Flat-Out Love - Park Jessica - Страница 27

Everyone simultaneously backed their chairs up about three feet and—amid hollers to call 911 and prayers to higher powers—Uncle Pete upended his water glass on the flames. “No harm, no foul,” he chortled. “Get it? Fowl? Turkey joke.”

Julie patted her napkin on the table with one hand and fanned the smoke away with the other. She sighed and sat back down, pinning herself once again between her cousin Damian and her mother’s sister, Erika.

“So, Julie,” Erika started, “how is school going? Do you love Boston?”

“I do love Boston. It snowed for the first time a few weeks ago and the city looks even more beautiful at night.”

“Eh, Boston,” Uncle Pete growled. “I went there once. Dirty city with a bunch of bums hanging all around the Common. It’s not that hard not to be homeless.”

Julie gripped her fork and considered the pros and cons of stabbing her uncle’s hand. Had he always been such a dumb jerk? “I’m sure my Economics of Poverty professor would disagree with you.”

“Economics of Poverty? What the hell is that? What’s to teach? If you don’t have any money, there’s no economics to talk about.” Her uncle dropped his fork and looked at Julie’s mother. “Are you actually paying money for your daughter to take a class on being poor?”

Her mother squirmed uncomfortably. “I doubt the class is just about—”

“The class is about exploring and analyzing poverty and understanding the effects of poverty and discrimination on different populations,” Julie explained through clenched teeth. “Currently we’re looking critically at different public policies that attempt to combat the cycle of poverty.”

“You want to end poverty? Get a job like the rest of us. There. Class dismissed.”

“What about the working poor? It’s a little more complicated than that,” Julie practically snorted.

“No, missy, it’s not. Now, we’re not rich or anything, but we work hard and pay our bills. You don’t need some college class to know that poor people bring it on themselves.” Pete’s face had started to turn red with anger. “And these government handouts you’re talking about? Another excuse for these lazy people to sit on their asses and collect cash.”

“So when you lost your job two years ago and tracked down my father for fifteen hundred dollars, he should have told you to suck it up and get a job, the wretched economy be damned?” Julie shook her head and stood up. “Have you even paid him back now that you’re employed again?”

“Julie, sit down!” Kate ordered.

Pete’s face was now scarlet, and the vein next to his eye throbbed disgustingly. “Your father doesn’t give a rat’s ass about that money, and you know it! He also doesn’t give a rat’s ass about—”

“Shut your mouth!” Julie hissed. “Don’t you dare.” She stepped away from the table. “While you’re busy ignoring the systemic, social, cultural, educational, and political contributions to poverty, I have a paper on ignorant, bigoted creeps to finish writing.” Julie walked angrily out of the room, up the stairs, and into her old bedroom.

She shut the door and blocked out most of the dinner-table chaos. She didn’t care in the least that the cousins and uncles and aunts were probably tearing her apart right now. They revolted her even more than the slew of tacky Thanksgiving decorations that her mother had strewn throughout the house.

She sat at her old desk and logged on to the article database that Erin had given her access to. Julie was about to write the best damn term paper on “the collapse of the housing market as it related to an increase in suburban poverty.”

So there.

Chapter 15

Matthew Watkins At the first Thanksgiving, one of the bloodiest battles ensued when it was discovered that the deliveryman forgot to bring extra duck sauce.

Finn is God is, on this enchanted evening, in love with a wonderful guy.

Julie Seagle Going to write a book called, “Binge, Screw, Loathe.” It will be about a hateful woman who travels across the U.S. visiting all-you-can-eat brothels.

Julie giggled at Finn’s reference to the musical South Pacific. She knew where he was now.

It was the Friday night of Thanksgiving break, and Julie was itching to get back to Boston and end the torture that this trip had become. She hadn’t bothered to return any of her friends’ phone calls and even had her mom tell callers that she hadn’t come home for the break. Since the scene on Thursday, she’d pretty much been holed up in her bedroom working, and except for one snarly conversation about her lousy attitude, her mother had left her alone. She had nearly finished her paper on poverty and took a break from spell-checking to go online.

 Her email held twenty-some messages from friends in Ohio wondering why she wasn’t home; there was nothing worse than missing the most badass party at Jacob O’Malley’s tonight! Whatever. Nothing from Seth, but his parents had decided that the holiday weekend in Vermont was going to be technology-free.

 She and Celeste had taken to studying at the coffeehouse after school once a week, and Seth had proved to be completely unfazed by Flat Finn’s presence. He was an all-around good guy: smart, funny, a hard worker, sweet to Julie, and patient. Between classes, homework, Seth’s job, and Julie’s long days with Celeste, it’d been hard to get together alone more than once a week, if that. So their relationship was on a slower track than normal. While most of Julie’s friends from school spent nearly every night with their boyfriends in the dorms, Julie and Seth were taking it slow. Being responsible. Smart. Methodical.

But Julie thought that was a good thing. They held hands and messed around a little in his car, and Julie wasn’t rushing into anything else. So far Seth had understood. Not that he wasn’t a good kisser, because he was. And not that Julie didn’t have raging hormones, because she did. She just wasn’t in a huge rush.

A lot of Julie’s time was eaten up by the exorbitant amount of schoolwork that she had. She was killing herself to keep up, and it was paying off with excellent grades. Even her calculus class was going better than she’d hoped, and Matt had helped her out more than a few times whenever she’d needed it. For someone so intellectually smug, he was a surprisingly good teacher, and they often studied together at night. So far she hadn’t found any opportunity to help him out with anything, of course, but one could hold out hope that there might be an occasion where Matt got stumped.

Julie wasn’t holding her breath on that one.

She stretched her arms above her head and yawned. It was only ten o’clock, but she was worn out. This trip home had hardly been energizing. She deleted a few more messages and then saw that there was one from Finn. Julie and Finn had been in touch regularly over the past few months. In fact, she checked her email more often than she liked to admit. He liked receiving her updates on Celeste, and she liked all the cool pictures from his travels.

She read his email because she was fairly confident that Finn was not going to invite her to an annoying party, make her wear a holiday outfit, or proselytize about why those in poverty deserve what they got.

Julie-

Hope your trip home is going well?  I’m in the Cook Islands. Fan-freakin’-tastic here!

Wanted to give you a heads up: I heard that Flat Finn sustained an injury the other day. Nothing major, though. Something to do with Matt, a steaming iron, and maniacal shouts of, “There are no wrinkles allowed in this house! You may be flat, but you’re not smooth enough yet for this family!” From all reports, Matt Dearest had an alarming, fortunately temporary, reaction to the traditional Thanksgiving moo shu pork. Celeste bonked him over the head with an LL Bean umbrella, and he returned to his normal state. I think she should’ve hit him again, but that’s just my opinion.