It didn’t take him long to reach the page again that showed that ugly picture of him.

Feed the Hungry

He stared at it for another moment and started to have second thoughts.

Do it now or you’ll never do it.

Thomas clicked on the “Like” button.

As he did, he could feel the tingles on his body.

The picture of him in his profile was over a year old, but it still looked like him. People would probably do a double take when they saw that he’d joined this page.

They might start thinking it’s a joke or something.

He was going to do more than simply join the page, however. On the main screen, where comments from students ranged from “Who is this guy?” to “Hilarious,” Thomas wrote a message to all 145 people who liked the page.

Want to really “Feed the Hungry”? Want to really do some good this Christmas?

Get a gift for someone in need.

Someone REALLY in need. Not just a high school student who doesn’t have much of a wardrobe. From now until Christmas break, all donations can be brought to locker #1700. I’m leaving my locker unlocked for all gifts. I’ll then bring them to the Salvation Army the week before Christmas.

Let’s do something good. As a school.

He posted the comment and then shut off the laptop.

There.

A part of him wondered if someone would do something to his locker, but then again, he didn’t have anything to steal. Now he’d just wait and see what his fellow students were really, truly about. Not Vic, but the rest of the school.

He was going to tell Carlos and his buddies about the page—to join it and the cause. And maybe, just maybe . . .

Opportunities

Nobody could ever criticize Kevin for not trying, for not working hard enough. He realized that sometimes trying and working weren’t enough, that so often the great successes in life, whether they were in business or the arts, ended up arriving because of a combination of skill and timing and luck. Being at the right place at the right time with the right idea. That didn’t discourage him, however, not even after the roadblock that had recently come up that could really truly be a dead end.

I can still be at the right place at the right time.

So every day, he started out updating his to-do list, making a list of potential opportunities and projects, marking whom to reach out to and whom to connect with. He was using the Internet to his advantage, using those pesky social networks to connect.

He’d usually be able to get in an hour and a half of work before reaching the office. But this morning, he had a couple of meetings at Starbucks. The first one was to connect and to receive some much-needed encouragement. The second one—well, that was probably to say good-bye.