We both laugh a little. I always thought senior year would be a relaxing one. I’d spent the past three years ensuring I’d have good grades and enough committees and volunteer experience for my college applications. But it’s been nothing but anxiety. How is anybody supposed to know what she wants to do for the rest of her life at seventeen? Oh, and the whole what-school-do-I-go-to question? What school I pick will decide who will be my new friends. When I think about the major life shift that’s going to happen in nine months, it freaks me out.

Right now the plan is to graduate from college, get my teaching license, and then find a job at an elementary school nearby. It may not seem like a big dream to some, but I like living in a small town. I like school. (As I was saying before: dork.)

So that’s the plan. For now.

Last year, I was thinking of becoming a veterinarian. There’s always the chance that college will shape me in a way that I’ll want to do something else. So despite the popular essay question, I have absolutely no idea what I’ll be doing in five years. I should be excited about all the different possibilities ahead of me, but sometimes it gets to be too much.

“I’m sorry,” Neil says as he looks down at his hands. “I came here to give you sugar, not for you to be my therapist.”

“It’s okay. I’m stressed out, too,” I confess. Although I don’t think I’ve been as good as Neil at hiding it. He’s always so sturdy and reliable, the relatively quiet center of the Gleason storm. I say relatively quiet because the quietest Gleason is still hella loud.

There’s an awkward pause. I’m not sure what else there is to say. A car honks down the street. I look at the clock on the microwave. The Dorns will be home any minute now.

“Should I go?” Neil asks after seeing me glance at the clock. He hesitantly gets up from the table.

“Probably. I don’t think they’d mind you being here, especially in the name of baked goods, but who knows what will be spread around town.” This past summer, my dad ran into a married woman at Gleason’s Grocer. They started chatting about the timeline on the house he was working on. So, of course, that fifteen-minute conversation caused the whole town to think they were having an affair.

You can never be too careful. And as much as Dad and I are members of the community, we weren’t born here and will always be considered outsiders.

“Would that be so bad?” Neil asks, so quietly I’m not sure if I heard him correctly.

Did he mean a rumor about a boy and me? Or about him and me?