“Oh, so you live on a ranch?”
“That’s right.”
“Where is it?”
“In a little town called Clarkstown. Near Dallas.”
My face brightens. “Oh my goodness! I know that ranch! I live in Clarkstown too!”
“Yeah?” he chuckles and smiles. “How long have you lived there?”
“All my life! You?”
“Same here. How is that even possible?”
Here's where he gets even more creeped out. “Well, we live way on the outskirts, almost in Dallas, actually. And unless you go to my church, chances are pretty slim that we’d ever have met.” It sounds like I live in a convent. “I even went to school outside of Clarkstown. I'm like my folks’ little secret weapon.”
“You an only child?”
“How’d you guess?”
He smiles. It’s kind of cute. “On account of my mama. We may all live together on the ranch, but with so many of us, it would be impossible to keep tabs. We come and go as we please. No questions asked.”
“And what made you decide to come out here for school?”
He looks at the ground. “I wanted to get away for a while. Go somewhere I'd never been before.”
“I hear you there. If my folks had their way about it, I’d a never come to school. But I've got big plans.”
“Yeah?”
I change the subject. “What’s your major?”
“I don’t really have one yet. I thought I'd go into engineering, but I don’t have enough brains for that.”
“How are your grades?”
He gives me a knowing look, and then continues. “And I bet you’re scoring all nineties, huh.”
“Sort of. I’m majoring in Psychology. If I don’t get high nineties, I’m sunk.”
“So, you’re going to be a psychologist?”
I nod. “I hope to be. If the money doesn’t run out, that is.”
He doesn’t respond. I'm guessing that money is a sore spot for him, too. He changes the subject. “Who’d you like to meet?”
A ‘v’ forms between my brows before I realize that he’s circling back to the assignment. “Oh.” I chuckle, and he chuckles, as he waits patiently. “I’d have to say God.”
He cranes his neck slightly, frowning. “Well, my mama always says that if y’all pray hard enough, that you can be with God whenever you want to. He’s here with us all the time.”
“Well, I believe that, too. But what I mean is I want to sit down with him, over coffee or something, and ask him a whole load of things.”
“What would you ask him?”
I don’t know this boy well enough to answer that question completely. “Just stuff. You know. Like why this person died, or why did that person do this, and why did this happen to who, you know?”
He smiles, tilting his head slightly. “In that case, I want to change my answer.”
