This Is Not the Real World by Anna Carey

Author:Anna Carey [Carey, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2022-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

20

Val stretched out on the checkered blanket, watching Reed try to get his chin-length black hair into a top knot. It didn’t matter that Reed had come out sophomore year, and that he’d broke up with his first boyfriend just three months ago, and that I’d told Val those facts at least twice. She was still staring at him like he was the TCBY toppings bar.

“Best sandcastle wins,” Kipps said, kneeling in front of the blanket. We hadn’t planned on going to Maple Cove after school, so he was in his jeans, sand collecting in the folds of the denim.

“Best? What does that even mean, best?” Reed scrunched his nose at him. “That’s not quantifiable.”

“They’re going to quantify it. With a vote.” Kipps gestured at me and Val.

“She’s your girlfriend.” Reed stared at Kipps in disbelief. “And they’ve both just met me, like, an hour ago. You’re stacking the deck.”

“I am not.” Kipps made little trowels with his hands, dragging his fingers along the sand to form a moat. Reed was still staring at him, annoyed, then seemed to realize he was wasting time. Every second he argued was a second Kipps pulled ahead.

“I can be impartial,” I said as Reed begrudgingly scooped mounds of wet sand from the water line. He flashed me a smile and then rolled his eyes, as if he didn’t quite believe me.

It was fun, not being the only one giving Kipps shit. Reed was nineteen but somehow seemed much older, accepting Kipps’s brotherly competitiveness with a kind of good-humored resignation. The “best” sandcastle competition had followed the “tallest” sandcastle competition, which Reed had easily won. He’d won a handstand competition too, and though I’d never say it to Kipps, I got the sense Reed was good at most things he tried.

He’d applied for a prestigious virtual university based in England on a lark, after watching a ten-hour documentary on the country and falling in love with the Thames and the Premier League and fish-and-chips and deciding he had to move there one day. He got in (of course) and then started playing soccer. He was the one who loved it, practicing every night in their massive backyard, even though Kipps was the one playing a varsity striker on the show.

I wasn’t sure when or how Kipps had told Reed about our plan for the night of the Fall Formal, but he had, and I’d decided it would be less obvious if he and Val went as friends. It turns out it was maybe kind of weird for a college student who’d been in a grand total of eleven episodes to show up at a high school dance unannounced.

“How am I doing?” Reed glanced up at me. He’d only managed to make a mound of dirt so far, but Kipps already had a moat and what looked like several small buildings.

“I think you might have this,” I lied. “I’m rooting for you.”

“Definitely,” Val added. She pressed her chin into her hands, watching as Reed dug all the way down to water, using it to shape the thing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.