The Serpent King(19)

“Dill, who are you kidding? You’re miserable here. All the whispers and stares. Come on. Plus, I would love it if you had some direction so that you weren’t getting mad at me every five minutes for having some.”

Dill folded his arms. “I wondered when we’d get to the part where this is about you.”

Lydia took a loud, deep breath through her nose. “Ergh. This is not about me. It’s about you improving your life and I happen to get something out of it—namely you not being so defensive about my refusal to spend my life stuck here. I’m trying to pull you up.”

A sunshiny church youth group a few grades below Dill and Lydia came in and ordered cupcakes and smoothies. That used to be me. Dill waited for them to pass their table before responding.

“You’re turning me into a project,” he said, his voice lowered. “It’s not enough to dress me anymore. Now you need to chart out my life for me.”

“Are you kidding me? You think I see you as a project?”

“That’s how you’re making me feel. Like a craft project. Like a photo series for your blog. Except not for your blog because obviously I’d never actually be on your blog.”

“Yeah. Okay. Fine. I’m making it a project to make your life better.” Her voice crescendoed. Lydia had no discernible Southern accent until she got mad. “I’m so sorry for caring and trying to help you make your life better.”

“Is it that or is it your fear of the stain of my sad life getting on you? So you have to polish me up and make me worthy.”

“No, dude. You’re way off here, and you’re being gross about it. You’re scared of the thought of leaving and you’re projecting that fear onto me. You’re the one trying to make this about me. You think if you can convince yourself that I have totally impure motives for wanting you to go, you won’t have to face the possibility that you’re just afraid.”

A couple of the youth group kids peeked over. Lydia gave them a firm mind-your-own-business stare. They pouted. One whispered something to the other, as if to prove Lydia’s earlier point about whispers and stares. Dill could make out “pastor” and “jail.” He gave serious consideration to the possibility that Lydia had hired them as plants. Wouldn’t surprise him.

“Look,” he said, almost whispering. “I would love to go to college too. But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“My grades.”

“They’re fine. Not spectacular, but there are colleges who’ll take you just for having a pulse. But more importantly, you’re extremely smart. I wouldn’t hang out with you if you weren’t. Next.”

“I can’t afford it. Even if my grades are good enough to get in, I can’t get a scholarship.”

“Financial aid and get a part-time job. Next.”

“I still can’t afford it because I need to start working full time to help my family get out of debt. I need to work more than full time, in fact.”

“You’ll be of more financial help to your family farther down the road with a college degree. Next.”

“I never planned on it. Going to college isn’t something Earlys are supposed to do. None of us have ever been.”

Lydia rocked back in her chair with a smug bearing. “Finally, the real reason, and it’s the dumbest one of all.”

“Thanks, but they’re all the real reasons. Especially the part about needing to help my mom. I’m all she has. My grandparents died. We don’t have any other living family nearby who still associate with us.”

“I’m not trying to convince you to go to the Sorbonne or Harvard, Dill. Go to UT. Go to MTSU. Go to ETSU. Go to TSU. You’ll be close to home.”

The youth group held hands in a circle, praying over their cupcakes and smoothies. Dill waited for them to finish.

“Why aren’t you up Travis’s ass about this too?”

“First of all, don’t assume that I’m incapable of being up more than one ass at a time. I can be up—” The youth group table cast dirty looks in her direction. She lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. “I can be up many asses at the same time. Multiple asses. I cause rips in the space-time continuum with how many asses I’m capable of being up simultaneously. Stephen Hawking had to come up with a parallel universe theory to explain my up-asses omnipresence.”

“So you’re up Travis’s ass?”

“No.”

Dill did a double facepalm.

“Listen,” Lydia said. “I’m not bugging Travis because he’s fine here. And that’s because he doesn’t actually live in Forrestville, Tennessee. He lives in Bloodfall land. Trav will be happy stacking lumber during the day and reading books at night until he dies. That’s who he is. But you? I can tell you don’t want that life. Everything about you screams that you want a different life. This is how you do it.”

“What if I moved to a different town and got a full-time job?”

“Don’t do this halfway. Either go to college, learn something, and change your life, or stay here and be miserable. Don’t move to the next county over to be miserable. You’ll waste your time.”

“This is all super easy for you to say. You have loving parents who support you and want you to succeed at stuff. You can afford college.”