Nightstruck - Jenna Black Page 0,26

to go there, and just going to Edith Goldman is enough to get me into someplace like Temple or Drexel. So why should I be wasting my time in boring classes?”

“Have you been drinking?” It was the only explanation I could come up with for what I was hearing. No, Piper had never been an exceptional student and had never done more than the bare minimum she needed to get acceptable grades, but she’d never treated her education this dismissively before. She and I had talked about our college plans less than a month ago, and though she wouldn’t be applying to all the power schools I would, she definitely had some selective schools on her list and had shown every sign of caring where she went.

Piper laughed. “It’s a little early, even for me, so no.” She shrugged. “I just had an epiphany over the weekend. It really doesn’t matter where I go to school, or even if I go to school. Shit like that only matters if you have career ambitions.”

“And you don’t?” She’d never told me specifically what she wanted to do with her life, had always said she’d figure it out when she was through with college, but I’d always had the sense she wanted a career of some sort, even if she didn’t know what career it was.

“Don’t look so surprised. You don’t either, do you?”

She gave me a challenging look, and I found myself looking away. It frustrated my parents to no end that I couldn’t blurt out, “I want to be a ___.” Both of them had known from the moment they started high school what they wanted to do with their lives, and they’d aimed themselves at their goals like guided missiles. My older sister was like that, too—a chip off the old block. She was in her first year of med school and had never seemed to consider any possibility except becoming a doctor. No waffling, no doubts, no indecision.

Not me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a living. My college counselor at school told me that was fine, that I had plenty of time to make a decision and that things would be clearer when I was away from home and had dabbled a bit at college. She said that very few people went into college knowing what they wanted to be, and that most of those who thought they did found out they were wrong before they graduated. My parents did not agree.

Piper touched my shoulder. “Sorry, Becks. Didn’t mean to throw salt in the wound.”

“Just because I don’t know what I want to do, that doesn’t mean I don’t have ambitions,” I said. My ambitions were vague ones—get a good job that paid decently in a field I enjoyed—but that wasn’t the same as not having any.

“I know. You might not know what you want to do, but you know you want to do something. I guess I realized this weekend that I … don’t.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means my parents will support me no matter what I do, so I might as well do what makes me happy. Hell, I might not even go to college at all, although maybe if I find a good party school I should go for a couple of years just to have that experience.”

“So you’re saying your big goal is to mooch off your parents for the rest of your life?” I asked incredulously. I’d thought I knew Piper pretty well, but it was beginning to look like I didn’t. Or like something had happened over the weekend that had fundamentally changed her outlook.

“Basically, yeah.” She shook her head. “How many times have I told you that you should live your own life and not the life your parents want for you? I can’t believe you never pointed out what a hypocrite I was being.”

I had no idea what to say to that. As far as I could tell, Piper had never cared what her parents wanted her to do, had always gone her own way with barely a second thought.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. “You’d better hurry if you want to get to homeroom on time. I’m cruising to get myself in trouble, not you.” She winked at me.

I felt like I was standing in the presence of a stranger. Piper had always been wild, but nothing like this. I was also surprised that she’d bothered paying attention to the time. Maybe this