“He says he wrote his father that he had a good job, and they could forget about him. Then he broke into that cellar on a dare or for kicks.
Hilda looks at me—me, age fourteen—as if I might actually know, and it’s kind of unnerving. Everyone I know, their life goes along in set periods: grade school, junior high, high school, college, and maybe getting married. They don’t really have to think what comes next.
I say cautiously, “My pop says a kid’s got to go to college now to get anywhere. Maybe he ought to go back to school.”
“You’re so right, Grandpa,” she says, and I would have felt silly, but she has a nice friendly laugh. “I wish I could persuade him to go back. But it’s not so easy. I guess he’s got to get a job and go to night school, if they’ll accept him. He won’t ask his father for money.”
“You two got my life figured out?” Tom has come up behind us while we were lying in the sand on our stomachs. “I just hope that sour grape at the filling station gives me a good recommendation so I can get another job. The way he watches his cash register, you’d think I was Al Capone.”
We talk a bit, and then Hilda gets up and says she’s going to the ladies’ room. She doesn’t act coy about it, the way most girls do when they’re sitting with guys. She just leaves.
“How do you like Hilda?” Tom asks, and again I’m sort of surprised, because he acts like he really wants my opinion.
“Yeah.” Tom suddenly glowers, as if I’d said I _didn’t_ like her. “I don’t know why she wastes her time on me. I’ll never be any use to her. When her family hears about me, I’ll get the boot.”
“I could ask my pop. You know, I told you he’s a lawyer. Maybe he’d know how you go about getting back into college or getting a job or something.”
Tom laughs, an unamused bark. “Maybe he’ll tell you to quit hanging around with jerks that get in trouble with the cops.”
This is a point, all right. Come to think, I don’t know why I said I’d ask Pop anyway. I usually make a point of not letting his nose into my personal affairs, because I figure he’ll just start bossing me around. However, I certainly can’t do anything for Tom on my own.
I say, “I’ll chance it. The worst he ever does is talk. One time he made a federal case out of me buying a Belafonte record he didn’t like. Another time playing ball I cracked a window in a guy’s Cadillac, and Pop acted like he was going to sue the guy for owning a Cadillac. You just never know.”