What Happens to Goodbye(50)

“Yeah.” I pulled my knees tighter against me. “But, see, that’s the thing. You can acknowledge that, that easily. But she can’t. She never has.”
“Surprising,” he replied. “It’s kind of obvious.”
“Don’t you think?” I turned, facing him. “I mean, if you can understand that what she did was wrong, why can’t she?”
“But,” he replied, “those aren’t the same, though.”
I just looked at him as another car passed. “What?”
“First you said she wouldn’t acknowledge what she’d done,” he replied. “Right? Then you asked why she didn’t understand it. Those are two different things entirely.”
“They are?”
“Yeah. I mean, acknowledging is easy. Something happened or it didn’t. But understanding . . . that’s where things get sticky.”
“That’s us,” I said. “Seriously sticky. For years now.”
“I can relate,” he said.
We sat there for a moment. He was picking at the grass, the blades squeaking between his fingers, while I just stared straight ahead. Finally, I said, “So your parents really freaked when you got arrested, huh?”
“ ‘ Freaked’ is putting it mildly,” he said. “It was basically a family DEFCON 5. Total breakdown.”
“Seems kind of extreme.”
“They thought I was out of control,” he said.
“Wasn’t it just one beer, at one party?”
“It was,” he agreed. “But I’d never done anything like that before. Not even close. I hadn’t even been to a high school party until a few weeks earlier.”
“Big changes,” I said.
“Exactly.” He sat back, leaning on his palms. “In their minds, it’s all the fault of Frazier Bakery. When I started working there, my downward spiral began.”
I studied him for a second. “You aren’t exactly a criminal.”
“Maybe not. But you have to understand my parents,” he said. “To them, an after-school job is something you only take if it enhances your educational future. You don’t waste your time making Blueberry Banana Brain Freezes for minimum wage when you can be reading up on applied physics. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Blueberry Banana Brain Freezes?”
“It’s a breakfast smoothie,” he explained. “You should try one, they’re seriously good. Just drink it slow. It’s called that for a reason.”

I smiled. “So why did you take the job?”
“It just looked like fun,” he said. “I mean, I’ been assisting at my mom’s lab since I was ten, doing research, writing up experiment notes. It was interesting, but it’s not like I had much in common with the professors there. One day I was at FrayBake, getting my usual, and they had a help wanted sign up. I applied and they hired me. Simple as that.”
“So much for the lab,” I said.
“Yeah, well. There are plenty of kid geniuses around that building. I don’t think anyone but my mom missed me that much.” He pulled at some more grass. “Anyway, I made some friends my own age, started doing things on the weekends other than read and study. Which was unnerving enough. But then, that summer, I told them I wanted to transfer to Jackson. They said absolutely not, pointing out all these statistics about the test scores and student-teacher ratio—”
“They countered with research?”
“They’re scientists,” he said as if this explained everything. “Eventually, I got them to agree to it, but only for a semester, and only because I already had more than enough credits to graduate.”
“This was last year?”
He nodded.
“You could have graduated as a sophomore?”
“Actually,” he replied with a cough, “I had enough credits after ninth grade.”
“Holy crap,” I said. “How smart are you?”
“Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?”
I bit my lip. “Sorry.”
He shot me a fake-annoyed look, which made me snort, and then continued. “So I transferred. And then, you know, I started hanging out more with Riley and Heather, and went to a few parties, and blew off my Physics Bowl practice.”
“Sounds pretty normal,” I said. “Except for the Physics Bowl thing.”
“For some people. Not for me.” He cleared his throat. “Look, it’s not like I’m proud of it. But I was almost eighteen and I’d never done anything, you know, normal. And suddenly, I was at this big school, where no one knew me. I could be whoever I wanted. And I didn’t want to be the super-serious smart kid anymore.”
I had a flash of all those schools I’d attended, a blur of hallways and closed doors. “I can understand that,” I said.
“Yeah?”
I nodded.
“The point is, they were already not happy with me. And then I started planning this trip for after graduation, instead of going to Brain Camp, which didn’t help things.”
“Brain Camp?”
“This math thing I’ve done every summer since fifth grade,” he explained. “I was supposed to be a counselor again this year. But Ellis, Riley, Heather, and I want to do this big road trip to Texas. Which is, you know, somewhat less academic.”
I smiled. “Travel is educational.”
“I pointed that out. They weren’t buying it, though.” He looked down at his hands again. “Anyway, it was my crappy luck that in the middle of all this I w that party and got busted. Which made the trip a moot point.”