AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Landon walks over to check the dishwasher like I asked, then he leans against the counter right by me, folding his arms over his chest and watching me rinse off dishes.
“Can I ask you a question?” I ask him, turning on the water so I can rinse the first dish.
“What’s my favorite Disney character?” he mocks.
I roll my eyes, smiling faintly. “No. A serious question.”
He nods, watching me. “Sure.”
“What are your plans for after high school?”
“My plans?”
I nod, looking over at him. “Are you planning to stick around here, or…?”
A guarded look slides into place, one I haven’t seen in a few days—and to be honest, I hadn’t missed. “Why?”
I shrug. “Just wondering.” Since he seems reluctant to answer, I decide to share my plans first. “I’m planning to go to college. It doesn’t seem like you’re that into school, so I wasn’t sure if you were, or…?”
He glances toward the living room. “My dad wants me to. Baymont basically requires it. Gotta send us off to the next stage of becoming a master of the universe, after all.”
I smile at his faintly mocking tone. “Sure. But it’s not what you want?”
He shrugs. “Considering our species is on the fast track to extinction, just doesn’t feel like four more years of school is the best use of my time.”
I snort. “Yeah, we’re not doing so great, are we? You could always be a climate scientist. That would be exceptionally hot.”
He smirks. “You wanna nerd me up?”
I nod. “Absolutely. Change nothing physically. Just study up and then launch a ‘hot nerd’ social media empire. Film yourself working out while you give relatable lectures and sell eco-friendly merch like sweat towels made from recycled plastic bottles. People will watch the videos to ogle you, then later, when they’re about to throw something recyclable in the trash, they’ll be like, ‘wait. Didn’t LandonLifts say something about this?’ Before you know it, they’ll be composting and installing solar panels.”
He shakes his head, smiling. “Sneak attack.”
“Exactly. They’ll never see it coming. They’ll get educated even if they didn’t want to, all because they wanted to drool over some hot guy.”
“Sounds like you got it all worked out.”
Nodding, I say, “I can come on part-time as your brand strategist. I think it’s a good plan.”
He nods. “It is. Probably not gonna happen, but a good plan nonetheless.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t you want to save the world?”
“Not particularly.” He nods at me. “What about you? What’s your plan?”
“Mine is much less focused on aesthetics and branding, but obviously, I have a pretty strong drive to make a difference. I plan to go into education, so I obviously don’t agree that it’s a waste of time.”
“After you go to school for a million years, you want toworkat a school?”
“Probably at the college level, but yeah. I think educating people and helping open up their worldview is super important. College is when a lot of that tends to happen. Before college, most people aren’t really in school to learn, and after college, the majority of people get too busy or too distracted to keep feeding their minds. If you don’t use it, you lose it, so that tends to be the way it goes. I want to be there when people are at their hungriest, offering up a delicious plate of brain food for their eager consumption.”
Landon smirks. “You’re such a fucking nerd.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ll be good at that, though. Professor Johansson,” he teases.
I sigh, smiling. “Sounds good, doesn’t it?”
