The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,56

now for all the times I’d thought about telling him about my job and then had just chosen to avoid the subject entirely. “Well, not my dog, exactly,” Clark amended after a second. “But the dog who . . . lives in my house.” Now it was my turn to stare at Clark, but before I could say anything, he added, “Well, not my house, so to speak—”

“Bertie’s not your dog?” I asked, feeling my eyebrows fly up.

“Why are you walking his dog?” my dad asked.

“Andie’s a dog walker,” Clark said, then a moment later, and in the silence that followed, he seemed to read the room. “Was that supposed to be a secret?” he asked, leaning closer to me, his voice barely above a whisper.

“It’s my summer job,” I said to my dad, crossing and then uncrossing my arms.

“Since when?”

“A week and a half ago.”

“But you have no experience with dogs,” my dad said, still staring at me.

“I got trained,” I said quickly to Clark, “before I started.”

“You do a great job with Bertie,” Clark assured me. “She really does,” he added to my dad.

“Help me understand this,” my dad said, turning back to Clark. It didn’t seem like this positive report of my job performance had cleared anything up for him. “You’re not in school. But you’ll be going to college, I assume.”

“No, um . . . ,” Clark said, glancing once at me before putting his hands in his pockets, then taking them out again. “I . . . well, I’m a writer. So I’ve been mostly focusing on that. I’m not sure college fits into my plans at the moment.”

“A writer,” my dad repeated, his voice flat. I was trying very hard not to look quite as thrown by all this as I felt. Clearly, the downside of having a theoretical crush on someone you knew nothing about was the crashing realization that you actually knew nothing about them.

“Yeah,” Clark said with a low, nervous laugh. “I write fantasy novels.”

“Wait, what?” I asked. All of this was moving too quickly, and I really felt like it would have been better to find this stuff out while sitting across from Clark in a restaurant somewhere, or while driving there in his car—not in front of my dad.

“Another thing I was going to mention later,” Clark said with another quick smile. I could see, though, that his cheeks were starting to get pink.

“Fantasy novels?” my dad repeated, his voice skeptical.

“Yeah,” Clark said with a shrug, his cheeks still flushed. “I mean, I’ve only written two so far, but . . .”

“And this is what you do,” my dad said, still sounding unimpressed. “Rather than going to college.”

“Well,” Clark said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “It is kind of a full-time job, especially after A Murder of Crows was published. . . .”

“Wait . . .” My dad stared at Clark like he was trying to understand what was happening. “I’ve heard of that. Wasn’t it a bestseller? Wasn’t it a movie?”

Clark nodded. “Two,” he said, then cleared his throat. “It was supposed to be a trilogy, but I’m a little bit behind on my newest book.” I suddenly flashed back to the old man waiting on line in the library with his thick paperback, complaining about the author who hadn’t finished his series. What had that writer’s name been? Wasn’t it something McCallister?

I blinked at him, trying to figure this out. I had assumed Clark was my age, or close to it, though I was now starting to question everything. Because people who were my age, or close to it, didn’t write bestselling fantasy books. They didn’t have movies based on their books with huge movie stars in them. How was this even possible?

“I published the first one when I was fourteen,” Clark said, clearly reading the confusion on both our faces. He gave an embarrassed shrug. “Homeschooled kids have a lot of time on their hands.”

“Well,” my dad said. He looked as overwhelmed as I currently felt. “I should let you two get going. Andie, be home by . . .” He trailed off, looking at me blankly.

I stared back at him, silently panicking as I weighed my options as quickly as possible. I normally never had a curfew. But if I said something like midnight or one, what if Clark thought I expected to spend all that time with him? I didn’t know how to tell him that I had plans after our dinner