Free After School Activities by Dirk Hunter Page A

of
    my league. She wants me to apply to the most prestigious universities in
    the country, but I’ll never get in.”
    “Why not? Your grades are good enough.”
    “I guess. But I still have to take the SAT, and I’m bad at
    standardized tests.”
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    After School Activities

    It was starting to sound like Adam was making excuses, like he had
    already decided he was going to fail and so wasn’t going to even try.
    There was no way I was going to let that fly.
    “I’ll help you.”
    “I don’t know….”
    “I’m serious. I’ve always been good at those. They’re pretty easy
    once you get the knack.” Adam started to say something, but I cut him off.
    “Listen, you can argue all you want, but I’m helping you study and in two
    years your mom will be visiting you at Yale, or wherever.”
    Adam shrugged, but at least he didn’t disagree. It was a start. I
    was still surprised that Adam was so insecure about all this. It was a
    little weird to reconcile that big, bravado-fueled jock I thought I’d
    known for all those years with this introspective, caring guy I was
    discovering him to be. I was really glad he had finally revealed himself
    to me, and not just in the naked-in-my-bed kind of way. I realized that,
    somewhere along the line, I had started to care for Adam.
    It was a weird thought.
    “What about you?” Adam asked. “What do you want to do when you
    graduate? What’s your dream?”
    “Oh, something small. Ruler of the World. Batman. That kind of
    thing.”
    Adam laughed. “I’m serious. I want to know.”
    “My dream? Like, that thing you’ll probably never do, maybe even
    never try for, but sometimes you just sit and fantasize about?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I don’t know. Nothing.”
    “Oh come on! You obviously have something in mind.”
    I hesitated. My dreams were, well, personal.
    “Well, sometimes, when I think about my future—and obviously this
    would probably never happen—but sometimes I dream about running
    away to some monastery at the top of a mountain or something, and
    spending the rest of my life singing hymns, like some kind of Gregorian
    monk.”
    “Weird haircut and everything?”
    “Weird haircut, scratchy brown robe, vow of silence, all of it. I
    picture a huge Gothic cathedral, silent but for the reverberations, the dying 49
    Dirk Hunter

    echoes of the last hymn. Surrounded by giant stained glass windows,
    which are always lit by epic sunsets in my imagination, by the way. I’d
    spend my days singing and reading—they might frown on all the sci-fi,
    but I’m sure I could work something out—and doing good deeds, and
    polishing stained glass windows. Really, the fantasies are, like, seventy
    percent stained glass window themed.”
    “I didn’t know you were very religious.”
    “Oh, I’m not, really. I mean, I believe in God. Jesus is pretty cool,
    though I don’t really care whether he really was the son of God or not. The
    story is powerful enough on its own. And besides, even if there is no God,
    no higher power of any kind, that doesn’t make the universe one iota less
    amazing, though maybe a tiny bit more depressing. So if I’m not singing
    praises to some omnipotent deity, then it’s to the marvelous entirety of
    existence. It doesn’t especially matter to me either way.”
    “Worship the universe, huh?”
    “Not worship, exactly. More like appreciate. Rather than just take
    advantage of. People tend to only wonder how to use all the miracles of
    existence to make their lives easier, which I guess is important too. But I
    don’t think they do enough of that. Appreciate the world and all the things
    in it, I mean. So I would kind of like to spend my life doing exactly that.”
    “Appreciation through song and stained glass windows.”
    “Exactly.”
    “I like it.”
    “Really?”
    Adam laughed. “Yeah. Why? Is that surprising?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never really told anyone this before.”
    “Not even Malachi?” Adam