I tilt my head back to fully soak in the winter sun rays. “Was it your number one choice?” I ask.
“Well, no.”
“Okay, so why does it matter then?”
“It’s the principle of the whole thing,” she says. “I met all their requirements and then some. I was the perfect candidate.”
“It’s not like they said no,” I tell her, slightly annoyed.
“It’s not like they said yes.” She takes a few bites of her chicken strips. “So that thing we talked about in the library the other week? The hypothetical friends hypothetically kissing?”
I keep my head tilted back and am grateful for my sunglasses. I haven’t been avoiding Ruth, but I haven’t really gone out of my way to hang out with her lately in the week and half since my date with Freddie. I firmly believe that a lie by omission is still a lie, and well, Ruth is really hard to lie to. “What about it?” I ask.
“Well, how did that go? Hypothetically.”
I shrug, squeezing my eyes shut behind my glasses. My voice is too high when I say, “Good. Fine.”
She nods. “Just wondering. Anyway, what about you next year? You still have time to figure something out.”
I sit up and glance around. “You’re looking at it.”
She rolls her eyes and runs her fingers through her dusty blond hair. “I don’t get it, Ramona.”
“I’m happy here.” I know it’s a lie the minute I say it. It’s not that I hate Eulogy or my Mississippi roots, but it’s that feeling of ducking down when I walk into a too-short doorway or hunching over when I’m in the shower. Like I’ve outgrown my life somehow. And now, after my trip to New Orleans with Freddie, I feel it everywhere.
Ruth puts her chicken strips to the side and pulls her backpack into her lap. “So you and Freddie went to New Orleans on Saturday?”
“Who told you that?” All I can hear is the conversation we had in the library after that first kiss.
“Hattie,” she says. “We all watched movies together at Saul’s.”
“Do you still miss him? At home?” I ask, referring to Saul. Partly because I’m curious and partly because I needto change the subject.
“It’s hard,” she says. “I’m trying not to feel like he’s abandoned me. I gotta remember that I was going to abandon him soon enough anyway. He has his own life now, which makes me feel better about having my own.”
My chest aches at the thought of all of us creating our own lives separate from one another. Except that Hattie needs me in her life on constant standby. So while Saul is off with his boyfriend and Ruth is busy with all her pre-med stuff and Freddie is at LSU, I’ll most likely be here in a holding pattern.
From the inside of her backpack, Ruth pulls out a stack of folders and booklets. “I picked these up for you at the college fair a few weeks ago. Do whatever you want with them,” she says. “But at least look at them first, okay?”
I take the stack from her, and each thing has a seal or a logo from a different community college within a few hours’ driving distance of here. “What are these?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Options.”
“Ruth, you gotta quit with this stuff.” I shove the stack back across the table.
But she pushes it back. “There’s no reason you should be stuck here forever. I know you’re over this place. It’s so obvious.”
“No reason? Are you serious?” I ask, trying not to raise my voice. “I have plenty of reasons. I have no money, no car, a knocked-up sister, mediocre grades... I can keep going,” I tell her.
“Those aren’t reasons,” she says. “They’re excuses.” Shetakes her plate and walks it back to the kitchen, leaving the stack of brochures and catalogs there.
I wait until she’s out of sight before thumbing through the stack. I spy Delgado Community College and flip through the pamphlet before putting all of them in my backpack.
TWENTY-SEVEN
We were never good about splitting up our time equally between Mom and Dad like the court had mandated, but Christmas Eve has always been Mom’s. Meaning it was the final hurdle to jump before I could relax and enjoy my winter vacation from school.
This year Christmas Eve falls on one of Mom’s workdays, so me, Hattie, Tyler, and Freddie all make the drive down the coast to the row of casinos, where the lights never stop twinkling.
