Page 15 of The Serpent King

“Why do you say ‘if’?”

“Because I’m not making you. You know that.”

“I guess I didn’t think you were serious when you said that.”

“I was. I’d just as soon you went full time at Floyd’s. They like you there. Make you a manager and you’d be earning thirty-five thousand a year before you knew it. That’s real money.”

“What about graduating?” I can’t believe I’m actually defending school to my mom.

“You can read. Write. Add. Subtract. You got a line to a good job. What do you need a piece of paper for? I care that you learn your scripture, that’s all.”

Dill scrubbed the dishes. “Lydia’s about to apply to every one of the best colleges in America; meanwhile, my mom is telling me to become a high school dropout.”

“Lydia’s dad is a dentist and her mom works too, and they don’t have our debts. No use comparing yourself to her.”

“No use is right.”

“Your dad didn’t graduate from high school. And I quit high school to marry him.”

Dill put down the dish he was washing, turned, and gave his mother an incredulous look. “You can’t possibly believe that’ll convince me.”

“Someday you’ll learn that you’re no better than your own name.”

Someday? “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll learn it in school this year. They seem pretty determined to teach me that. Good night.”

Dill put the dish in the cracked white plastic drying rack and went to his room. He lifted up his door by the knob, on its broken hinge, and shut it. He sat down on his twin bed, the only piece of furniture in his room besides a Goodwill dresser, and the lumpy mattress groaned under his weight. He popped his new CD into his hand-me-down CD player from Lydia. He put in his earbuds and reclined with his hands behind his head.

Sometimes music worked on the loneliness. Other times, when he felt as if he were sitting at the bottom of a dry well, looking up at the sky, it didn’t work at all. Today marked the beginning of the end for him, but only the beginning of the beginning for Lydia. He sighed.

No song would fix that.

When Lydia got home, her dad and mom were lounging on the couch, watching TV. Her mom had a glass of red wine and sat with her feet tucked under Lydia’s dad’s leg. A pizza box rested on the reclaimed-wood coffee table in front of them. Lydia’s dad had a fetish for industrial antiques. He had filled their meticulously restored Victorian house with them. The Restoration Hardware catalog was his pornography.

“Hey, kid,” her dad said. “Have fun in Nashville?”

Lydia held up her bags.

“I have my answer. How’d Al Gore treat you?”

“The real Al Gore who lives in Nashville? We didn’t run into him.”

“Your car, Al Gore. Ran okay?” Lydia had inherited Al Gore (the first Prius in Forrestville) from her dad.

“Treated us fine.” Lydia kicked off her boots, flopped onto the couch on the other side of her dad, and tucked her feet up under his leg.

“Are you hungry? We’ve got some Pizza Garden left there,” her mom said.

“We need a real pizza place in this town,” Lydia said.

“One more year and you’ll be in some amazing big city with more pizza places than you could ever possibly try,” her mom said.

“Yeah,” Lydia said, “but another year is a long time to eat subpar pizza.”

“You’re such an elitist,” her dad said. “Pizza Garden is fine. How bad can pizza ever really be?”

“ ‘Elitist’ is synonymous with ‘has discerning taste,’ but I’ll concede that Pizza Garden more or less gets the job done, as long as you avoid ham and pineapple.”

“That’s true of any pizza place, though,” her dad said. “Go on. Have some.”