm's my dog. Outliers, you know, from 10,000 hours?" Lyle said awkwardly, waiting for his reference to catch on.