“The best,” he says finally, a note of false cheer to hisvoice.
“So what are your plans now?” the host asks. “That’s a truly life-changing amount of money. Enough to make all your dreams come true, right? So what are they?”
“Well, first I’m going to Disney World, obviously,” Teddy says, which makes her giggle in a way that’s all out of proportion to the joke itself. “No, I’m still thinking about what to do with it. It’s a big responsibility. I’m going to have some fun, of course—”
“Of course,” she says with a knowing smile.
“But I also want to make sure to do some good with it, if possible. And I want to do some nice things for my mom too.”
“That’s so sweet,” the host says, putting a hand over her heart. “Like what?”
“Well, if I said it on national television, it wouldn’t be a surprise, so…”
She’s positively glowing now. “Too right. But I’ll tell you this: she’s lucky to have a son like you.”
“Well, I’m lucky to have a mom like her.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asks suddenly. “Because I have two daughters…”
Teddy gives an easy laugh, and he looks so handsome right then that it makes my heart bobble. “No girlfriend,” he says. “Maybe one day.”
“Well, I can imagine there will be quite a few applicants for the job,” she says, reaching out to shake his hand. “Teddy McAvoy, thanks so much for being here with us this morning. I’d wish you all the best of luck, but it seems like you have luck to spare.”
Teddy is still grinning into the camera when Aunt Sofia points the remote straight at his head and the screen goes dark. None of us say anything for a few seconds. On the table the coffee is going cold, and the square of light from the kitchen window is lengthening. It’s well past time to leave for school, but nobody moves.
After a minute Leo begins to laugh, and I stare at him.
“What?”
“It’s just…,” he says, shaking his head. “Remember that time in third grade when he peed his pants in front of the whole school?”
Everyone is silent for a moment, then—all at once—we burst out laughing too, and once we start it’s hard to stop, our eyes filled with tears at the memory, so starkly different from the version of Teddy we just saw on national television.
“I have a feeling,” Uncle Jake says eventually, still trying to catch his breath, “that you might need to remind him of that at some point.”
The following evening, Leo drags me to a discussion on digital animation at the Art Institute. For two hours he’s completely enthralled, leaning forward in his seat as if willing himself closer to the stage. But I have a harder time paying attention; my mind is elsewhere.
This morning I found out I got into two schools: Northwestern and Colgate. When I texted my aunt to tell her the good news, she sent back a chain of exclamation points so long they filled the screen. Northwestern is her alma mater, and though she knows I have my heart set on Stanford, I suspect there’s a part of her that’s been hoping I might end up closer to Chicago.
But the person I most wanted to tell—the person I always want to tell everything—is still the only one I haven’t. Instead I watched this afternoon as he sat amid a group of women on yet another talk show, joking about his terrible estimation skills.
“If you give me a jar of jelly beans and ask me to guess how many,” he told them, “I’d probably say, like, two million. I was never much of a numbers guy.”
“And now look at you,” one of the hosts said with a smile. “I’d say the numbers have definitely worked in your favor.”
I switched it off then. But for too long I stayed there in front of the TV, looking at my own reflection in the flat blackness of the screen.
When the panel discussion is over, Leo and I walk out onto the steps of the museum. Across the street is a white granite building that’s part of the college and we stand facing it, the gusty breeze from the lake at our backs.
“You’ll get in,” I say, and he looks over at me distractedly.
“What?”
“To the Art Institute.” I nod at the building. “You’ll get in.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead he walks down the rest of the steps, then pauses in front of one of the enormous stone lions—which stand guard at either side of the entrance—and gives it a salute, the same way he’s done since he was a kid. The motion is subtler now, and he seems almost embarrassed to be doing it, but it’s more superstition than tradition at this point. The lion regards him stoically in return, then we head off down Michigan Avenue, our path lit by an endless constellation of red taillights.
“When do you hear from Michigan?” I ask as we walk. It’s meant as a peace offering. From his stony silence I assume he’s annoyed that I mentioned the Art Institute, so this is my attempt to balance it out, to show him that I’m supportive no matter what, that even if he goes off to Michigan next year I’m still on board. But this strategy only gets me another slightly irritable look.
