Sam had proved his mother wrong.

And then had proved her right.

But before all that, Sam had sat on his bed with a green Mead notebook and said, “Come on, Lincoln, you have to pick a major.”

“You pick my major,” he’d said. He’d laid his head on her lap and kept reading a paperback, something with swords and goblin queens.

“Lincoln. Seriously. You have to declare a major. It’s required. Let’s focus here. What do you want to do with your life?”

He set down his paperback and smiled at her until she smiled back at him. “You,” he said, touching his thumb to her chin.

“You can’t major in me.”

He turned back to his book. “Then I’ll figure it out later.”

She snatched the book from his hands. “Can we please just talk about this? Seriously?”

He sighed and sat up next to her. “Okay. We’re talking.”

“Okay.” She smiled, she was getting her way. “Now, think about it, what do you want to do for a living?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think you might want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you good at? And don’t say you don’t know.”

He didn’t say anything at all. She stopped smiling. “Fine,” she said. “We’ll make a list.” She opened the notebook and wrote THINGS LINCOLN IS GOOD AT at the top of the page.

“Dangling preposition,” he said. “Dubious start.”

Number one, she wrote, Grammar.

“And spelling,” he said. “I won the fifth-grade spelling bee.”

2. Spelling.

3. Math.

“I’m not good at math.”

“You are,” she said. “You’re in honors calculus.”

“I’m good enough to be in honors calculus, but I’m not good at honors calculus. I’m getting a B.”

She underlined “Math.”

“What else?” she asked him.

“I don’t like this,” he said.

“What. Else.” She poked him in the chest with the end of her purple ink pen.

“I don’t know. History. I’m good at history.”

4. History.

“You’re good at physics, too,” she said, “and social studies. I saw your report card.”

“You’re making it seem like I’m good at six different things, when really it’s all the same thing.”

He took the pen and put a line through her list. In the margin, he wrote: 1. School.

Sam took the pen back.

2. Ruining perfectly good lists.

He reached for the pen again. “No,” she said, “this isn’t your list anymore. It’s mine.”

“Fine with me.” He picked up his paperback and put his arm around her waist, tucking her into his side. She kept writing. He kept reading. An hour or so later, he walked her to her car. When he got back to his room, he found the notebook open on his pillow.

THINGS LINCOLN IS GOOD AT 1. School.

2. Ruining perfectly good lists.

3. Avoiding the issue.

4. Not worrying about things he REALLY should worry about.

5. Not worrying about things he really shouldn’t worry about.

6. Staying calm/Being calm/Calmness.

7. Turning the page with one hand.

8. Reading.

9. And writing.

10. Pretty much anything to do with WORDS.

11. And pretty much anything to do with NUMBERS.

12. Guessing what teachers want.

13. Guessing what I want.

14. SECOND BASE. (Ha.)

15. Laughing at my jokes.

16. Remembering jokes.

17. Remembering song lyrics.

18. Singing.

19. Unfreezing computers/Untangling necklaces.

20. Explaining confusing things/Giving good driving directions.

21. Driving in bad weather.

22. Reaching things.

23. Being helpful.

24. Being cute.

25. Making me feel cute.

26. Making me feel RAVISHING.

27. Ravishing.

28. Making me feel important.

29. And loved.

30. Listening to me when no one else can STAND to anymore.

31. Looking at me like he knows something I don’t.

32. Knowing things I don’t.

33. Being SMART.

34. Being SENSITIVE.

35. Being KIND.

36. Being GOOD.

The next morning, when she came to pick him up for school, Sam told Lincoln that she’d chosen a major for him. “American Studies,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“It’s kind of everything. Like everything that’s happened in America. And everything that is happening. And pop culture. It’s putting things together and making them make sense.”

“That sounds fascinating,” he said.

“Don’t be sarcastic,” she said.

“I’m not. That sounds fascinating. That sounds perfect.”

It was February, and Sam was wearing a puffy pink jacket and a white scarf around her neck. He tugged the scarf down to kiss her. “Perfect for me,” he said.

SAM’S FAMILY THREW her a going-away party that August, just a few days before she and Lincoln left together for California. Her parents bought fireworks and rented a karaoke machine. The party was still going strong when Lincoln fell asleep on a lawn chair around midnight. He wasn’t sure what time it was when Sam squeezed into the chair next to him. She smelled like the fifth of July, like sweat and spent bottle rockets.

“Did you say your good-byes?” he asked.

She nodded her head. “I said your good-byes, too. You kissed everybody full on the mouth. It was kind of embarrassing.”

“Show me.”

She kissed him quickly. She seemed strange, urgent and jittery. Wide-awake.

“Are you okay?” Lincoln asked.

“Umm …I think so, yeah. I don’t know. God, I don’t know what I am.”

She stood up from the lawn chair and walked across her parents’ deck, picking up dirty plastic cups, then setting them down again.

“I just feel …ready.”

“Ready for what?” Lincoln sat up and tried harder to follow what she was saying. The moon was thin, he couldn’t see her face.

“I’m ready for everything to change,” she said. She sat down on a picnic table and started fiddling with streamers. “I feel like it already has. Like, I thought I was going to be so sad saying good-bye to everybody. I thought I was going to cry and cry—and I didn’t. I didn’t feel like crying at all. I felt like singing. I felt, like, God, yes, good-bye! Not good riddance, just good-bye.

“I am so ready for new people,” she said, throwing the streamers into the air. “In two days, I’m going to be in a place where I can walk around without recognizing a single face. Every person will be brand-new. Just, like, fresh and full of potential. Nothing but potential. I won’t know any of their stories. Nobody will be on my last nerve.”

