“One mystery pop coming right up.”
She disappeared and reappeared a moment later, holding two store-brand colas.
“Heads up,” she said, and tossed one in my direction. I caught the ice-cold can just before it crashed into her desk. “Mystic,” she said, flopping onto her bed, “I got a question for you.” I grimaced. Her questions generally revolved around me, Adrian, and Victoria’s Secret. But she surprised me with “What was home like?”
I blinked, trying to see if there was any way that question could be interpreted sexually. Maybe by a great stretch of the imagination, but probably not.
“Why do you ask?”
She shrugged and popped the top of the can. “I just don’t know much about you is all. I mean, I do, but I don’t. I didn’t want to push you when you first got here, but I feel like we’re friends now.”
She smiled at me and I smiled back, then shrugged. “Not much to know. Grew up in Connecticut in what I thought was a small town, until I moved here. Mystic’s a metropolis compared to Stony Creek. I loved the ocean and our house. Sewed a ton of shit with my mom, watched the Bachelorette with my grandma every week. Pretty simple life, really.” I popped the top of my soda can. “Speaking of not knowing a whole lot about people, what about you? You have what, two brothers?”
“Three,” she said with a look that clearly said three was too many. “I already told you Jimmy’s getting married this summer. Crazy bastard,” she muttered and took a swig of cola. “He’s just a freshman. But when he’s home, he looks happy like I’ve never seen him before.” She smiled. It kind of made me wish I had siblings.
“Where do they go to school?”
“Jimmy’s at Boston U studying engineering. Mark’s a junior at Penn State majoring in art or something. And Paul’s going for a law degree at NYU.”
“Dang.”
She smiled. “Underneath the hick, we’re a family of semigeniuses. Paul’s, like, crazy-ass smart, but we couldn’t afford to send him anywhere too fancy.”
She smiled again, happy for her brothers. A thought struck me.
“Trish, what’s your GPA?”
“Since when did you turn into Ms. Blunt? That’s my job.”
I blushed. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to ask it like that.”
“Don’t be; it’s not a secret. I’ve got a 3.95.” I stared at her. “Oh, come on, we’re in the middle of Stony Creek; the curriculum isn’t exactly rigorous.”
Since when did she use words like rigorous—or curriculum? And since when was a 3.95 something to shrug off? I barely had a 3.0 (thanks to my lack of enthusiasm for living and subsequent inattention to homework), and it wasn’t a walk in the park trying to bring it back up.
“Where do you want to go to school, after this?” I asked, unashamedly curious.
Of all the reactions I would have expected, embarrassment was not one of them. “I don’t know,” she said, not meeting my eyes.
“Oh, come on, Trish,” I said, reveling in being the one with the questions now. “You obviously have something in mind.”
She glowered at me. “So what if I do? There’s no way.”
“If there’s no way, then there’s no harm in telling me.”
She rolled her eyes and said, “Fine. I want to go to Oxford.”
I blinked. “Oxford?”
“Yeah. Like, in England.”
“I know where Oxford is. But—why?”
“Because it’s one of the founding schools of English literature. Mr. Warren’s trying to help me get a scholarship.”
She wanted to go there to write? “You want to go there to write?”
She shook her head in a so-so motion. “Maybe. It’s more about the history of the place. And I want to travel. I was thinking of getting a master’s in literature, then going on to publishing or something.”
It was like I was talking to a different person. I briefly wondered if Trish was schizophrenic, but she interrupted my thoughts.
“But that’s a long way off. I got plenty of time to screw around and be a reckless teenager. Which is why we should get some homework done.”
“Doing homework is reckless?”
“Nah,” she grinned, “but making sure you have absolutely nothing to distract you from your night with Adrian is.”
*
“I’m gonna take Caitlin home,” I heard Trish tell her parents. They replied low enough that I couldn’t hear. “Yeah, she’s not feeling good. I’ll be back for dinner.”
I heard her climb the stairs so I grabbed my bag.
“You ready?” she asked, stepping into the room. I nodded and tried to look ill.
“Hope you feel better soon, Caitlin,” Mrs. Fields called from the kitchen. She was cooking something on the stove that smelled deliciously like chili, and my stomach rumbled. I covered it with a grimace and said, “Thanks; I hope so, too.”
We made it to the truck and Trish drove me five minutes down the road until we saw a black truck parked on the side. I thanked Trish again for covering for me and hopped out, sprinting to the truck to keep out of the snow.