Page 45 of Something Rad
She throws her hands up in front of her. “I– I don’t know. I just…I want to…create something.Things.”
I raise my brows, but don’t say anything, pushing her to continue. The tactic works, and the minute she starts nervously babbling, she can’t seem to stop.
“I want to…I guess…be able to… I want to make stories.Writethem. I want to create moments that makeother peoplefeel something. I don’t know how to explain it, because I don’t even haveitentirely nailed down. But I want to write. Anything I can. I want to tell stories. Write books. Make movies. I want to be able to reach people all across the world and leave them with something they’ve never experienced before. I want to evoke emotions in them that they didn’t know existed. I– I want to leave something behind. I just want to create something that will be remembered…” she trails off, shaking her head. “I know that doesn’t make any sense.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. Cooper meets my eyes, and it looks like she just snapped back to reality. A look of embarrassment washes over her, and she looks away again. I swallow, my throat suddenly feeling dry. “I get it,” I say.
“You…do?” she asks.
“Yeah, I do,” I nod. “I get it. You want to do something rad.”
Cooper’s face relaxes, and a confused chuckle escapes out of her. “Um, yeah,” she says. “I guess that’s a really simple way to put it.” She pushes a lock of her red hair behind her ear, obviously still uncomfortable.
“And that’s why you work in the library after school?” I ask. “Because…you want to write books?”
“It’s…more complicated than that.”
“Well, explain it, then.”
Cooper blows out an exasperated breath. “I want to write,” she echoes me. “At a screenwriting program…at NYU.”
“NYU?” I repeat. “As in…New York University?”
“Yeah,” she nods. She looks at me for a while, gathering her thoughts, and I can see her features re-hardening into the anger she had a few minutes ago by the second. She lets out a humorless laugh, shaking her head.
“What?” I question her.
“Well, it's just…my college plan? The one I had all figured out months ago with myperfectly content and functioning two-parent family?” she says, throwing my words at me from earlier today. “Well…turns out that’s not quite the case.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“For multiple reasons,” she says, “but mainly…it’s gonna cost a pretty penny. And we barely even have aregularpenny. Not that that’s something you’d be able to understand.” She tries to walk away and continue sorting books, but I just follow right after her.
“Wait, so, that’s why you work at Groovy Movie? You’re saving up money for college?” She doesn’t answer me. “And…and you work at the library for your resume… Meaning what? You’re trying to get some scholarship money?”
Cooper scoffs out a laugh. “Yeah,somescholarship money isn’t going to cut it.”
“What does that mean?” Cooper seems to be on auto-pilot at this point, zooming between the bookshelves so fast that I’m having to nearly jog to keep up with her. “Cooper?”
She shakes her head, barely glancing at me. “It means that I needthescholarship. One of the three full-ride scholarships that NYU offers to the top students admitted into the screen-writing program.”
I skid to a stop next to her. “And you got that?”
“The scholarship?” she asks, not looking my way as she scans the shelf in front of her. “No, not yet. They don’t announce the recipients until April of next year.”
“But the program? The screenwriting one? You’ve already been accepted into it?”
Cooper pauses, blinking a few times. “Yeah. Yeah I was.”
“Cooper…that’sawesome,” I say, shaking my head in true amazement.
She slowly turns to look at me. “Why am I telling you all of this?” she asks. She shakes her head in what looks like irritation with herself. She tries to turn around, but I walk around her side, stopping in front of her.
“Is that why you were in a bad mood today?” I ask. “Because you’re stressed about the scholarship stuff?” I don't know why, but now that I’ve got Sara Beth Cooper talking, I can’t seem to stop.
She rubs a hand down her face. “Robbie,enough.”
“Is thatwhy?” I push, stepping closer to her.
