Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [54]
“Let me think. You travel a lot. And … let me see … well… you really haven’t provided any other clues.”
“Go with your gut.”
“My gut. Okay. My gut tells me you’re doing something involving psychology and writing. Some sort of research, maybe? Involving travel… hmmm… You’re studying … I don’t know… demographical differences in narratives?”
[Pause.]
“Am I close?”
[Long sigh.] “Marcus.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Seriously, Jessica. What?”
“Oh, come on, you know what.”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“If I say something that makes me sound like an asshole, I can blame it on Byron, right?”
“Sure.”
“When you guessed about my job … No, I don’t need to say this to you. It’s nothing.”
“I swear I’ve never heard someone speak so much of nothing when she obviously means something.”
[Pause.]
“Have you Googled me?”
[Pause.]
“No. I haven’t Googled you.”
“Not once?”
“No.”
[Pause.]
“I choose to believe you.”
“You should. Because I’m telling you the truth.”
[Pause.]
“Have you Googled me?”
[Sigh.] “I confess that I have, though not recently. I quit cold turkey because it was always so … anticlimactic. You’re, like, one of the last un-Googleable people left on the planet. Or you were when I last tried it. Anyway, getting back to your guesses, you could make a killing as a mind-reader.”
“I didn’t read your mind.”
“I know that! But you did what any fake psychic does. You used what little you did know about me from what I had said throughout our conversation, and you made educated guesses based on those clues. Then you carefully watched my body language in response to those clues and made more educated guesses. It’s all Professor Marvel, Wizard of Oz bullshit.”
“So you don’t believe in clairvoyance. You don’t believe that anyone can accurately predict events in the future.”
“No reputable scientific study has ever supported the idea of a sixth sense.”
“Hmmm.”
“Hmm, what?”
“So I take it that my guess was pretty close, huh?”
“I’m the cofounder and head of development for the Do Better High School Storytellers project, a nonprofit creative writing and mentoring program.”
“Jessica!”
“What?”
“That’s amazing!”
“What? My job? Or your guess?”
“I was referring to your job. Though my guess wasn’t that far off, was it? No wonder you thought I Googled you.”
“Though you missed the part about how I’m the one who works with disaffected youth, not Hope.”
“Are you annoyed about that?”
“About what?”
“The assumption that Hope was the one working with disaffected youth and not you.”
“Why would you ask that?”
“The furrow in your forehead. The tone in your voice.”
“I’m MMS-ing, okay?”
“Mmmmmm?”
“Mid-menstrual-syndrome-ing. And what? You don’t think there’s enough disaffected youth for the both of us? There’s plenty, I assure you.”
“By all means, assure me. Tell me more, because I’m already very impressed.”
“Oh, don’t be too impressed. The whole thing wouldn’t even exist without Cinthia’s Do Better seed money.”
“Jessica, stop being so modest. That’s just an underhanded form of apology. I’ll have to charge you a dollar if you do it again.”
“Well, it’s true! Without Cinthia’s money, the idea wouldn’t have survived long enough to even qualify as an epic fail.”
“Did Cinthia conceptualize this program?”
“Uh, no. I did.”
“Did Cinthia strategize? Organize? Put those concepts into practice? Make them a reality?”
“No, no, no, and no. That was all me, too. With a team, of course.”
“A team assembled by who?”
“Okay. You’ve made your point. I am a genius! And you don’t even know what I actually do yet.”
“You’re right. Tell me.”
“Basically, I travel to high schools all over the country that have applied for and won High School Storytellers grants. Priority goes to schools that have lost funding for arts programs because of budget cuts.”
“There are far too many to choose from, I’m sure.”
“Hundreds. And we’re still pretty small; there’s only a half-dozen of us mentors so far. We work with the students a few times a week for about ten weeks—a marking period. Between us all, we can only hit about twenty schools a year.”
“Still,