“Have you ever been here before?” he asked.
She raised her eyebrows. “To the Waffle Shack? I think everyone has been here.”
“Right.” He felt stupid. He knew the assumption he’d made, and that it was rude. Just because she didn’t associate with his circle of friends, that didn’t mean she didn’t have her own group to do things like go out to lunch with. Just because she wasn’t with anyone right now, that didn’t mean she’d come to the game alone.
They ordered waffles and sodas and settled in to wait. “So,” Rob said. “You’re taking chemistry.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re on the advanced track, then?”
She nodded. “And you are too?”
“Yeah. I wonder why we don’t share any classes?”
She shrugged. “Do you have to take gym? Someone told me that if you’re in a sport, you can opt out.”
“That’s right,” he agreed.
“So that’s probably got a lot to do with it,” she said. “My schedule is built around gym.”
That made sense. Rob knew that gym class was only offered fourth and fifth period. Whichever one you took, you were likely to have your lunch on the other one. Because he was an athlete, he had more freedom in his schedule. He’d chosen the first period of the day as his free hour, and he got by on granola bars and energy drinks until three o’clock, when he usually ate his first meal of the day before going to practice.
“So if you’re on the advanced track, you must be thinking about college next year,” he said.
She nodded. “That’s the plan, anyway,” she said. “I’ll be the first one in my family to go.”
“Wow, really?”
“Yeah,” she said. “My parents run our family restaurant together, and my older brother Carlo—do you know Carlo? He was three years ahead of us in school.”
“I think so,” Rob said. “He played on the soccer team, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. He wasn’t very good or anything, but he liked it. Anyway, he didn’t do that well in school—which is fine, he’s not an academic and no one expected him to be—so when he graduated, he became a line cook for my parents. He’s the head cook now,” she said, with a note of pride.
He grinned. “You don’t want to work in the restaurant, though?”
“No, I never did,” she said. “It’s the reason I study so hard. My parents can probably afford to send me to state school, but if I earn a scholarship, I can go anywhere I want to, and then the future will really open up for me.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a plan.”
“What about you?” Thea asked. “Do you have a plan?”
Rob nodded. “Get out of Iowa,” he said. “That’s the plan.”
“You don’t like Iowa?”
Rob hesitated. How much did he actually want to open up to this girl? He was enjoying the conversation, but there were things he didn’t talk about. Things he didn’t talk to anyone about. Was he really going to relax that policy for someone he had only just met?
No. She didn’t need to know details. She was just being polite. This was a surface level conversation—they weren’t going deep here.
“Iowa is fine,” Rob said. “It’s just not the place I want to be for the rest of my life. Do you know what I mean?”
“I think I do,” Thea said. “Leaving Deer Ridge isn’t a priority for me, but I do want my life to be bigger than this town. I guess I’d like to go to college somewhere else, even if I do eventually come back.”
“Hence the hard work,” Rob said.
“Hence my need to pass this chem test. We were going to talk about covalent bonds, not my plans for college.”