“Thank you,” she says, slapping the pool, hard, with her hand, water flying. “I may not be book smart, but I am street smart.”
“I always say I’d rather be street smart than book smart, otherwise you won’t know how to survive in this world.”
“I love to write music, I play the piano, but none of that is, like, normal to my family.”
“Preach, sister,” I say. “When I told my parents I wanted to be an actor, my father laughed in my face. And they both died without seeing me make it.” I hesitate as the words hit me harder than I imagined. “I still want to make it. I still want to prove to people that I did it. I still want to prove to myself that I’m talented.”
“So do I,” Ava says.
She holds up her hand, and I high-five it.
“I have a boyfriend, Gabe,” she offers. “My parents and grandma know I’m seeing someone, but they would hate him if they ever met him.”
“Is he hot?” I ask.
Ava releases a girlish giggle. “Of course! Do I look like a girl who would date a boy who wasn’t hot?”
“No. Do I?” I ask. She laughs again. “How old is he?”
“Eighteen. Too young for you.”
“Eighteen, high school, or eighteen, college?” I ask. “There’s a big difference.”
“Eighteen dropout,” she clarifies. “He’s a musician, and my family thinks the arts are a ticket either to being poor or to hell.”
“Well, I’m sure they’re just concerned about your future and his influence on you,” I say.
“You, too?” she asks, moving away from me. “I thought you’d see it differently.”
“As an actor and writer,” I say, “I see it from every point of view. But I will give you this: Older people always tend to think poorly of artists. It’s easier to take the safe route in this world. It’s easier to fit in and just get by. Try being gay and in musical theater. I had a target on my back from elementary school.”
“Can’t I just be a kid?” Ava asks. “Sean is, like, this robot, programmed for success. No time for fun. I just want to be a teenager, but I feel like if I don’t have the next forty years planned out, I’m a failure. It’s not fair.”
“Ava?”
She stops and rotates in the water until she is facing me. I continue.
“Let me tell you something: I don’t know what you believe. Hell, I don’t even know what I believe still, but I do believe this: Someone in this universe made each of us to be unique. And we spend our entire lives letting the world deplete us of our gifts one day at a time until we’re not even close to being the people we once dreamed of becoming. I’ve never had my next day figured out, much less the next forty years. I don’t plot out every detail of my life. I’m not handcuffed to the norms of the world. I can be who I’m meant to be, and I believe that—just like your Great-Uncle Teddy and all the men in there who are my family—my light changes not only those around us but also the world.”
Ava tilts her head back, sun on her face, hair trailing in the water. She looks like a child for a moment, a girl on vacation, a young woman free from the troubles of the world.
“Can I ask you a question?” I ask.
Ava doesn’t respond. I take her inertia as confirmation.
“What was it like to find your grandfather?”
Her body spasms in the water as if she’s had an electric shock, and she flails her arms in the water until she’s upright and has steadied herself. I ready myself to be verbally dismembered by the girl I now remember who walked into the house and not the kinder, gentler intruder who has recently overtaken her body.
“Thank you for asking,” she finally says, her voice breaking. “No one has asked me that.”
I nod and wait until she is ready to talk.
“Grandpa was the first person in my life who’s ever died,” she says. “I mean, I had a goldfish named Goldy...”
“So clever,” I interrupt.
Ava gives me the finger.
