Watermelon Summer by Anna Hess Page B

hand, Mom had a pretty solid point when
it came to the danger of throwing away your future for a boy.  Not
that she'd ever said so in my hearing, but I knew Mom's life had made a
sudden left turn when she'd gotten pregnant with me.  I'd also
seen how falling for a guy had clouded the eyes of girls at my school,
how they'd decide to drop dreams of Harvard then follow a boyfriend to
the state university instead, and I'd resolved not to date in high
school for that very reason.  Plus, I'd read Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed and
knew that the chances of a couple staying together if they hooked up
before they were 25 were pretty slim.  As a certified
over-achiever, it seemed to make sense to wait until the deck wasn't
stacked against me.
     
    But I was going to need to grow a third hand
because...Jacob was just so darn appealing!  Hours had passed while
all these thoughts whooshed through my  head, and now I looked
over at Kat,
who was busy painting Lucy's toenails on the couch of the
farmhouse.  (If there was
ever a dog who less needed painted toenails, I had yet to meet one, but
Kat had trouble sitting still, and Lucy didn't mind any sort of
attention.)  "Do you think I'm going to make bad decisions because
of my crush on Jacob?" I asked her.
     
    "And the ball flies in out of left field!" Kat
proclaimed in a sports-announcer voice.  "Where's that coming
from?"  Then glanced over at the phone I was still fiddling with,
despite being way outside the cell-phone-reception zone, she added, "Oh,
you've been talking to your mom, huh?"  At my nod, Kat closed up
the bottle of polish so she could keep her attention trained on
me.  "Look, I won't tell you that I like the kid but, if anything,
he seems to be more of a workaholic than you are.  Young love
appears to be good for getting a community running."
     
    "But is that really what I should be doing?" I
pressed.  "Mom thinks Greensun is going to stand in the way of me going to
college.  And maybe she's right—the farm does seem more
important right now.  But is our community really my top priority, or am
I just making a decision based on Jacob's blue eyes?"
     
    Kat rolled her own eyes, making it clear that she was
heartily sick of hearing about Jacob's assets.  "Well, if I had
someone willing to put me through college, I'd leap at the chance," she
answered. 
"But I guess there's really only one way to know whether you're here
for
Greensun or for Jacob."  I waited with baited breath for the
solution to my dilemma, and Kat didn't leave me hanging.  "You'll
have to crush the crush," she told me.
     
     
     

    Kat's words startled me into a laugh, because I
hadn't been sure my sister had been listening when I explained how I'd
reached
seventeen without ever having had a boyfriend.  There was no TV at
Greensun, the radio only picked up two stations (spottily at best), and
Kat wasn't a reader, so we'd spent a lot of time talking in the
evenings.  Mostly, Kat told me about her extensive
experiences—she'd lived much more in her 24 years than I thought
possible—but now
and then my sister decided it was time to talk about me.  A week or
so ago, I'd explained how I wanted to get more out of my life than
being a suburban housewife like my mom.  I planned to see the
world, to figure out my passion,
    and then to follow wherever that led me, and I had a sinking
    suspicion that falling head over heels for a guy would only get in
    the way.
     
    I can just see you shaking your head and saying,
    "Very astute.  But you can't do anything about a crush. 
    What you feel is what you feel."  In fact, those had been Kat's
exact words.  To which I'd replied—wrong!  While my
    compatriots were kissing for the first time (average age: 15) and
    losing their virginity (average age: 17), I had come up with a
    time-proven method for getting over crushes large and small. 
In case you have a crush