The Foreseeable Future Page 3

  Even my sister, too young for term papers and AP exams, lived for our family’s yearly trips to Office Depot. Her fetish for paper clips shaped like animals and sparkly gel pens didn’t exactly scream budding genius, but her collection of novels—organized by color on a shelf above her desk, their pages slightly warped from all the hours she spent in the bath—proved she was our father’s daughter.

  I had tried.

  I wanted to love reading. I wanted to participate in heated family arguments over which twenty-first-century authors would contribute to the canon and who among the ancient Greeks had best understood democracy—but I didn’t actually care. Whenever I opened a book my fingers always itched to text Sara. My legs craved a hike and my ears missed music. In ninth grade, after I’d nearly failed my midterms in both English and European history—“You didn’t let me edit your essay!” cried Dad; “I would have quizzed you on the Peloponnesian War!” mourned my mother—I had turned my attention to math and science, supposing I might be the first ever left-brained Nelson. And while I was a tiny bit better at solving for X and memorizing the periodic table of elements, I still had to enlist Sara and Elliot to help me with my homework. By junior year, Sara had exhausted her patience explaining simple chemistry equations to me.

  “I am not your science teacher,” she said finally, shoving my textbook across our wobbly cafeteria table. “You have one. She’s called Mrs. Delaney. Have you ever tried paying attention in class?”

  Paying attention in class was, for me, an impossibility— like trying to count how many times you blink in a day. I would sit down, stare at the teacher, endeavor to hang on her every word. Then the drone of her voice would become a soothing sound track to whatever was actually on my mind—something funny Rosie had said at dinner. Whether Elliot would be willing to steal beer from his mom for a party. Where my family would travel this summer and if my siblings and I would get our own hotel room, like last year in Orlando, when we’d snuck out, hopped the fence surrounding the pool, and admitted how many people we’d kissed so far.

  Rosie: one girl, on a dare.

  Me: three boys.

  Jake: also three boys, but hoping to increase his numbers during his second year at Columbia.

  In the fall, my parents had ever-so-gently suggested I apply early decision to Whedon. “It’s a good school, honey,” my mother said. I sat on the couch, picking at a hole in my jeans. “To be honest, it’s superior to any school that’s going to accept you with your current GPA.”

  She was referring to my collection of low Bs. They stung worse than Cs, the grade you got when you didn’t particularly care. Teachers gave out Bs to acknowledge when you’d tried.

  “What makes you think Whedon will let me in?” I asked, wishing my voice hadn’t cracked.

  “They will,” Mom said firmly.

  She had already talked to someone.

  “There’s also the not-insignificant matter of Whedon covering tuition for the children of faculty members,” Dad added, summarizing: “No loans.”

  Last September, I had filled out a completely symbolic application to Whedon College because I was tired of trying. My unsurprising acceptance letter had thrilled Mom and Dad, and now my mind could wander guiltlessly. I could half-ass my papers, and guess on my tests, and pass notes with scruffy football players if I wanted to—all the while maintaining lazy faith in my parents’ claim that at college, this fall, I would learn to love learning.

  I would get a second chance.

  * * *

  * * *

  At the end of first period, Seth slung his bag over one shoulder and lingered. Glancing up at him, all I could think to say was, “Hi.”

  How many times was I going to greet him today?

  “Sorry again,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For getting you in trouble.”

  “You didn’t get me in trouble. I mean, I’m sort of always in trouble.”

  “Oh, I see. Didn’t realize I was dealing with such a badass.”

  “I didn’t realize you were dealing with me.”

  The look he gave me was one of amusement and acknowledgment. We had started something. A math class friendship or a promising flirtation or just an inside joke to which we’d refer, casually, if we ever ran into each other in the grocery store. Remember the time my girlfriend puked on you? Whatever we’d started, our next encounter would have to be different. We’d have to say something more than Hi.

  Seth grinned. “You know what’s weird?”

  “What?”

  “How you’ve never sat next to me before.”

  Sliding my textbook into my bag, I released a note of laughter. “Why is that weird?”

  “I don’t know. I just think it’s strange.”

  “You’re not actually in class that often,” I pointed out.

  “True.” He sighed, wistful, as if his attendance record was beyond his control. “Anyway, Audrey, I’ll see you around?”

  “See you,” I confirmed.

  His boots thumped against the floor as he walked away. In Crescent Bay you could always tell whether someone lived close to the beach or up in the woods by what clung to their shoes—sand or dirt. Seth’s boots were streaked with hardened mud. He moved differently than most boys of his height. Rather than propelling himself forward with his shoulders, he stood up straight and sort of glided.

  Before today, I had never once considered sitting next to Seth O’Malley, but he was right—that the idea had never occurred to me now seemed unlikely, and strange.

  FOUR

  “This house is full of tourists,” Sara complained into the phone.

  “That’s because you live in a hotel.”

