We haven’t had a family dinner, with all four of us at the table, for days. Dad was away at an orthodontist convention. Hunter’s been claiming to be at extra sessions with the band. I had dinner at Kylee’s one night because her mom made this special spicy pork-and-noodle dish that I love. But we’re all here tonight.
“What’s new with you, Autumn?” Dad says. He always starts with me, as if to get some good news before he has to turn to Hunter for the bad news. But today I have no good news. Today I have the total opposite of good news.
“Nothing,” I say with false brightness.
“Nothing?” Mom asks.
I thrust out my chin. “Nothing,” I repeat. I can be as surly as Hunter when I want to be.
At least there are only two more days until the agents come to the library and I have a chance to show them chapter one of Tatiana and Ingvar. Plus, there’s still the essay contest, though my hopes for it are dimming. Winners are supposed to hear by mid-November; it’s already November 10, and I have a feeling I would have heard by now if they read my essay and were enraptured by it.
“Hunter, what’s new with you?” Dad asks.
“The band has another gig,” Hunter says.
“That’s wonderful!” Mom gushes.
“And we’re getting paid this time,” Hunter adds, unable to keep the pride out of his voice.
For a second I feel as if I’m in some kind of alternative universe, where I’m Goofus and Hunter is Gallant, where I’m the one sitting in sullen silence while he gets to crow about a major accomplishment.
But I’m not going to let him know how jealous I feel.
“To Hunter!” I’m the first one to say, holding up my water glass to start a round of clinks. And once Dad raises his glass, too, I almost do feel happy for Hunter, and happy for me. This is what normal families should be doing, celebrating someone’s success with an ice-water toast.
“What is the gig?” Mom asks.
“We’re playing for the dance at Southern Peaks,” he says. I notice he doesn’t call it Southern Pukes this time. A school that is paying you to play at their dance can’t be all that pukey.
Now I have something else in my life to hope for. Even though my publishing dreams have had some crushing disappointments, the first big if of my Cameron-at-the-dance fantasy has come true: Paradox is playing there! Now all I need is for Cameron to come to the dance, and for the band to play his song, and for him to ask me to dance. The first two of these are now pretty likely. So I need to concentrate all my deepest wishing on the final one.
I’m so lost in these thoughts I miss the last couple of things said at the table. Apparently, while I blinked, it all turned not-so-good.
“All I meant,” Dad is saying, “is that while it’s great that the band is getting gigs, you should consider signing up for some school clubs or activities, too. You’re on a roll now! Keep the momentum going!”
“Save the Rhinos?” Hunter asks. “Anime Club? Board Gamers Guild? Like, my life will be totally better if I join the Board Gamers Guild?”
“Okay.” Dad forces a smile. “I concede that the Board Gamers Guild is not likely to be a big life changer. But what about the school newspaper, or the debate team, or the knowledge bowl? Or—even if you don’t want to do cross-country—surely there is some other sport…”
“Oh, Derrick,” Mom says. “Let’s just celebrate Hunter tonight.”
“That’s what we’re doing,” Dad says. “But, Hunter, you’re in high school now—”
“Am I? Thanks!” Hunter says. “For a moment there I had forgotten.”
Dad’s color deepens. Like Mom, I wish he’d get off the why-don’t-you-do-a-sport topic. But Hunter’s sarcasm is going too far.
Dad continues as if Hunter hadn’t interrupted him. “And college admissions committees are going to want to see more on your application than ‘drummer in a rock band.’ That’s a fact. I’m just pointing out a fact.”
“Maybe I don’t want to go to college,” Hunter shoots back.
I wait to see if Dad is going to blow up over this one, but he gives another conciliatory smile, even though it’s a condescending smile, too.
“You say that now. But let’s see what you’re saying two years from now when all your friends are applying to colleges and getting into good places. Your mother and I want you to have choices. We don’t want you doing anything now that limits your choices.”
“Maybe my choices for me are different from your choices for me.”
“You aren’t going to have any choices then”—Dad raises his voice—“if you don’t start making some different choices now. You do realize that report cards come out next week?”
Hunter shrugs.
If there’s one thing Dad hates, it’s a shrug.
“I hope,” Dad says, “that a certain drummer will complete some missing work and turn it in between now and then. I hope that a certain drummer can bring up certain grades to at least C’s so that he doesn’t get grounded. It’s hard to play at a dance if you’re grounded.”
Hunter has already pushed his chair back from the table. He walks upstairs without a backward look at his barely touched make-your-own taco.
Maybe he’s gone off for one last-ditch study spurt to get his grades back on track. He could still finish that missing work and turn it in for partial credit. Hunter is smart. He could raise his grades if he tried. He’s just never cared enough to try.
“Couldn’t we be happy for just one evening?” Mom asks as I hear Hunter’s door slam.
“He’s not going to get into a decent college with those grades,” Dad says wearily. “How happy will we all be then? How happy will he be when he gets a dead-end minimum-wage job with no benefits and no future, just a few fifty-dollar gigs now and then? We’ve tried letting him have his own way, follow his own path, walk away from the cross-country team after one week—one week! Maybe we need to ground him right now, today, this minute, rather than sit around waiting for him to fail next week, or next year, or for the rest of his life. Maybe it’s time we imposed some consequences on him, or one of these days the real world is going to be doing that for us.”
“Give him one more chance,” Mom says. “You’ve made your point. Let him get that missing work finished on his own. Maybe we haven’t trusted him enough.”
“Or maybe we’ve trusted him too much,” Dad says.
So Hunter and I are both Goofuses now, and our family has no Gallants at all.