prettydamngood | (no subject)

(no subject)

Steve loves the beach. He loves it in all weathers but he particularly loves it when it's hot, when he can spend the whole day there, with a magazine, with soda. He spends most of the day sprawled out on a blanket on the sand reading or napping but, when he wakes up, he feels hot and sweaty, hectic, and it's definitely time for a swim. He leaves the majority of his stuff on the sand and he plunges into the water, submerging and swimming until he starts to feel comfortable in his skin again.

He wades out, shaking water from his hair as he goes, only realising after he's done it that that's potentially antisocial. He pushes the heavy weight of his hair back from his face and grins at whoever he just splashed.

"Shit, man," he says. "Sorry."

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"Yeah, me too," says Steve, nodding, his wet hair tumbling across his forehead again. "In this weather, it's pretty much all I do when I'm not at work. At least, that's what it feels like."

"I-" I stopped, realizing I was finally getting a chance to be a kid. Like I was meant to. Steve was talking about work and I was going to tell him what I did when I wasn't at the beach and it was a nice thing to realize none of it was particularly serious. None of it was worrying about Peter. I still thought of Charlie and Sal all the time, but even that was a little different.

"I've been riding bikes a lot," I said. "With Eddie and Beverly. Except she's dating this guy named Peter, so sometimes it's just me and Eddie. And I have to do homework to catch up before school starts."

I sounded like I belonged here.

"I keep thinking about school," admits Steve. "I was pretty close to graduating back home, and part of me just...doesn't want to bother, but a friend of mine thinks I ought to get my GED." He shrugs. "I don't know. Don't need it to work here."

"I think it's important," I said, although I didn't know if Steve was asking my opinion. Maybe it wasn't necessary to work here, but given what I had been told from staff and other kids, given what I had read in the library, I thought education was important because it exposed you to new ideas.

"I think it's important to always be learning," I clarified. "And I think education can help us do that by explaining things we might not know otherwise, which leads us to learning other, bigger ideas." I paused. "What's a GED?"

"General Education Diploma," says Steve, looking down at his hands. "Gives me a qualification without me having to go back to school and, like. Actually graduate. I'm not sure that I could stand doing that here." He winces. "I was never that good at school. Back home, I was applying to college, but only because I felt like I was supposed to."

College was the school that came after high school, I had learned that much here. I also knew it wasn't required of people, but that high school was, even if I wasn't sure why they couldn't force people to go into both. Mostly it had something to do with age, I expected, and I hadn't been to high school yet, but I thought I would want to go to college. And I had been told in order to go to college, you had to finish high school first.

"I think you should do it," I said. "Because maybe three years from now you find out college offers classes in something you really want to do, but you can't go because you didn't graduate. And maybe you don't, but I think it's worth it to have. Just in case."

"Yeah, well, maybe," says Steve, with a ghost of a smile. "If two guys I trust say I should, plus my best friend, maybe I ought to just go ahead and do it."

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