He walked over to the picnic table and sat next to her. “For thirty-six hours.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you’re very in touch with your last nerve.”

She tilted her chin up. “Maybe that’s about to change. I’ll be brand-new, too. Maybe the new me will be patient.”

“Maybe.” He put his arm around her. She was so small, he felt like could hug all of her at once.

“Don’t you feel it, Lincoln? Like everything is changing?”

He held her tight. “Not everything.”

LINCOLN HAD DUG out this notebook a dozen times since high school. He took it out every time he changed his major, every time he started a new program or finished a degree.

He kept hoping that he would see something on the list that he’d missed all the other times, some basic truth about himself, a clue about what he should be doing. Or shouldn’t be doing. How had his life gotten stuck at No. 19, unfreezing computers? Because a person couldn’t make a living untangling necklaces? Why couldn’t he be stuck at No. 29? Or even 27 …

Whenever Lincoln looked at this list, he always ended up thinking more about Sam than his career path. He didn’t get to the want ads that night or to his parachute or his plan.

CHAPTER 9

From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

To: Beth Fremont

Sent: Wed, 09/01/1999 1:14 PMI

Subject: Do you want to hang out tonight?

I need a break from Mitch. He’s still in a funk about our successful use of birth control.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Can’t. I’m finally going to see Eyes Wide Shut.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Ech. I don’t like Tom Cruise.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Me neither. But I usually like Tom Cruise movies.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Me, too …Huh, maybe I do like Tom Cruise. But I hate feeling pressured to find him attractive. I don’t.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Nobody does. It’s a lie perpetuated by the American media. Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Men don’t like Julia Roberts?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Nope. Her teeth scare them.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Good to know.

CHAPTER 10

WHEN LINCOLN CAME downstairs Thursday morning, his mother was leaning over the kitchen table, scraping lime green paint off a dresser drawer. There were flakes of paint all over the table and floor.

There were chips in her hair and in the butter dish. This sort of thing gave Eve a migraine. “Didn’t you just paint that dresser?” Lincoln asked.

“Yes …I did.” She frowned at the drawer.

“Why are you scraping it?”

“It was supposed to be ‘Meadow Path.’ That’s what it said on the paint chip. This isn’t ‘Meadow Path.’ This is lime.”

“Did it look more ‘Meadow Path’ on the paint chip?”

“Of course it did. It said ‘Meadow Path’ right there, so it couldn’t help but look meadow-y. But look at it, it’s clearly lime.”

“Mom, can I ask you something?”

“Of course. There are biscuits in the oven, and ham gravy. I’ll get you some. Do you want honey?

We have fresh honey from local bees. Did you know that it’s better to eat honey from local bees?”

“I’ve never thought about it …,” he said, trying not to sound impatient.

“It’s better. Because the bees eat the pollen from the plants that grow around you, and then, I guess you’re less likely to be allergic to those plants.”

“I don’t think I have any allergies.”

“You’re so fortunate. Maybe we’ve been buying local honey all along.”

“Mom, do you find Tom Cruise attractive?”

His mother set down her chisel. She looked at Lincoln as if she was trying to decide whether he was “Meadow Path” or lime.

“Honey, do you find Tom Cruise attractive?”

“Mom. No. Why would you ask that? Jesus.”

“Why would you ask that?”

“I asked if you found Tom Cruise attractive. I didn’t ask if you thought I was gay. Do you think I’m gay?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said. “I have thought, occasionally, that maybe, you might, but I wasn’t saying that. I was just trying to help you.”

“Help me what?”

“Help you tell me, if you were. Which you’re not. You’re saying you’re not, right?”

“Yes. I mean, I’m not. Are you serious with this?”

“Well, Lincoln, you have to admit, it would explain a lot.”

“What? What would it explain?”

“It would explain why you don’t have a girlfriend. Why you haven’t had a girlfriend for, you know, honey, a long time. Since Sam, right? And frankly, it would explain Sam.”

“How would that explain Sam?”

“Well, she wasn’t very womanly, was she?”

“She was plenty womanly.”

His mother wrinkled her nose and shrugged. “She seemed boyish to me. She didn’t have breasts.”

Lincoln pressed a palm into one eye. “She had breasts.”

“Really,” his mother said flatly. She had a way of asking “really” that wasn’t ever a question. It was more of a challenge.

“I’m not gay.”

“Of course you’re not gay.”

“I was just, I was going to ask you if you found Tom Cruise attractive because I don’t find Julia Roberts attractive, and I was wondering if it was maybe all a big lie perpetuated by the media.”

“You don’t find Julia Roberts attractive? Huh. Really.”

ON FRIDAY, LINCOLN got up late. He caught the last half of Quantum Leap, helped his mom move a couch, then met his sister at the mall to help her pick out a new cell phone. They ate hot dogs afterward in the food court, and Lincoln showed Eve his library book.

“So,” she asked, “what color is your parachute?”

“Green,” he guessed. It could be green.

Eve was so pleased with this progress that she insisted on buying him an Orange Julius. Then she remembered that he was making more money than she was now and insisted that he buy her an Orange Julius.

That night at work, he felt like he was wearing somebody else’s pants. A thinner somebody else’s pants. He shouldn’t have eaten two hot dogs. He should get some exercise. Maybe he could sneak a piece of exercise equipment into the office. What could he fit in his backpack? Free weights? A ThighMaster? His mom’s inflatable yoga ball?