Learning to Swim(28)

“It's the first time I ever talked to her,” he said. “She seems nice.”

I knew that I should have accepted this as the compliment it was intended to be and moved on. But instead I blurted out, “She's crazy.”

So much for eloquent and profound.

He raised his eyebrows. I thought I could see the hint of a smile.

“I mean, not certifiably insane but, well, she's very different from me.”

“How so?”

Wrap it up, I cautioned myself. “She has affairs with married men.” Yep, that ought to do it.

“Married men?” he repeated incredulously.

I picked up a stray twig and began playing with it absentmindedly. “That's why we move so often. Every time a relationship breaks up, she wants to start fresh. At least, that's how she justifies it.”

Keith kept his gaze on me. “How often have you moved?”

“Fourteen times.”

His eyes widened in surprise. “Wow, so every year you go to a different school?”

“Almost. This is the first time I can remember that I'm actually going to be attending the same school two years in a row.”

Keith stretched his legs out and leaned back on his arms. “That's got to be tough. My mom and I moved to D.C. when my parents separated and I was in middle school. I still remember how weird it was to walk into the cafeteria and see all these people hanging out and talking to each other and realize that I didn't know a single person. There wasn't one familiar face.”

“Story of my life,” I said, breaking the twig in half.

“Have you thought about where you want to go to college?”

“In state, that's for sure.” I told him about the small but growing tuition fund that my mom and I had set up. I put in seventy-five percent of my Tippecanoe earnings and she matched it, even if it meant she had to work an extra shift.

“That's nice that your mom's helping you.”

This comment irked me. I rarely thought of Barbie as being helpful. “Yeah, but what's not so nice is that she's threatened to walk with my money if I don't go to college. She told me she would just use it to take herself on a really nice long vacation—sans yours truly.”

He chuckled. This irked me too. Barbie's dysfunction was rarely funny.

“So you think that's amusing?” I asked.

Keith took his foot and tapped it against mine. Magically, I wasn't irked anymore. “I don't mean to laugh. Really, Stef, it just sounds like she wants to make sure you have a better life than she's had.”

I already knew this, of course. And now that I thought more about it, it was sweet that he had made my kooky mother's threats about absconding with my hard-earned money sound sane.

“Have you thought about what you might want to study?” The sun was dropping every minute, but it was still warm. Keith's swim trunks were almost dry.

“Psychology. I feel like I've been my mom's therapist for years.”

Keith let out another laugh. This time I was happy I was the cause of it. “No kidding.”

“Yeah, it would be nice to actually get paid for my work. And to have patients who actually listen to my advice.”

His eyebrows rose again. Adorable. “Your mom doesn't listen to you?”

“Unfortunately, no,” I said, shaking my head. “If she did, our life would be a lot different.”

“How so?”

“Well, for one, she wouldn't be working as a cocktail waitress. She could've gotten about ten degrees with all the time she's wasted on dead-end relationships.”

He grinned. “You seem like you've got it together, Stef. I know your life can't be easy, working and going to school like you do. But I think it's cool. You're like Alice in that way. You don't need money to be happy.” He glanced out at the bay. “Maybe you can give me pointers. Up until now, I've only had to pay for all the incidental stuff at school, like books and stuff, and my dad has paid for everything else. But as he informed me a couple weeks ago, nothing comes for free.”

I must've looked confused, because he said, “He's willing to pay as long as I study law or medicine.” All of a sudden he cupped his hands together and opened them. He had caught a lightning bug. How cute/gross! “The problem is, I don't want to be a lawyer or a doctor. I want to be an entomologist.”

The fact that he was holding a bug should've been a clue, but I had no idea what he was talking about.

“I want to study bugs,” he added.

A nonchalant How interesting would've been an appropriate response. Instead, I said, “I love bugs!” Me. The one who screamed whenever a bee flew near, the one who had never met a spider she hadn't squashed.

“You do?”

I looked into those glimmering eyes and nodded.

He furrowed his brow. “You're an unusual girl.”

“What exactly do entomologists do?” I was trying hard to act as though I was really interested, like, Hmmm, maybe I'll forget about this psych stuff and become an entomologist instead!

“There are different kinds. There's forensic entomologists, the guys you see on TV who can determine when a person died by the bugs on the corpse.”

Or maybe I wouldn't.