Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [119]
They all murmured in doubt.
“You,” I said, pointing to Will. “You drove here in the Mini Cooper your parents bought for your seventeenth birthday, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the odds of dying in a car accident are 1 in 18,000.”
“You,” I said, turning to Maddie. “You fake and bake, right?”
“Sure.”
“The odds of getting skin cancer are 1 in 200.”
“I'm not getting skin cancer,” she said.
“Fine. Whatever. Have faith in your disease-resistant melanin,” I said, pursing my lips like a priss. “I'm just trying to make a point.”
They all grumbled.
“Do you know that last September, a city-sized asteroid missed our planet by a distance only four times that of Earth to the Moon? In galactic terms, that's nothing!” I pinched my thumb and forefinger together to illustrate. “Nothing! Life as we know it! Over in an instant!”
They were all slyly but not shyly texting one another about my mental instability.
“All I'm saying is that you can't hide from certain death, so you shouldn't hide from uncertain life.” It sounded profound as I said it. But hindsight is not as kind. I deserved the inevitable backlash.
“Why do we need to know this?” asked Geoff. “Teach the test!”
“The test.” This, of course, is the SAT I, the be-all and end-all of standardized tests designed to assess verbal, math, and, most recently, writing skills. Despite UCLA's best efforts to devalue its importance, it is still the key factor in separating the Ivy League get ins and did nots.
“Yes,” whined Will and Maddie. “Teach the test!”
And it became a chant. “Teach the test! Teach the test!”
These damn kiddies never appreciate a valuable life lesson when they hear one.
I said earlier that I'm just so over high school. I would venture to guess that this is one of the reasons I'm having trouble empathizing with the kiddies' angst. Another reason I'm having trouble is because I don't like people very much. (The Storytelling Project did little to change that.)
In choosing to be a Psychology major, I decided to learn for the joy of learning for the first time in my life. I'd always been fascinated by human nature. What makes us act the way we do? Why do we make the same mistakes over and over? But I guess my interest is purely theoretical. I'm a Psychology major who has no desire to work with people. This was poor planning on my part, I suppose. My parents definitely think so. But choosing passion over practicality seemed so honorable when I was a first-year student and graduation seemed so very, very far away . . .
But now, a semester away from unemployment, I realize how much better off those Engineering students really are. Sure, they're boring conversationalists that make you want to kill yourself because every story begins, “The other day? In the lab?” But people become a whole helluva lot more interesting when they're pulling down six figures, don't they? If I'm going to drag my friends out to my cardboard box, the pressure's on to provide some pretty goddamned sparkling conversation once they get there. And even with all my noble knowledge for knowledge's sake, I'm not sure I can.
At the very least, I'll be able to burn my diploma to keep me warm.
the nineteenth
Just in case you've been wondering why I haven't written about my social life, it's because I don't have one. This has not gone unnoticed by my parents. And when I say my parents I really mean my mother.
“So, Jessie, when are we going to meet this boyfriend of yours?” she asked yesterday.
Did I mention that I haven't told my parents about my breakup?
“Uh, never,” I said.
“What do you mean never? We were so looking forward to making his acquaintance!”
I'd made the mistake of telling my mom that Kieran went to prep school in Greenwich, Connecticut. That was all she needed to hear. The cachet of that particular zip code more than made up for the fact that he was a Philosophy major, which topped even Psychology on the list of slacker liberal artsy majors. I'm sure she'd been thinking that if I married right, and by “right” I really