  On a rural road about ten miles outside of town, the Quintero family’s B&B was one of my favorite places in Crescent Bay. It was the only home in which I’d spent a significant amount of time that didn’t smell vaguely like a wet dog, and where the floors weren’t always coated with a thin layer of sand. Sara’s mother hung modern art instead of dead starfish on the walls. The bathroom sinks were edged with tiny bottles of perfume and eucalyptus-infused shampoo. Tourists—usually up from San Francisco or Silicon Valley—happily forked over two hundred dollars per night to stay in the carefully curated guest rooms.

  “There’s this couple here”— Sara’s voice was low, but I could hear floorboards squeaking and horses snorting, suggesting she had already escaped the main house for the solace of her barn. Sara spent a lot of evenings hiding in her hayloft, armed with homework and TV shows downloaded to her laptop—“and they want me to take them on a trail ride tomorrow night. At sunset. They have a very specific need to canter across the sand at sunset. Which, fine. But they showed me all this gear they brought with them—boots and pants and helmets. And this stuff is so brand spanking new, you can tell they bought it all for this one vacation.”

  “Are you jealous?” I teased her.

  “Maybe of the boots,” she admitted. “They look like Brogini’s.”

  In spite of the way she slandered them behind their backs, Sara was always nicer to her customers than I would have expected. And I didn’t think it was just because some of them tipped. Secretly, I suspected my best friend of wanting to be the kind of person who could pass through Crescent Bay and absorb its charms without feeling its limits.

  Still, I understood that the boots and jodhpurs were overkill. When Sara and Elliot and I went riding on the beach, we wore cheap sneakers and jeans, no helmets. We were always fine.

  “I have a question for you,” I said, slipping out the front door and onto the porch. My dad was grinding coffee beans for the morning and bellowing along with a Loudon Wainwright song, but I didn’t want to risk him falling silent, overhearing.

  “Go for it,” Sara said.

  “Would you be alarmed if I became a Certified Nurse Assistant?”

&nb
sp; “No. Wait, maybe. What’s that?”

  I laughed, then explained. The job entailed bathing and dressing patients, monitoring their vital signs, helping them get around and go to the bathroom, reporting major concerns to the RNs or doctors on staff. For days now, I had been poring over forums on which nurse assistants, nationwide, compared their salaries, supervisors, horror stories, and favorite patients. The best part of this job, one girl had written, is that you’re never, ever bored!

  Sara was slow to respond, and I felt my excitement deflate. I’d hoped she would see the appeal immediately, or at least agree that the job sounded like something I’d be good at. Finally, she asked, “Wouldn’t that be a lot of work for a summer gig?”

  “I could switch to part-time after school starts. First I need to take this class at Steeds County Community College. It starts next week.”

  “And what about, uh, high school?”

  “The class meets at night. A lot of people do it while they’re still in high school.”

  Sara cleared her throat. “This is the thing Seth O’Malley was telling you about?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What does Seth know about it?”

  “He mops floors at the retirement home.”

  Again, Sara was quiet. “You’d be so busy. Especially after August.”

  “That’s kind of the point. . . .”

  “But you’d be working nonstop. You’d never have time to hang out.”

  “Um,” I said, waiting for Sara to be struck by the obvious. “Hang out with who?” Come September, she and Elliot would be long gone.

  “I’ll be home some weekends. And you’ll make friends at Whedon.”

  I remembered Vanessa. She had so relished describing the dining hall’s weekly rotation of offerings—from Meatball Mondays to Falafel Fridays—I’d wondered about her childhood in some Chicago suburb, if maybe her mother had served nothing but roast chicken.

  Of the two of us, Sara was more likely to arrive at school and assemble a fast group of friends. None of the kids in her veterinary science program would leave campus after class; they would crowd into one another’s dorm rooms to study heartworm prevention, methods of tranquilization.

  And I doubted she would ever drive home for the weekend. UC Davis was seven hours away.

  Sara sighed. None of this needed to be said aloud; she was leaving town and I wasn’t. “I guess my question is just . . . why? Why even bother training for this intense-sounding job? It’s not like you desperately need the money. You’re going to live at home.”

  The sun had set since the start of our call, and now the air was cold, perfumed by the rosebushes in my backyard. “Exactly,” I said, shivering.

  “Come again?”

  “I’m going to wake up in this house every day for the next four years. Just like the last four years, and the four years before that. I’m going to live with my parents. They’re going to be my professors at some point—you can’t even graduate from Whedon without taking my mom’s political responsibility seminar. Basically, if I don’t do something different this summer, nothing will ever change.”

  “College won’t be anything like high school.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  I regretted the question instantly. I knew Sara was excited for college; my best friend loved school, in theory, but had long been forced to make the best of Crescent Bay High’s meager offerings. She’d never fully forgiven the administration for accidentally putting her in ninth-grade Spanish after she’d registered for French. Madame Casey’s class already full, Sara was stuck listening to us white kids laconically butcher the language she’d been speaking at home all her life.

  Overlooking my skepticism, Sara continued. “So many people would kill to go to Whedon! Did you know this magazine just ranked it the second best liberal arts college in North America? The article raved about one Professor Iris Cox Nelson.”

