“For nine years.”
“Wow.” Esme was blinking at him as if she was trying to square that with her image of him. “Like for little kids or big kids?”
“Big. Eleventh- and twelfth-grade English. American lit for theseniors and college composition for the juniors. Every other year I also taught AP English Lit.”
“Wow,” she said again, and he had no idea why she was finding it so remarkable that a novelist had previously been an English teacher.
“Do you really want to know what I think?” he asked.
“That’s why I asked you.”
“You’re lucky that you have these years to do what you want. To learn and explore. Don’t overthink it too much. Major in what calls to you.”
“Then I can always go to teachers college,” she said, deadpan.
He quirked a smile. He couldn’t help it. “Then you can always go to teachers college.”
Actually, she would make a good teacher. She had her mother’s dry sense of humor and openness to experience. But how often did children of Hollywood royalty become teachers?
“What calls to me is being a ballet dancer, but unfortunately I have terrible turnout and I like to eat. That was why I was taking French, you know, so I could move to Paris and dance.”
“Really?” Blair said.
“No, not really.” Esme rolled her eyes self-deprecatingly. “Just in my dreams.”
“Could you be a dance critic?” Jack asked.
She looked like he’d slapped her, her mouth and eyes wide. “CouldI be a dance critic?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“What would I major in if I wanted to be a dance critic?”
Jack didn’t know how a person became a dance critic. And more importantly, was he overstepping? He used to have conversations like this with some of his high school kids, and he’d always felt like it was a lot of pressure—and in those cases, their parents weren’t hovering.
He looked at Blair. Blair looked at him.
She made an on-with-it gesture.
“Journalism, I would think. Or do they have a BA in dance where you are? Maybe some combination of the two?”
“Journalism.” She nodded decisively, and she looked just as he imagined her mother did in meetings.
“Probably more important than what you actually study, though, is experience. Get yourself on the student newspaper. See if there are local papers that use freelancers.”
“Can I use you as a reference on my résumé?”
He laughed.
She looked at him blankly.
Oh shit, she was serious. “Uh, sure?”
The conversation shifted to summer plans. It sounded like Coachella was a firm tradition.
“Oh, oh!” Esme exclaimed. “Maybe I could be a music critic, too.”
“You know every band out there,” Blair said, “so that actually makes a lot of sense to me.”
