The Serpent King(21)
“Go ’head,” he says.
She sits down with her baby carrots, pita chips, and hummus, all bought on a recent supply run to Trader Joe’s in Nashville. Her mother’s Lexus SUV groaned under the weight of all their groceries. They’d bought a “Trader Joe’s fridge” to put in the garage, just for these runs.
“What are you writing?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
Cut-to-the-chase time. “I’m not here to make fun of you, by the way. Maybe you haven’t noticed that the people who do that to you don’t care for me much either. I liked what you said in class about the book.”
He continues to regard her warily. “Songs. I get ideas in my head and I write them down. Words, or melodies.”
“You’re a musician?”
“Yeah, I learned how to play the guitar and sing when I was really young so I could play in my dad’s church.”
“So are those, like, Jesus songs you’re writing?”
“No.”
“Do you like movies?”
“Yeah. I mean, I haven’t seen very many.”
“Every Friday night is movie night at my house. Wanna come this Friday?”
“My mom’s pretty strict.”
Lydia shrugs. “Okay. Maybe some other time.”
Dillard hesitates. “But she’s working on Friday night. She works pretty much all day every day and every night. So as long as I’m home before ten…”
“I’m no snitch. Snitches get stitches.”
And for the first time she can recall, she sees Dillard Early smile.
Lydia pulled herself from her reverie just as Travis bumbled into Good News, his hair still wet from the shower.
“Sorry, I got held up at work. Telling stories.”
He sat down next to Dill and pulled out his tattered copy of Bloodfall.
Lydia looked up from the blank page she was staring at on her screen while reminiscing. “You cannot possibly have read that book fewer than seven times.”
“Eight times.”
“So why—”
“Because Deathstorm, the final book in the series, comes out in March. And I’m rereading the whole series before then so I don’t miss any details when I talk about it on the forums. They’re brutal there. I don’t want to look like a noob. I’m reading it with one of my friends from the forums. They’re good books. You should read them.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, no. I wouldn’t read five thousand pages of something if it contained precise instructions on how to lose twenty pounds by eating Krispy Kremes and orgasming. Do you not have homework?”
“Damn, Lydia, you’re everyone’s mom tonight,” Dill said. Travis gave him an inquisitive eyebrow raise.
Lydia raised her hands in surrender, still gazing at her screen. “Nope. Nope. I’m done. Y’all do your thing. This is what I get for trying to help.” This is what I get for trying to keep from having to watch your life wither and die on the vine in this stupid little town.
Her phone buzzed.
OMG just got sneak peek at Vivienne Westwood pre-Fall. Mind-blowing, Dahlia texted.
JEALZ.
Cool things going on with subverting trad. ideas of femininity etc.
I ALREADY SAID JEALZ.
Soon, love. BTW spoke with Chloe this morning. Expressed interest in rooming with us in NYC.
Chloe Savignon was a young actress and fashion designer. Lydia had never met her in person, but had corresponded with her online and seen her movies. She was a fan of Dollywould.
I’m down, she texted.
She could barely process how different her life would be in a year. A change she had wrought through her own force of will and ambition. From a nobody in a nothing town at the edge of the Cumberland Plateau to rooming with actresses and fashion industry scions in the most glamorous city in the world, attending one of the finest universities in the world. The possibilities were so endless. Her new friends would dress and talk differently. They’d be from big cities and elite prep schools. They’d have beach houses where they’d spend weekends. They’d have late-night conversations about Chomsky and Sartre and Kraftwerk and Kurosawa and the Givenchy spring line. Friends who would introduce her to new things instead of it always being the other way around. That’s what would replace this. Not that this wasn’t fun. Not that Dill and Travis weren’t good friends to her. Not that she wouldn’t miss them. Not that she wouldn’t feel guilty leaving them behind. But.
A year from now, she wouldn’t be sitting in a Christian coffee shop across from friends who resented her ambition, that was for sure.
This was a good mind place for her to start drafting her college admission essay. She began typing.
I was born and raised in Forrestville, Tennessee, population 4,237, according to the last census. Not surprisingly, technology startups, software companies, media conglomerates, and so forth are reluctant to set up shop in a town named for Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Opportunity and possibility don’t knock at your door in Forrestville. You have to create them for yourself.
The coffee shop faced out onto the town square. Her classmates congregated at the gazebo at its center and used the square as a turnabout when they cruised the main drag, ending up at the Walmart parking lot. She could see them beginning to gather.