  “I’m still going,” I reminded her. “But does my whole life have to revolve around college? I don’t even like school. I never really have.”

  “Shouldn’t you have thought about this, like, six months ago?”

  “I was hoping I had enough time to sort of . . .”

  “. . . become a different person?” Sara supplied.

  “Correct.”

  “So far, the new you seems really similar to the old you.”

  “Do you think I could do it? Work as a CNA?”

  “You’re asking if I think you’re capable of helping other people’s grandparents go to the bathroom?”

  “Don’t judge. You’ve logged a lot of hours dealing with literal horse shit.”

  “Horses eat oats, Audrey. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

  “There’s more to the job than the gross stuff.”

  “Okay, but do you even like the elderly?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Really?” she pressed. “Like, you have a specific interest in them?”

  “They’re just people, but with wrinkles. And I like people. I think I could do it.”

  “Of course you could do it.” Sara always withheld her confidence in me until I desperately needed it, then acted like her faith in my abilities was a given, something she shouldn’t have to assert at all. “You’ll be great. You’ll be the first-ever college freshman moonlighting at an old folks’ home.”

  “Lots of people have jobs in college,” I argued.

  “Maybe,” she said. “But not people at Whedon.”

  Crickets were chirping in the long grass of our yard. Farther down the gravel road, the neighbors’ cat sounded indistinguishable from a baby crying. Living in the country was supposed to be quiet, but it was actually deafening most of the time.

  “They’re all going to think I’m a townie, aren’t they?” I asked Sara.

  “You’re not a townie,” she assured me, avoiding the actual question. “Seth O’Malley, on the other hand . . . there’s your townie.”

  “He’s not my townie.” Alone on the porch, I could feel myself blushing.

  “He’s somebody’s townie,” she said.

  FIVE

  The back of my father’s T-shirt said PROFESSOR “NELSON” NELSON, the letters cracked and faded from too many cycles in the washing machine. Dad’s given name was Hunter, but it didn’t suit him; everyone had called him Nelson since he was a teenager. After drawing his name in the English department’s game of Secret Santa, five Christmases ago, Dad’s secretary had gifted him with the custom tee. Mom despised it—which explained why he’d hardly taken it off since she’d left.

  Neither Dad nor Rosie seemed aware of me as I entered the kitchen the next morning. My sister was leaning way back in her chair—bare ankles crossed atop the table, a lot of bagel crumbs spilled down the front of her camisole—while Dad drummed his fingers against the cover of a novel Rosie had been reading all week.

  “What did you think of that climax?” he asked her. “Didn’t you feel like your heart was going to escape your chest?”

  “Oh my God,” Rosie confirmed. “I died.”

  I decided to make my announcement all at once, no build-up. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.

  “Hey, Dad? Remember the job I was telling you guys about? At the old folks’ home?”

  He shifted toward me, a smile lingering on his face. “I think so.”

  I took a breath. “I’ve decided I want to go to night school to get certified.”

  My sister’s mouth hung slightly ajar.

  Before our mother had left for Europe, she’d instructed us to go to Dad with our requests and complaints, with all the blank permission slips we normally reserved for her signature—but lately, when it came to executive decision-making, Nelson had been painfully slow to engage.

  “That’s probably fine,” he concluded.

  I locked eyes with Rosie.
With her feet still on the table, she shrugged.

  “Really?” I couldn’t help pressing him. “You don’t want to discuss it with Mom? You don’t want to have a lengthy chat about presenting a united front?”

  “Audrey has a point,” Rosie said. Frequently, my little sister’s only contribution to a conversation was to comment on who had a point. “You guys normally opt for the lengthy chat.”

  Dad took a second to examine the linoleum, which was spangled with drops of tomato sauce. “Do you imagine Iris will mind?” he asked.

  It was a complicated question. Iris would mind anything that distracted me from the final exams and papers of my senior year. She would mind if she knew that the nursing home was likely to assign me to the night shift, compromising my REM sleep and limiting my exposure to vitamin D. She would definitely lose her cool if September arrived and I told her I didn’t want to quit, didn’t have it in me to devote myself entirely to my studies, after all.

  “Nope,” I told Dad.

  Strictly speaking, I didn’t think my mother would forbid me from signing up for night school and becoming a CNA.

  I would assure her it was just a summer job.

  * * *

  * * *

  Night school, it turned out, was exhausting.

  The classroom at Steeds County Community College was small and hot and windowless. It was always too dark to see the decades-old dust hovering in the air, but by the end of each three-hour session I could feel it coating my tongue, invading my nostrils. Everything in the room was either broken or breaking; it took our instructor forever to successfully project her PowerPoint onto the battered pull-down screen. Inevitably, the screen would snap back toward the ceiling with a loud thwap and no warning. In those moments, when all of us prospective CNAs were just sitting around, waiting to be taught, I would forget I wasn’t still at Crescent Bay High. I would check the clock on the wall, thinking it must be past three thirty and time to go home, only to remember that it was nine at night and I was here by choice.