Free After Summer by Hailey Abbott

she’d said that before, but she couldn’t stand another moment of the oppressive silence. “I’m really impressed that you have a movie to show in the first place, to be honest.”
    Bennett, Kelsi couldn’t help noticing, didn’t appear to notice the quiet. He had that same compelling ease about him that Taryn did, although he didn’t look much like her. Kelsi had expected someone small and skinny like Taryn. But Bennett was taller and lankier than Kelsi had been imagining. He was every inch the hipster, in a frayed corduroy jacket and Buddy Holly glasses that seemed custom-made for his intelligent face and shaggy coppery-red hair.
    “Taryn says that I got all the creative genes in the family,” Bennett said, leaning back in his creaky desk chair. He grinned, showing a dimple in his cheek. “It’s cute, especially coming from Taryn. Her whole life is creative.”
    Also cute, Kelsi couldn’t help thinking, was Bennett’s raspy, Kiefer Sutherland-y voice.
    “So how are you liking freshman year so far?” Bennett asked, still smiling. “Taryn’s pretty psyched that she got such a cool roommate.”
    “Taryn’s great,” Kelsi said truthfully. “But you know that.”
    “Yeah, she’s okay.” But he was laughing.
    “She, and so many of the girls at Smith, are so smart—it’s amazing.” Kelsi forgot to feel awkward as she began speaking. In fact, she was excited to have an actual discussion with a guy that didn’t involve keg-pumping strategies. “In one of my classes the other day, we got into this huge debate over which female mythological figures were male constructs and which were more clearly feminine, and then it turned into a whole different discussion about how to read pop culture today for the same messages.”
    “Like how the Brad-Angelina-Jennifer triangle taps into social concerns about women?” Bennett asked, grinning.
    “Exactly!” Kelsi said, laughing. “I mean, believe me, nobody thought about stuff like this at St. Augustine’s.”
    “Don’t tell me you went to Catholic school,” Bennett said with a chuckle.
    Kelsi laughed, too, rolling her eyes. “My whole life. The sisters might have been interested in intellectual discussions, but none of the other girls were.” Kelsi sighed.
    “College is cool,” Bennett said simply.
    Kelsi nodded. “I guess I like that I’m finally in a place where nobody thinks I’m a freak for wanting to study,” she said, and paused. “Taryn said you guys went to a much more creative kind of high school.”
    “Well, sure,” Bennett said. “But then it became a whole competition about how creative you were. How many ironic references you could put into your film, how many intertextual asides in your poetry—if you see what I mean.” He grinned. “So I, obviously, had to be the most creative.”
    “Of course.” Kelsi waved a hand at the wall over his desk, which was covered with abstract paintings in different sizes. Wild, moody colors, purples and browns. “I like those,” she said. “Did you do them?”
    “I’m experimenting,” he said, swiveling to look at them. “Did you see that exhibit in the college art center?”
    “Yeah, Taryn took me,” Kelsi said, sitting forward. “My favorite was the huge seascape in all those random colors.”
    “That’s exactly what I’m trying to play with,” Bennett said, leaning forward, too. “I’m not much of a painter, but I like to mess around with ways of seeing.”
    “Like that seascape,” Kelsi agreed. “Somehow, making the colors nothing like the ocean at all made me miss the ocean more than any photograph would have.” She thought of Pebble Beach with a pang of longing.
    “Right!” Bennett said with obvious delight, and then they both gave a start when the door swung open and Taryn bounded in.
    “Oh, my God,” she cried. “Did you guys even notice I was gone for about a hundred years? Thanks for answering your cell phones, losers!”
    Under the guise of pulling out her