“Why not?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation going instead of letting thedemoted to back seat third wheelfeeling wash over me.
“Because school doesn’t matter.”
Again, what does Kristen see in him?
“Yeah, it does,” I say, leaning forward.
“In the real world, no one cares what grade you got in history or how well you graphed an equation. Your success doesn’thinge on metaphors and chemical reactions—unless that’s what you want to do,” he says, turning to look at me.
“In the real world, without a primary education, you wouldn’t know anything.”
“Wrong. Someone might not have book smarts, but they’d have street smarts. They’d have real-world experience,” he argues.
“And what ‘real-world’ experience doyouhave?” I ask.
Vincent lives around the block from me in a neighborhood named Colony Grove. His mom is an architect, and his dad is a chemistry professor at Kent State.
“Are you guys really going to argue about school when wejustleft there?” Kristen asks.
“Babe, we aren’t arguing. We are debating.”
“Still,” Kristen says, “talk about something fun.”
Kristen and Vincent start going over some of their publicity plans for the skate show while I scratch Skittles behind the ear and watch the farm pass us by.
The farthest acre of the farm has hemlock and some old pine trees that have been in the Haverford family for generations. Mr. Haverford rarely uses these trees. For Kristen and me, they formed our own magical woods where we could reenact fairy tales and quests. Kristen parks the cart, and we start walking among them, Skittles weaving in between us, sniffing the ground. Kristen and I used to climb the trees, saying our problems couldn’t follow us up so high.
I wonder if Vincent can climb.
Kristen sits down at the base of a tree and pulls a smallbox out of her pocket. Vincent drops into a divot in some roots beside her.
“What are those?” I ask upon noticing a lot of weeds in the shade next to them.
“Exactly what you think they are,” she says, unfazed, as she pops her little case open.
She passes a Backwood to Vincent and snaps her fingers when Skittles tries to bite one of the leaves of her weed plant. So, maybe Vincent’s accusations were grossly exaggerated, but they weren’t completely false.
When? Why? How?
I stare in disbelief as Kristen takes a hit, opening her mouth and sucking the smoke back in through her nose. She smiles at me, exhaling a gray cloud in front of her face. She passes it back to Vincent, and I look around. Two or three young plants are nestled at the base of a few more trees.
“Do you want to try?” she asks, like this is completely normal. As if when my cousin Jeremiah offered us a hit of his blunt at my Momma’s cookout three years ago, we didn’t say smoking seemed stupid.
Who is she?
“Um, I’m good. I think I’m actually gonna head back,” I admit.
I feel small, and I hate feeling small. I don’t belong here.
“Don’t be such a prude,” Vincent mumbles.
“Shut up, don’t be mean,” Kristen snaps, swatting his shoulder. Then to me, she softens. “Clarity, don’t go.”
“It’s okay, really. I have homework—” I stop short, flinching internally when I hear myself sounding exactly like a prude.
“Clarity, look, I’m sorry. I should have told you—”
“Kristen,” I say, scrunching up my nose when Vincent exhales in my direction. It smells like a skunk, like a musky, spicy skunk. The secondhand smoke alone stings my nostrils. “I’m just gonna head home. We can hang out some other time.”