“But it’s across the country,” says my dad. “And it’s—basically college. So you’d have to live there.”
“Well, yeah. But it’s okay, I just need parental permission,” I say, grabbing my phone back from him so I can show him the school website.
But then my dad looks at me with an expression I very rarely see but immediately recognize: the one that means I have flown too close to the sun.
“And you’re gonna give me parental permission … right?”
My dad runs a hand through his hair, glancing back down at his laptop like something’s going to pop up on the screen and give him a way out of the conversation. I should probably give him some room to think, but that’s not necessarily my forte.
“I didn’t just get in. I got a partial scholarship,” I add. “So it’s not even that expensive.”
“It’s still a lot of money.”
“So I’ll pick up more hours at the Milkshake Club,” I say, my tone more chipper than a flight attendant’s. “Or get a part-time job.”
“Los Angeles?”
“So I’d have Grandma and Grandpa out there,” I press. Admittedly not my finest argument, seeing as they ditched New York for a farm in Oregon the year before I was born, but it’s still technically on the same coast as LA.
But my dad shakes his head. “It’s not just that.… We’re not gonna…”
He looks helpless, like I just shoved him into the Hudson in a boat without a paddle.
“We talked about doing dance classes over the summer,” he offers.
It’s like trying to trade me a marble for a diamond. I look at Heather, hoping to find an ally, but she’s already furrowing her brow in that way she always does before declaring herself Switzerland.
“You have to let me go,” I tell him, trying to keep my voice measured. “Like—this is the kind of opportunity that could change my whole life. This is my destiny.”
I’m fully aware of my own melodrama, but not enough to curb it. This does feel like my destiny. What were the last seventeen years of aggressive jazz hands and late nights watching bootleg Lea Salonga videos and openly weeping to the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack for if not this?
In the end, my dad talks more to the floor than to me. To be fair, he’s not the best when it comes to discipline. But to be more fair, I hardly think this situation qualifies.
“I really wish you’d talked to me about this,” he says. “When did you even apply?”
Several months ago, with some extreme subterfuge and a sprinkle of lies about study groups that may or may not have existed. The truth is, I knew before I even started looking into it that he probably wouldn’t be on board. But I thought maybe if it were already a done deal—if he saw that I’d actually defied the bajillion-to-one odds and gotten in—it’d be enough to sway him.
“I didn’t wanna jinx it,” I say instead.
It turns out, though, I already did. Because if destiny really is something that’s constantly around the corner, apparently I just slammed into mine like a traffic accident.
“I’m sorry, Mills,” says my dad. “My answer is no.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Be on my side,” I whine, wedging myself into Teddy’s couch cushions, which are just deep enough to make you feel like you’re being swallowed whole. I hike my knees up and prop Heather’s laptop on them, staring at the sea of open tabs with determination.
“I am on your side,” says Teddy through a mouthful of popcorn. “I can be on your side and on my phone at the same time.”
I jostle Teddy’s shoulder with mine, peering at the open chat app on his phone. “How’s your girlfriend?”
Teddy rolls his eyes. “She’s a fellow GeoTeen, not my girlfriend.”
I sidestep the fact that the word GeoTeen makes them both sound like underage superheroes in a poorly animated eighties cartoon series. “You told her about your deep-seated fear of pigeons,” I remind him.
“They’re demons with wings.”
“And your middle name—”
“If only my parents’ first date hadn’t been to see Toy Story—”
“And even told her your cross streets. That’s like the New York version of a Social Security number, so. I feel like she is close to girlfriend status, if not officially there.”
Teddy pulls the kind of face that is less of an expression and more of a gymnastics routine. “She’d probably want nothing to do with me if we met in person. We just share a love of finding random useless objects across Manhattan and annoying MTA employees by poking all over their stations. It’s hardly a love connection.”
I know better than to believe this because I know Teddy better than I know my own self—which is saying something, considering how many hours I’ve clocked practicing for auditions in front of mirrors. We’ve been best friends since I was six months old and he was two days old, after my dad heard him crying across the hall and just about tripped over himself to make friends with fellow new parents. (Apparently getting an infant unceremoniously dropped at your door when you’re a coed—which is, incidentally, what happened to my dad—can be a kind of isolating experience.) By the time Teddy and I could walk we were simply poking our heads into each other’s apartments like we lived in both. Neither of us has any genetic siblings, but Teddy and I have been brother and sister since before we knew what those words meant.
“Maybe it would be, if your usernames weren’t all anonymous and shrouded in dweeby mystery.” I squint at the first open tab. “I could be a Postmates delivery person.”
“With what car?” Teddy asks. “And what driver’s license, for that matter?”
I close out of the tab. Only twenty-seven more to go. “A preschool is looking for summer help.”
“You’d turn all those kids into show tunes–belting monsters. Their parents already have to deal with two Frozen soundtracks, don’t make them deal with Wicked, too.” Teddy sets his phone down and takes in the chaos of Heather’s screen. “Do you really think getting a summer job to help pay for this is gonna change Coop’s mind? It seemed like a pretty hard no.”
“A no for now. But between my savings from the Milkshake Club and the scholarship and a part-time job, I can definitely pay the first semester. And saying no would be like, illegal.”
“I don’t think that’s how parenting works.” Teddy reaches over my shoulder to click out of the next tab, which reads “Personal assistant to chill male exec!” I turn to glare at him, but it jostles the computer, pulling a tab out from the bottom of the screen.
“How do you have this many unopened emails?” Teddy gasps.
“This isn’t my email, it’s Heather’s,” I say, about to minimize it again. But just then a new email pops in, the caps lock in the subject line seizing my retinas: OMG I THINK I FOUND YOUR LITTLE BRO’S OLD LJ IM CRYING.
It’s from Heather’s ex-girlfriend Jade, who’s currently couch-surfing through Europe and apparently still very much up in the Price family’s business. I make a mental note to slide in a passive-aggressive comment about this at the dinner table, then click into the email.