Page 120 of Hail Marry
He scoffs.
“I’m serious, Dallin. Math skills like this are valuable. They’ll open a lot of doors.”
“Last time I saw you, you were trying to convince me not to give up on football. Now you’re saying I should pursue math?”
“I’m saying develop every skill you can. Pursue football. Pursue math. Keep your options open. You can always close doors later, but if you don’t bother opening them while you can, you pretty much guarantee you’ll end up doing something that makes you miserable. The clichéknowledge is poweris true.”
“Money is power. And I don’t have that.”
I shrug. “I’m not going to argue against that. Money definitely matters. But it’s not the only thing that matters, and if you need proof of that, just look at that hot guy over there.” I point to Luca, who happens to look up at that moment.
His eyes fix on mine, and my heart skips a few beats.
“He’s only made it this far with hard work,” I say, “and by taking people’s doubts and using them for motivation. If you want to stick it to the man, the best way to do that is by proving the man wrong and succeeding when you have every excuse not to.”
Dallin’s quiet as he stares at me.
“Work with the things you have control over,” I say. “Then you’ll be in a better position to make the most of any luck you do happen upon.”
“I don’t get lucky.”
“Not withthatattitude you don’t.” I toss a wrapper at him, which he deflects at the last second. “Make your own luck.”
He snorts again as I walk away, but when I catch sight of him a minute later, his eyes are glazed over. He’s thinking.
“How’d that go?” Luca asks.
“Impossible to tell. Worst-case scenario, I gave him a bunch of unsolicited advice and a bunch of cavities.”
“What more could he ask for?” Luca teases, slinging his arm around my shoulders.
“Money,” I say. “He’s convinced he’s got no prospects without it and that everyone but him gets lucky.”
Luca’s gaze flits to Dallin’s corner. “I know that feeling.”
“That’s what I told him. But I thinkmaybeI convinced him to try to make his own luck.”
Luca looks down at me with a distinctly appreciative light in his eyes. “Of course you did. How?”
“By telling him to give money the middle finger, basically. But secretly?” I look up at Luca. “I get what he’s saying, and I still wish he’d gotten one of those scholarships at the camp. The kid could use a leg up.”
“Sometimes having someone who believes in you is even better.”
“It’shard to know exactly what questions they’ll ask at the interview,” Preston says through the speaker as Luca and I sit on the couch at home. “They’re trained to ask the type that’ll tell them what they need to know.”
I shoot Luca a look that saysoh joy. “I take it they aren’t the warm fuzzy types who give slaps on the wrist now and then?”
“Correct. They have one job, and they take it seriously: identifying people who’ve abused the immigration system and seeing that they don’t get away with it.”
“Perfect,” I say.
Preston goes over a list of potential questions with us. On the surface, they’re innocuous, but some of them aren’t easy for us—and that’s when we’re sitting next to each other and Preston can’t see our guilty faces.
“Maybe we should just tell them the truth,” Luca says once we get off the phone. “That we didn’t realize how serious what we were doing was?—”
“And that your agent was more than happy to egg us on,” I add. “Not to mention he was the one who even suggested getting married.”
“I don’t think he really meant it.”
