“Now how can you say that?”
I couldn’t express it right, not without Jane’s help. Those turns of phrases she used that gave elegance to even the unpleasant things. She would say I was wanting in singularity. Staunchly average. Spectacularly … insufficient, in situations like this. In the face of all caps ACHIEVEMENT. Because what if you didn’t have it in you? What if, deep down, you were just one of those background lions?
“Everyone’s good at something,” Mrs. Wentworth said after observing me for a moment. “You’ll find your niche. And you know a good place to find it?”
“College?”
“See, you’re a good guesser. There’s something already.”
I smiled a little.
“I think you’re a perfect candidate for college. Don’t think I’m trying to dissuade you here. I just want to know why you want to continue your education.”
“My parents,” I said. She could’ve just asked that straight off the blocks.
“To get away from them?”
“To keep them from murdering me.”
A particularly fierce twitch seized her lips. “I want you to get involved,” she said, sticking the essay back into my file. It was the only thing in there, save the crumpled postcard from Reeding University I showed her at our first meeting. “And give the personal statement another try. Heck, write the whole life’s story while you’re at it.”
I made another face.
“All right, all right, I won’t get ahead of myself. Have a good day, Devon.”
“You, too,” I said, and left the office.
I walked down to the football field after our session and thought about what Mrs. Wentworth had said. Mostly I thought about the essay—a page from the story of my life. I imagined writing about myself in the Peace Corps: a philanthropic Devon, traversing jungles and deserts, filled to the brim with the chance to self-sacrifice for the good of others. That’s the kind of shit those college people wanted—some spectacular tale of unflinching originality, sandwiched between your grade point average and your ACT scores. How many volunteer hours have you performed, and tell us exactly when your stunning triumph over adversity occurred.
I felt like I had never done anything. I had never suffered. I had never triumphed. I was a middle-class kid from the burbs who had managed to be rather unspectacular for the last seventeen years. A triumph over mediocrity—that was what I needed.
“Did college club get out early?”
Wherever I was, Foster had a way of finding me.
Until this past summer, he had been the kind of cousin that you see only every fourth Christmas or so. His family lived in California, we were in Florida, and that had been perfectly fine, a perfectly acceptable dose of Foster. But things had changed, and the new dosage of Foster in my life was pretty hard to tolerate at times.
He threw his bag to the ground and plunked down next to me on the bleachers.
“Did moron club get out early?” I said.
He looked at me for a moment. Then he said, “I see what you did there. I said ‘college’ for your club, and you said ‘moron’ for my club. Clever.”
I looked out at the field, partially to avoid having to reply to that, and partially because practice was just starting and this was my favorite part. All the players would circle up on the field to do calisthenics. I liked the jumping jacks best, the way they’d chant each count aloud together. It was hard to see faces when everyone had their equipment on, but I could spot Cas Kincaid from anywhere. His jumping jacks were always half-assed.
Foster didn’t like Cas, but I didn’t like Foster. I probably should’ve felt bad for him, but Foster had this inability to do or say anything remotely human. Sometimes I thought the earth could rip open and swallow our house up whole and he would just stand there on the sidewalk changing tracks on his iPod.
“What’d you learn in college club?”
“Stop calling it college club.”