Chương 1
""“Fourteen seventy,” Daniel Mercer said, and his father laughed before Daniel had even finished turning the laptop around.
Richard Mercer leaned back at the kitchen table with his coffee balanced against his stomach and gave the score the same amused look he gave coupons for products he never intended to buy.
“Save the money for your brother,” he said.
Daniel waited for the rest of the joke.
There wasn’t one.
Across the table, Elaine Mercer took the printed score report from Daniel’s hand, smoothed the corner with her thumb, and studied the numbers.
“That’s very good,” she said.
Richard snorted.
Elaine shot him a look, but when she turned back to Daniel, her expression had already changed into something worse than mockery.
It was practicality.
“You should be proud of yourself,” she said.
Daniel heard the word should and knew there was a but coming.
“But we need to be realistic about what we can afford.”
From the hallway came the faint metallic rattle of the furnace starting, followed by the click of Ethan’s bedroom door.
Daniel’s younger brother appeared wearing gray sweatpants and a Central Crossing football shirt, his hair still flattened on one side from sleep.
“What happened?”
“Your brother got a fourteen seventy on the SAT,” Elaine said.
Ethan blinked.
“Damn.”
“Language,” Richard said.
“That’s really good.”
Richard lifted his coffee.
“He tests well.”
Daniel looked at him.
It was such a small sentence that arguing with it would have made Daniel sound ridiculous.
He tests well.
As if the score had happened to him.
As if all those mornings with vocabulary cards propped against the cereal box had been some neurological accident.
As if the practice tests he took after closing shifts at Grant’s Market had completed themselves while he slept.
Ethan opened the refrigerator.
“So what schools can you get into with that?”
“Quite a few.”
“Like Ohio State?”
“That’s one.”
“Cool.”
Ethan took orange juice from the refrigerator and drank directly from the carton.
Elaine slapped his arm without much force.
Richard pointed his mug toward Daniel.
“Listen, nobody’s saying you can’t go to school.”
“You literally just told me to save the money for Ethan.”
“I said we have priorities.”
“Which means Ethan.”
“Which means we’re not taking on eighty thousand dollars of debt because you want some fancy name on a sweatshirt.”
Daniel looked at his mother.
She folded the score report once, then unfolded it.
“We can help with community college,” she said.
“And after that?”
“You transfer.”
“To where?”
“We’ll see.”
Richard made a tired sound.
“You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Turn everything into a courtroom.”
Daniel almost laughed because Richard had once told relatives Daniel would make a good lawyer precisely because he argued too much.
That had been before Ethan became a starting wide receiver and college coaches began sending handwritten notes.
Daniel took his score report back from Elaine.
The paper had acquired a crease down the middle.
“I’m going to work.”
“You don’t work until four,” Elaine said.
“I know.”
He went upstairs anyway.
His bedroom was at the end of the hall, opposite the trophy shelf Richard had installed after Ethan’s sophomore season.
The shelf had originally been intended for family photographs.
Now framed pictures of Daniel and Ethan leaned together on a narrow table underneath it, partly hidden by plaques.
Daniel closed his door.
On his desk sat a blue accordion folder labeled COLLEGE in black marker.
Inside were drafts for Ohio State, Purdue, Case Western Reserve, Cincinnati, and three schools Mrs. Patel had suggested because Daniel’s grades and score might make him competitive for merit aid.
He had scholarship spreadsheets.
Deadline calendars.
Copies of recommendation request forms.
A yellow legal pad covered with calculations made during slow hours at Grant’s Market.
He knew exactly how much he had saved.
Three thousand eight hundred and twelve dollars.
Not enough.
Not close.
But it was his.
He opened his laptop and found the essay he had been revising.
The prompt asked him to describe a challenge that had changed his understanding of himself.
Daniel stared at the blinking cursor.
Then he deleted the paragraph he had written the night before.
For several minutes he sat there listening to Ethan and Richard arguing downstairs about whether Ethan needed new cleats before summer camp.
Daniel began again.
Three weeks later, he came home from work two hours early because Grant’s Market had lost power during a thunderstorm.
The house was empty.
Daniel changed out of his green store polo, ate half a peanut-butter sandwich over the sink, and carried his laundry downstairs.
When he returned from the basement, he smelled smoke.
Not electrical smoke.
Wood smoke.
He went to the back door.
Elaine stood beside the fire pit in gardening gloves.
A flame curled around the edge of a white sheet of paper.
Daniel stopped with one hand on the screen door.
He recognized the blue accordion folder on the patio table.
“Mom?”
Elaine turned.
Her face did something strange.
For half a second, she looked caught.
Then she looked annoyed.
“What are you doing home?”
Daniel pushed through the screen door.
“What are you doing?”
She reached for another handful of papers.
He saw his handwriting.
Scholarship deadlines.
His Purdue essay.
A printed recommendation from Mr. Callahan.
Daniel crossed the patio so quickly that the chair beside the table scraped over concrete when his hip struck it.
Elaine pulled the folder away.
“Stop.”
“Give me that.”
“We already discussed this.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“You refuse to listen.”
“You’re burning my applications.”
“They’re drafts.”
Daniel stared at her.
Smoke drifted between them.
Elaine’s mouth tightened.
“You’re filling your head with schools we cannot afford while your brother has an actual opportunity.”
“An actual opportunity.”
“Don’t start.”
“What does that make mine?”
The back door opened.
Richard stepped outside carrying his keys.
He had apparently come through the garage without Daniel hearing him.
“What’s going on?”
May you like
Daniel pointed at the fire.
Richard looked at it, then at Elaine, and his face told Daniel something before either parent spoke.
