“And you asked her about the band?”
“Of course. They are the only cute guys I’ve seen since we got here. She gave me all sorts of good info. So we’re going to go.”
“To band practice?” Brooks had invited me to crash band practice when he thought I worked here, but I knew that the invitation was all but revoked when he found out I didn’t.
“Yes, to band practice.”
Finally, I put my toothbrush in my mouth and started brushing. “Mom and Dad won’t let us.”
“Seriously?” she said.
“Yes.”
“It’s a camp-sanctioned event.”
“It is?”
She rolled her eyes. “It is now. Keep up, Avery. Besides, a cute band in the middle of the woods is going to make the best series of videos ever.”
“Is that how you make your decisions? Based on whether they’ll be good videos?”
“Why not? It pushes me outside my comfort zone. You should try it once in a while.” She raised her phone, pushed record, and pointed it at me. “What about your life would people actually want to watch?”
I blinked twice. Nothing, I wanted to say directly into her phone. I’m of no interest. Isn’t that why Trent left, why Shay was willing to risk everything? I swallowed down those words. “I don’t need people watching my life.”
Dad appeared in the doorway. “Who wants to go to Grass Games with me right now?”
“I’m going to the Slip ’N Slide,” Lauren said. “I sense I can get some good videos there.” She tucked her phone in her pocket and left.
“What was that about?” Dad asked.
I spit out my mouthful of toothpaste and straightened up. “All the world is her stage.”
He smiled. “And some of us are meant to work behind the curtains.” He pointed at me with the comment, then back to him.
I pictured my dad, the coach, pacing the sidelines at the junior high basketball games, yelling out encouraging words to the players or snide remarks to the refs. I’d never thought of him as a behind-the-curtains kind of guy. “Right,” I said anyway.
“So, Grass Games?” he asked.
“Sure, let me get dressed.”
Dad and I ended up on the lawn behind the lodge playing cornhole with two total strangers—a husband and wife from Idaho Falls. We had already learned that they had three grown kids and eight grandkids, each more accomplished than the last. At least Dad and I were crushing them in cornhole, because we weren’t winning in conversation at all.
“You all live in Los Angeles?” the man, Mr. Masters, was asking. “My oldest lives there. He designs sets for movies.”
Of course he did.
“That’s amazing,” Dad said. “I have a feeling my second daughter will be in the entertainment field. She has this super-creative brain. She’s constantly thinking outside the box and can turn anything into a compelling story. She has this incredible passion for what she does. And she’s only fifteen.” My dad’s eyes lit up as he described Lauren to this man. It’s not that I didn’t want my dad to be proud of Lauren—of course I did—but I had always assumed he and my mom thought the videos were a waste of her time. It was shocking to hear him brag about them.
“So what about you, young lady?” Mr. Masters asked. “Are movies in your future?”
“What? No.” I squeezed the beanbag I held, feeling the insides slip through my fingers.
My dad waved his hand through the air. “Avery is more laid-back. She takes the path of least resistance, happy to stay in her comfort zone. She’s going to be a professor, just like her mom.”
I froze, my brain trying to catch up with the words my dad was saying.
“That’s neat,” Mrs. Masters said. “What do you want to teach?”
“I…I’m not sure,” I said. “Literature…maybe.” Why did I suddenly feel like I was on trial? I’d been asked this question dozens of times. I was going to be a senior, after all; it seemed like it was the only question any adult knew how to ask.
“I bet you’re so busy planning and applying and testing,” Mrs. Masters said.
I opened my mouth to agree when Dad said, “My wife works at UCLA, so it makes it easy.”
Easy? Sure, I’d get to go to school for free because my mom was a professor there, but he knew I still had to have a certain GPA and that I had to fill out applications and creatively answer essay questions and register and actually get accepted, didn’t he? I stared at him for a moment, then bent down quickly to pick up the beanbag that had dropped to my feet. I tried to mask my expression because I didn’t want him to see that this whole conversation had hurt.
“Well, that’s great,” Mr. Masters said. “I hear UCLA is a really good college.”
“It is,” Dad said.
“Sometimes it’s nice to have your future already picked out for you, isn’t it?” Mrs. Masters said, patting my arm.
It took everything in me not to yank away from her touch. “Yep. Super nice,” I said.
I paced the living room alone, seething. It had been several hours since Grass Games with my dad but I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said. Path of least resistance? Happy to stay in my comfort zone? Did he think that was a compliment?
I did hard, new things all the time. Like that time I…My mind went absolutely blank as it scanned the last few years of high school. Suddenly I couldn’t remember the last time I did something outside of my routine. Even here at camp I was sticking to things I’d done before: badminton and floating on the lake and campfires. Was I happy in my comfort zone?! Is that how I chose my entire future—by default?
I plopped down on the couch and pulled out my phone. I stared at my boring apps. I gritted my teeth and swiped to my
