“Right,” he says. “Sure. But just to make a counterargument—”
“Here we go.”
“—you’ve been trying to do it on your own all summer, and clearly that hasn’t worked. So maybe it would help if you had some moral support.”
She considers this for a moment, then swivels back around and opens the laptop again. The clouds, almost imperceptibly, start to shift into shapes: a rabbit and a guitar and a wave. Mae leans forward and stops the video again. “Nope. Sorry. Can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she says, “I love it. Or at least Idid.”
“Okay, let’s say it’s horrible.”
“What?”
“Maybe,” he says, “it’s the worst thing anyone’s ever made. Maybe it’s a colossal failure of a piece of art. A disaster on every imaginable level.”
She blinks at him. “Is this supposed to be a pep talk?”
“Just stick with me,” he says. “I’m getting there.”
“Okay, so…maybe it sucks. If it didn’t, I would’ve been one of the four percent of people accepted to the program. But I wasn’t, and now I don’t know if I can stand to watch it again through their eyes.”
“Aha,” he says. “That’s just it. Do you know how often my students scoff at the paintings I show them in class?Professor Weber, you do realize that’s just a red square, right?I could do that in my sleep.But the thing is, those kids are being jackasses.”
Mae laughs. “Are you trying to say that the admissions people at USC are jackasses too?”
“He’s trying to say that art is subjective,” says Pop, who has appeared in the doorway, still wearing his suit and tie from the gallery. “Just because they didn’t love your film doesn’t mean it’s not great. And just because they had a different opinion about it doesn’t mean you have to change yours.”
“Actually,” Dad says with a grin, “I was gonna say the thing about jackasses. But his was better.”
Pop shakes his head, but he’s still looking at Mae. “You were really proud of that film,” he says with a smile. “I guess I don’t see why that has to be any different now.”
She glances back at her computer. “Garrett’s always saying—”
They both let out strangled groans.
“Garrett,”Dad says, rolling his eyes so hard that Mae worries they might get stuck like that. She knows he’s mostly teasing; they act the same with any boy she brings home. But Garrett’s flashy red car and swanky Park Avenue address haven’t helped matters.
Pop pushes off the doorframe and walks over to sit beside Dad on the bed, their shoulders touching. “Hasn’t he gone back to the city yet?”
Mae had met Garrett at the start of summer, when they were the only two people at an art house screening ofCinema Paradiso.She’d seen it a million times, of course; it was her grandmother’s favorite. And though it was a bit sappy for Mae’s taste, Nana was in the hospital at the time, and something about sitting in the darkened theater and watching the flickering screen felt almost reverential, the closest thing she had to a prayer.
Afterward, she discovered Garrett waiting for her in the lobby, as if they’d planned to meet there. With his square jaw and blond hair, he looked like he should be anywhere else on a Saturday night: at a party or a baseball game or possibly even a movie premiere. Instead he was holding a half-empty bucket of popcorn in the crook of one arm, and he lifted his eyebrows expectantly. “So? What did you think?”
Caught off guard, Mae studied him for a moment, then shrugged. “Brilliant, if overly sentimental.”
“Right,” Garrett said, looking thoughtful, “except the sentimentality is intentional. Which is why I think it works.”
“Even well-intentioned nostalgia can be saccharine.”
“Only if it’s manipulative,” he argued, “which it’s not in this case.”
Mae squinted at him. “What are you, a film critic or something?”
“Aspiring,” he said matter-of-factly. “What are you, an expert in Italian cinema?”
“Aspiring,” she said with a grin.
