I Was Told It Would Get Easier(31)

“We met last night,” mumbled Casper. “Well, Emily and I did.”

“At dinner,” I added, in case they thought we’d had a secret assignation by the ice machine.

“That’s nice,” said Casper’s mom.

“And so, Casper, what are your dreams for college?” Mom sounded chirpy, but I could tell she wasn’t quite sure how to handle being reminded of competitive failure this early in the morning.

“To graduate with honors, to get an exciting job, and live a life of exploration and discovery,” replied Casper. He turned to me. “What about you?”

I shrugged. “No clue.”

He raised his eyebrows. “No clue?”

“Nope. No idea what subject, what college, what time frame, what anything.”

He didn’t look critical. Just puzzled. “Huh.”

There was a pause. My mom tried again, turning to Jennifer. “So, do you feel ready for the whole college application process?”

Jennifer nodded. “Yes, it’s all taken care of. We create a schedule for the children several months in advance, so I know we’ll have time for everything. We put it in a Gantt chart, of course.”

“What’s that?” I asked. Might as well keep the ignoramus theme going.

Casper was surprised. “Oh, you’d know one if you saw one. It’s a chart project managers use to organize work and time, represented visually. It allows you to see how one job leads into another, and therefore, how one thing is dependent on another.”

“Really?” said Mom politely. “That sounds helpful.” She added another spoonful of sugar to her tea, which was unusual, seeing as she’d drunk half of it already.

“It is,” said Jennifer enthusiastically. “We use it all the time, for all of us. We plug in the kids’ schedules, my husband’s work schedule, mine, everything. Then we can see how it’s all going to come together and we don’t need to worry about any of it.” She smiled serenely at my mom, and I suddenly wondered if she was stoned. “It’s very efficient.”

I looked at Casper. “And you use it, too?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, it’s good. It has my school schedule, right, and it estimates homework times, keeps track of due dates, etc. I input everything throughout the day, and the system automatically updates.”

My mom took a really long drink of her tea. “And you created this?”

Casper muttered, “Mom works at Caltech.” He smiled at me and mouthed, Super nerd.

I laughed but shut it off when Mom shot me a look.

“Yes,” Jennifer said, nodding. “When Casper was a toddler my husband and I read an article in Scientific American about children not having sufficient downtime for their intellectual growth.” Her eyes widened. “So we wrote a program and have been refining it ever since.” She nodded. “Having a second child really helped, obviously.”

My mom nodded back. “Because you get more relaxed about everything?”

Jennifer frowned. “No . . . because you get a whole new data set.”

“Right,” said Mom, “that’s what I meant.”

“The chart even has blocks of time set aside for doing nothing, for playing Magic: The Gathering, for practicing the piano . . . everything.” Casper grinned. “Sometimes I think it’s developed a mind of its own. I noticed it started scheduling ‘room cleaning.’”

His mom laughed. “And made everything else a dependency!”

They cracked up. Nerds.

“Wow,” I said. “Do you ever do anything unscheduled?”

“Sure,” said Casper, “there are blocks of free time at regular intervals.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You schedule unscheduled time?”

Casper and his mom both nodded. I didn’t dare look at my mom, but luckily she’s tough.

“That sounds fantastic,” she said. “Do you know what you want to study in school, Casper?”

“I want to be a geologist,” he replied earnestly. “My grandmother gave me some iron pyrite when I was, like, three or four, and it was like a lightbulb went off over my head. Since then it’s always been my dream.” He smiled around. “I’m the president of the Minerals and Gems Club at school.”

I gazed at him, not quite sure what to do with that information. I couldn’t tell if I was amazed at how truly nerdy he was, or jealous that he’d achieved such power and influence in his school’s semiprecious and igneous subculture.

He added, “And I’m the president of the California Young Geologists Association. We meet twice a year to compare samples.”

I said nothing because, frankly, what can be said to that?

I was jealous, though, because I really, really wish I had half his certainty. When the college counselor at school asks me what I’m interested in studying, I go completely blank. I’d love to tell her the truth—I’m interested in studying how to get out of school, but I doubt she has a leaflet or podcast recommendation for that. I mean, I know what I’m supposed to do, we all do: I’m supposed to finish high school and go to college. In college I’m supposed to make several romantic errors and have one meaningful relationship and maybe question my orientation.