“We saw your guidance counselor today,” she finally said once my dad was in the room. “And do you know what she said?”
“I don’t even know the guidance counselor’s name,” I said.
“Don’t try to be funny,” my dad told me. “That’s not going to help you.”
“I’m not!” I cried. “I genuinely don’t know who she is! I’ve never met with her in my life.”
“Well, she knows who you are,” my mom said. She was banging around the kitchen now, pulling a wineglass out of the cabinet and a half-full bottle of Chardonnay out of the refrigerator. “Apparently, Oliver pointed you out to her one day.”
I paused. “I’m in trouble because Oliver told the guidance counselor about me?” I asked.
“No, Emily!” my mom yelled.
“Then what?” I yelled back. “Will someone just tell me what I did already?”
“Don’t use that tone,” my dad said.
My mom, though, had enough “tone” for both of us. “Your guidance counselor,” she said as she poured the wine, “congratulated us on your acceptance to the University of California, San Diego.” She took a sip of wine and looked at me over the rim of the glass.
I suddenly felt nervous all over. “I—I was going to tell you.”
“Oh, were you?” my mom said. My dad was standing next to her now, not saying a word. He didn’t have to. The frustration was evident on his face. “When, exactly?”
“Wait,” I said. “How did the counselor even know?”
“The school is notified of admissions,” my dad said quietly. Oh, he was really disappointed in me. This was worse than my mom yelling. “Your name was on that list. Did you really apply?”
I nodded hesitantly, like there was still some confusion in the matter and the acceptance letter that I had printed out wasn’t shoved between the pages of my old copy of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm on my bookshelf. “I did?” I said. “I mean, I did. And I got in. And I was going to tell you, I swear, but I didn’t know if I—”
“We had a plan, Emmy!” my mom cried. “You were going to go to community college for two years and work and live here and save some money and then go to school somewhere—”
Hearing “live here” made me snap. “No, you decided that!” I yelled, and both of my parents looked temporarily shocked. “You decided that, not me! That was your plan for me and you never asked me what I wanted to do or what I wanted! That’s what you want, it’s not what I want! I want to go to San Diego!”
There it was. The decision. I had been on the fence up until that moment, but having college dangled in front of me and then taken away was more than I could handle. Suddenly, I wanted to go more than anything in the world, even if it meant leaving Oliver behind. “Oh, why, Emmy?” my mom cried, her sarcasm heavy. “Why? Is your life so horrible here? You don’t pay for a thing except gas for your car—which, by the way, we bought for you and is no longer yours—”
“What?!” I was furious. “That’s not fair! You’re taking away my car because I applied to college? Who does that?”
“You lied to us,” my mom shot back. “Lying is not allowed in this household. Not to mention that we were humiliated tonight. Absolutely humiliated!”
The fury that was building inside my chest was starting to scare me a little. No car meant no surfing. I could handle being grounded, whatever, but after nearly a year of having the freedom to go to the beach whenever I could, I couldn’t stand not having it anymore.
“You want to know why I applied to UCSD?” I asked, and now my voice was low and cold.
“Enlighten me,” my mom said, taking another sip of her wine.
I turned, grabbed my car keys out of my backpack before anyone could stop me, then ran out to my car. I came back a minute later, my sandy wet suit in my hand.
“Here!” I said, throwing it on the floor. “This is why! Guess what, there’s something else you don’t know! I’ve been surfing for the past three years!”
The shock from both my parents rendered them temporarily mute. Even my mom didn’t say anything at first. Luckily, I had a lot of words to fill the silence. “Drew’s brother, Kane, taught me when we were fourteen! We were at the beach and I was good and I loved it. I loved it more than any of those stupid ballet or gym or karate classes, all those things you made me do! So I kept going and I got better and now I’m really, really good! They think I can try out for the surf team at UCSD, that’s how good.”
My dad was the first to recover.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
“Craigslist,” I told him. “And it doesn’t fit well at all and it lets in a ton of water and it’s freezing every time I wear it but I don’t care because I still love it. It’s mine!” Somewhere in between my words, I had started crying. My heart felt so broken, so shattered. I had gotten so close to so many things and now they were being pulled away so, so fast.
“You could have drowned!” my mom cried. “You could have hit your head! You could have gotten caught in a riptide, oh my God!”
“But I didn’t!” I yelled back. “Just stop, okay, Mom? Just stop! Stop pretending like all of this is for me, because really? It’s all for you.”
It was like I had pulled the pin out of a grenade. No one in the room moved for a few seconds. “Right?” I said, because once the pin is pulled, you can’t exactly put it back in. “That’s what it is, isn’t it? You don’t want me to leave because you saw the bad thing happen ten years ago to Maureen and you freaked out.”