Smirking, I reply, “It’s mini golf.”
This time, it’s her that pinches my skin and me yelping.
“Hey! Who’s the jerk now?”
“Still you!”
I chuckle, shrug, and I point my club again.
“You’re overthinking it. Just tell me what you see when you look at the buildings.”
She groans. “I told you. It’s mini golf. It’s a bunch of holes, only one of them is right and the others are all wrong.”
“Errr!” The buzzer sound that comes out of my mouth and my club hitting the green are timed together. “That’s the mindset you need to get out of. There’s more than one way to your goal.”
“I told you I used to come here when I was kid.” She reminds me, walking further into the green and pointing at the graybuilding two from the right. “I know this is the one that takes you to the other side.”
“You’re not wrong, but that’s not what I said.”
“Yes, it is.”
My legs cross, supporting myself with my club. “I said there was more than one way. Didn’t say anything about how to get there.”
I wait. I hope. Liliana doesn’t say anything, just walks around to examine the other buildings and dip her club into a few of the tubes before looking back at me, confused.
I sigh.
“Brainstorm. Think of something out-of-the-box that will get you there, even if it goes against what you know as the right answer. Be creative.”
Liliana takes another lap around the green, focus fixed on those damn buildings because that’s what she’s been told is the key to winning. Frustration might have settled in for someone else watching this unfold so painfully slow, but not me.
She’s spent, what I imagine has been years, creating a version of herself that only accepts perfection. Her attitude might trick people into thinking she’s just a good student, but her desperation to be good enough for something, someone, is too severe to be purely reliant on transcripts.
And no one jumps into an arts program, especially not post-grad, because they think it’d be fun. Not Liliana, who has based everything she knows about herself on what a professor decides is passable.
She loves to write. That was obvious when she enrolled. She’s amazing at it. That was obvious the first time we worked on our project together. And again, when she let me read her drafts. And minutes ago, when she came up with a monologue about Boston.
I can’t change how deeply rooted the issue of her self-confidence is. I can tell her the reasons why she needs to give herself a chance, trust in her talents and support herself. I can guide her as much to the answer as possible, but she has to do the rest.
“The rocks!” Liliana screams and tosses her club. A group of teenagers two holes down glance back to stare, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “It’s the rocks! You can bounce a golf ball off them, jump over the shorter buildings and get to the end!”
The answer sounds so sweet coming from her. I give her a thumbs up. She jogs over and starts high fiving me excessively. I don’t care if my hands start to sting with the impact. I’m too distracted by the pride tumbling out of her.
“It’s off course, but it totally works! That’s what you were trying to say, wasn’t it?”
“Exactly. You got it.”
“That’s so smart!” Her hazel eyes are sparkling with admiration and awe. “How did you come up with that?! You’re so intuitive!”
Liliana high fives me a final time before Clem calls us over to meet her ladybug friend.
I’ll tell her the truth later.
As much as I wish I could take credit for it, jumping the rocks wasn’t my idea. It was my mom’s secret play; the one she mastered and used to surpass me every time we came here. I never figured out how to do it. This is the only hole I could never beat my mom at, and that skill that belonged to her and no one else.
Now, it’ll be Liliana’s.
Half an hour later, when Clementine’s eyes are drooping, I scoop her into my arms. Liliana holds our clubs in one hand, and with the other, she locks her fingers with mine as I lead her out.
