The Education of Hailey Kendrick - Eileen Cook [5]
“You say that like he’s the best thing since sliced bread,” I said with a laugh.
Kelsie turned so she was facing me. “You do realize how amazing he is, right? He’s hot, he’s crazy for you, his parents are famous. He is the best thing since sliced bread. I bet when sliced bread talks about something cool, it uses him as the example.”
I paused. I knew Tristan was a great guy. I just wished everyone didn’t think he was so wonderful all the time. People at school act like he’s perfect. Sure he’s good-looking, funny, sweet, his parents are famous, and he has money, but he always does this annoying thing where he cracks his knuckles. Not only does it sound gross, but it could also cause arthritis. And he’s nice, but almost too nice sometimes. I couldn’t discuss anything with him, because he would just agree with me and tell me to do whatever I wanted. When we went out to eat, he left it up to me, saying he didn’t care if we went for sushi or pizza. At the movie theater I always chose what we saw. He didn’t get riled up about politics, or movies, or sports. He was so calm about everything that he made Gandhi look like he’d had an anger management problem. It wasn’t that I wanted him to lose it and start screaming, but it would have been nice if once in a while he had an opinion. If I wanted a heavy discussion, I had it with Joel, who could be counted on to have an opinion about everything. However, it’s hard to explain that your boyfriend can be too agreeable. No one feels sorry for you.
“You’re right. Tristan is definitely bread-worthy, and I have every confidence that you will find your own bread man who will love you exactly as you are,” I assured Kelsie.
Kelsie smiled at me. “There are KitKats in my bottom desk drawer.”
I gave a whoop and crawled forward so I could reach her desk. Buried under a stack of folders was a package of candy bars. I tossed one to her before opening my own. “I thought you said you gave your stash away,” I said.
“I did. This is different. It’s an emergency fund,” Kelsie explained, biting into her candy bar.
“This counts as an emergency? You’ve got a pretty low threshold.”
“I’m an Evesham girl. Anytime I want something, it counts as an emergency,” Kelsie said with a smirk. “For someone who is so keen on emergency planning, I would think you would know this.”
“Well, with the crisis averted, are you ready to get back to the presentation?”
Kelsie threw herself back down onto the bed. “I hate this project. Why are they trying to ruin our senior year? We’re under a lot of stress, and stuff like this could drive us over the edge. They’re crushing our college dreams. I think senior year should be pass/fail.”
“You’re not going to college,” I pointed out. “You’re doing an acting class through the art center next year. How stressed can you be?”
“That’s not the point. I could be going to college, and maybe I would have, if the whole thing wasn’t so stressful. Not everyone is like you, Miss Ivy League.”
“I’m not in yet.”
Kelsie waved away my stress about getting into Yale (top choice) and Harvard (close second) with a flip of her hand. “You’ll get in. You’re the kind of student that admissions counselors have wet dreams over. You’re spending your summer curing lepers, for crying out loud.”
“They’re not lepers. I keep telling you it’s a study for people with hepatitis. The pharmaceutical company my dad works for is doing a summer training program for doctors.”
“Whatever. If you ask me, the question is, why do you want to go to college at all? It sounds like four more years of the same thing as here—boring classes, homework, and lots of brick buildings.”
“My mom went to Yale, and I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“If I were you, I would swing by the college bookstore, pick up a sweatshirt, and then join Tristan.”
Tristan wasn’t planning to go to college yet either. He said he was taking a gap year to think about what he wanted to do next, but I wasn’t sure if he would ever go. He seemed perfectly