So B. It by Sarah Weeks

Author:Sarah Weeks
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2004-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

She was tall and thin, and that day we met Georgia had on a long yellow dress with blue flowers on it. She told me she was eighteen years old and had lived in Wheatland, Wyoming, her whole life, but that she was on her way to New York City, to go to college. New York City is a long way from Wheatland, Wyoming, but it’s only two and a half hours from Liberty. We would be riding on the same bus for the next two days. Once again I had been found.

“How did you know about the Doublemint?” I asked her as we showed our tickets and got on the bus together.

Georgia had insisted on buying me a Coke to help settle my stomach, and I was feeling much better.

“My mom always gave me Doublemint after an urp,” she said. “Yours too?”

“My mother has a bum brain, so she doesn’t really take care of me. Bernie is the one who gives me gum,” I said, determined to get off on a truthful first step with Georgia.

“Is Bernie your dad?” she asked,

“No. She’s my neighbor, but she sort of lives with us. She’s family. There are just the three of us, plus maybe I have a grandmother but I don’t know for sure yet. It’s kind of a long story,” I said.

Georgia was the opposite of Alice. She was an asker, not a teller. I answered a million questions during the two days Georgia and I traveled together. Like I’d told her, mine was a long story, but apparently Georgia wanted to hear it, and I guess I wanted to tell it because I didn’t hold much of anything back.

“Want a Violet?” Georgia asked at one point during a lull in the conversation. She rummaged in her purse, then held out a roll of candies wrapped in silver foil.

I took a candy but spit it out after only a second.

“Tastes like perfume,” I said.

“Uh-huh. Makes your breath fresh, see?” She blew a little stream of warm flowery air in my direction.

“Yep,” I said.

“It’s very important to have good breath,” she said.

I wanted to ask her if mine was okay, but I felt too shy. Instead I slipped the Violet back in my mouth and sucked on it just in case.

“Do you think you’ll go to college when you get out of high school?” Georgia asked me.

I hadn’t told her yet about me not going to school.

“Bernie teaches me,” I said, “so I won’t go to high school. I guess she’ll teach me college, too.”

“I don’t think one person can teach college—it takes tons of professors to do it,” Georgia said. “Besides, what if you want to study something Bernie doesn’t know about?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Like home ec. That’s what my mom majored in at college,” Georgia said.

“What’s home ec?” I asked.

“Home economics. Back then they taught that kind of stuff to women, you know, cooking and sewing and how to be a perfect mother.”

“Is she a perfect mother?” I asked.

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