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That was Callie’s voice behind me, and I had been almost shouting. Axel had definitely outplayed me this time.
He melted away grinning as I turned to Callie, my mouth working with no available explanations.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Callie said. “It’s no good for us to go turning on one another because we don’t quite see eye-to-eye. Was that your last exam? I just got out of mine, I think Tamara’s wrapping hers up too—they started late or something. Do you want to go have a celebratory drink somewhere? No men invited, I promise.”
“My dad’s coming to pick me up,” I told her.
“Oh, well we could go out later. I’m off work for the day so any time is good for me.”
I stared at Callie, and for a second I saw the present situation the way other people might see it, the ones who were always trying to put people together into groups with sharp edges to cut one another on. It was probably a no-brainer: the three of us getting tangled up with these three men from the same social group, right before our high school formal event too. We were probably supposed to find a new way of relating with one another at the event, all glittered up, and then go on to… what? We were clearly not compatible, and while Callie had Lucas in her life, I didn’t think she would have any great incentive to work on her relationship with the third wheel of her friendship group anyway.
I didn’t even have to see her any more, I realised. I could walk away now and disappear into my new life and never have to worry about any of this any more. Stop going into all the school group chats. Go out to clubs or take up more hobbies, meet new people that way. Anything would be better than to repeat the same pattern of drama my other friends seemed to be caught up in. I always thought I’d been different, forging my own way… but perhaps I was just as caught up in the high school trope machine as any of the rest of them, my archetype the delusional belief that I didn’t have an archetype.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll… I’ll let you know if I’m free some time, okay?”
I walked off before she could get herself together enough to argue, breaking into a jog as I saw Dad’s car arriving. He was only a few minutes late, basically on time for him. He’d been weirdly functional lately and I hadn’t had the courage to ask about it.
“How good do you feel about the end of your high school life, Aileen?” he asked as I pulled the car door shut behind me.
“It’s not entirely over until the formal and graduation day have been and done,” I pointed out. “That’s when I can basically move on, start a new life and never have to think about this one again.” I saw Callie standing by her car as Dad pulled away. It was impossible to miss her even if you were trying, alongside that garish custom convertible. Lucas had the thing painted the most awful colour he could think of just to make sure she remembered how much he owned her, I’d bet. Well, that wasn’t for me. Good for Callie and all, because with Lucas by her side she’d be able to achieve all her dreams with a tenth of the effort she’d need otherwise, but there was no way I’d ever become comfortable with some guy buying me expensive things he had chosen for me.
My mouth started going a bit ahead of my thoughts. “Actually, I’m not sure I’ll go to the formal at all.”
“Because of Axel?”
“Mostly, yeah.” Dad just grunted. “I guess now I don’t have so many places other than home to be for the moment, you’ll let me know if Axel is coming by.”
“He’d have to let me know about it first, he was real hot for a while, came by almost every day one week, but this past week… nothing.” One corner of his mouth turned up. “Still paying me, though. Now I ask you, what sort of world is this where a kid of eighteen can make enough money to balance a whole family’s books?”
If there was some hurt there, any clue that Dad was working over the thought that a ‘kid of eighteen’ not having the time for him was not exactly an endorsement of his character, it had been easy enough to miss.
“Anyway. If the formal isn’t on the cards, what’s next for the great Aileen Anderson?”
I’d already told him plenty of times before: I needed to get myself a job. But if I brought that up again, he was just going to react how he had the last time and tell me he was so sorry.
I spoke a different thought into being. “Dad, do you think I could actually go to university?”
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “Would you get an offer?”
“I guess I’ll find out soon enough. I did submit an application, but I wasn’t planning on accepting. Just something we were told we might want to do. Covering any base.”
“What did you put down for?” Dad asked. I was so flustered by actual interest I struggled to answer at first.
“Law. I hear it’s pretty hard, but I just…” I shrugged. “I really liked the idea of becoming a lawyer some day, when I was deciding what I’d apply for. Getting to talk for a living. I’ve always felt like I wasn’t too bad at that.”
“I think it’d be great, Ailie. I’d tell everyone I met about my daughter the big-shot lawyer for sure.” He elbowed me when we stopped at a traffic light. “You look like you were expecting me to bite your head off… I thought you were supposed to be some super-persuasive talker, to be a lawyer?”
“I just figured you were going to make a fuss, be obnoxious about it or something. Like you’re always bitching about Marcia and Elizabeth being so successful. And Elizabeth… well, you know.”
“I suppose I am.” He ducked his head, which made for an awkward acceleration as the light changed. “I guess, what I think is, my girl can do whatever she wants. Absolutely. And maybe she should do something that really challenges her. Did you know Matt Ehrlich is going to go on and study pharmacy?”
“I hadn’t heard that.” I wasn’t sure how Dad had heard it, either. “I always assumed he was going to go into computers: programming, hardware, whatever.” After recent experiences, maybe Matt was just ready for a break from computers.
“His mother says he thought for a long time about the best course of action, and combining an enthusiasm for the scientific and medical side of wellness with a less stressful discipline than pure medicine seemed to fit the bill.” Matt’s mother: that made some sense at least. She could be impossibly mopey but most parents fired up when asked about their kids. “I don’t know, Aileen. Really made me think whether I’ve encouraged you enough to follow whatever your dreams might be. It’s not the same world as the one I grew up in. Every
one’s got degrees now.”
“I don’t know if I’ve got what it takes to have a degree,” I admitted.
