“No, I’m not excited. I don’t know if I want to go to college.”
Surprise trickles through me. “What? Why not?”
“I never have. The thought of being stuck in one place, with the same people? With a set schedule that looks the same every week? I don’t know what I’d major in. I’d rather go to Greece than take a Greek mythology class. Or intern at a company rather than take a business course. I’m a kinesthetic learner, according to my guidance counselor. Sitting and listening, taking notes? Bores me to death. And that’s what most of college is.”
“Then why are you going?”
She sighs. “It’s important to my parents.Veryimportant to my grandfather. He’s already disappointed I’m not going to an Ivy. There are certain expectations that are part of my family, and I laugh at or ignore some of them, but others? Pretty nonnegotiable. College is what all my friends are doing, what my sister did, what all my cousins did. Everyone says I’ll love it once I’m there. I have no idea what I’ll do after, once I have a degree, but that’s a later problem. I’m sure all of that sounds stupid to you, but it’s … it’s my life.”
“I don’t think it sounds stupid,” I tell her. “My parents both went to college. It’s not like I’m unfamiliar with the concept.”
“Why aren’t you going?”
“Isn’t an option,” I say, hoping that’ll be the end of it.
But Wren scoffs rather than agrees. “I saw the letters.”
“What?”
“Technically, yes, I was snooping, but the drawer was open a little bit. There were at least a dozen schools, all recruiting you.”
I relax some. She doesn’t mean her letters. She doesn’t know I kept them all.
“That was before. Before I quit baseball, before I stopped takinggrades seriously.”
“You could still go, if you wanted to. You didn’t even apply anywhere, right?”
I stay silent.
No, I didn’t. Because I knew what the reply would be and because no one, with the exception of my mom maybe, expected anything different.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You can’t just avoid?—”
“I said,I don’t want to talk about it, Wren. It’smylife. Doesn’t have a damn thing to do with you.”
“Right. Of course.”
The words themselves aren’t bad, but her tone tells me, she’s pissed. Hurt too, probably. My fault again.
“I just meant?—”
“You’re the one talking about it now,” she tells me, reaching into her bag and pulling out a tube of sunscreen.
I sigh, then stand. “I should check …”
“You should,” she agrees, not even letting me finish the sentence.
I walk toward the bow. I could check over this entire damn boat and still not know how to explain to Wren that going after things I want—college, her—means risking losing them.
I don’t tell her that.
But I do end up asking her to text me the photo of us. Because I want a copy. And because I want her to be able to reach me by other means than a letter or landline, if she ever wanted to.
31
“Some hot older guy requested your section, Wren,” Abby tells me as soon as I return from my break.
