Undecided(18)

He glances at me. “I’m sure you’re very exciting, Nora.”

I laugh and he smiles around the screws, fishing one out of his mouth and sliding it into the next hole.

“How’d you do on your quiz?”

“What? Oh, Bio? Aced it.”

“Good for you.”

He shrugs and moves onto the last screw. “You know what’s weird?”

This whole situation? “What’s weird?”

“I f*cking hate school.”

“You do? I thought you wanted to teach.”

“Yeah. I want to be a teacher. Stupid, right?”

“Not really.”

“No? Why not?”

“If it’s what you want to do, I don’t see why it’s stupid.”

“Because I hate school,” he repeats. “And I suck at it. Why do you think I have to study for hours to learn what other people can learn in five minutes?”

I watch him assemble a drawer like he’s buttering a piece of bread. There’s nothing stupid about him. “Because you know how to work hard?” I offer. “There’s nothing wrong with trying.”

He’s focused on his task, but I see his mouth quirk. “I guess you’d know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how you’re always at the library. You’ve got five classes and a job. You work hard, too.”

I think about last year, how I did just the opposite and landed myself in this position. “Well, I have to.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“To have a good life. Isn’t that what everybody wants?”

“I guess so.”

“You want to have a bad life, Crosbie?”

Now he grins. “Yeah, Nora. I want to have a terrible life.”

I laugh and hand him the piece of wood he points to. “What do you want to teach?”

He blows out a breath and begins work on the second drawer. “Maybe history.”

“I thought you’d say Phys Ed.”

“Why?”

I roll my eyes. “Oh, I don’t know, Crosbie. Just a guess.”

“Is it this?” he asks, flexing his biceps. And though I do my very best to look unimpressed, a little frisson of sexual awareness trips down my spine. He’s very…big.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He laughs and gestures for me to move aside so he can work on the other desk leg. “What about you? What’s going to make your life so great?”

“I don’t know. But a degree seems like the first step.”

“A degree in what?”

“I’m still undecided.”

“Really? I’d think a girl who spent her whole summer at school would be working toward a very specific goal.”

My goal was to raise my average to a C+ from a D-and complete my two and a half months of community service without attracting too much attention. “Just trying to keep on top of things.”

“What’d you do when the campus was so empty?”

I swallow. I don’t want to lie, but I’m not ready for another person to know how badly I messed up. “Just worked, mostly. Studied and worked. Went for…walks.” Where I picked up trash along the highway.

“Alone?”

“There were four people on my floor,” I say. Eight in my clean-up crew. “Two didn’t speak English, and the other girl spent twenty hours a day practicing piano. Her fingers actually bled.”

He grimaces. “That’s gross.”

“Tell me about the party.”

He grunts. “You don’t want to know.”

“Why not?” If I can’t actually attend parties, maybe I can live vicariously through Crosbie. But even as I think the words, I find myself hoping he doesn’t tell me about hooking up with strippers—or any other girls.

“You ever been to a frat party, Nora?”

I avoid his stare. He probably thinks I’m too timid, but I just find it hard to meet his eye when I’m lying. “No.”

“Well, stay far away. They can get pretty out of control.”

“But you can handle it?”

Another laugh. “I kind of love it. It makes all the other shit worth it. It’s the only thing that comes easy to me.”

“Partying?”

“Yeah.”

I think about last year. How I’d thrown myself headfirst into that world. How great it had been. Until it wasn’t anymore.

“What do you do for fun?” he asks. I realize he’s trying to be kind. To make my assumed hobbies of knitting and star gazing sound interesting.

“Ghost hunting,” I say.

“You’re a f*cking liar, Nora.”

I can’t keep a straight face. “I don’t do anything fun,” I tell him. And this time it’s easy to meet his stare. “I kind of…can’t.”

“You can’t have fun?”

“I can’t balance it,” I clarify. “How you study and run and party—I can’t. It’s all or nothing for me. Always has been. I don’t know why.”

“So you just study? You never have fun?”

“Studying’s not the worst thing in the world.”