He had no idea how he would make his living once he did get that sheepskin. Did anybody hire people with film degrees? Or would he still be going Do you want to supersize that, ma’am? when he hit fifty? That wasn’t what he thought of as the American dream.

And so he tried to finish as slowly as he could. UCSB was a good school for that, and Goleta an even better town. If it wasn’t the party capital of the USA, he didn’t know what would be. The student newspaper listed a cocktail of the week-for people over twenty-one only, the pious disclaimer always said. One of the spring rituals was couch burning: getting publicly rid of furniture too beat up for even students to stand. The Goleta Fire Department did not approve, which probably worried nobody who didn’t work for the Goleta FD.

Another ritual was going home for summer, or at least part of summer. Going home, for Marshall, meant the house where he’d grown up, the house where Dad still lived. He’d see Mom, sure, but he couldn’t stay with her. The condo she shared with Teo Acosta didn’t have room for guests, and they’d made it plain they wouldn’t have wanted any anyhow.

Marshall didn’t know what to make of his folks’ breakup. What kid ever does? His father said as little about it as he possibly could. When he had to say something, his jaw clenched even tighter than usual. Mom would talk at the drop of a hat, or without one. But Marshall had seen long before she left Dad that you couldn’t count on everything she said.

When he came home after finals this summer, he found his father reading a book about the geology of Yellowstone Park. In a way, that wasn’t too surprising. Dad had gone there on vacation, after all. The card he’d sent Marshall featured something called the Fishing Cone, and was postmarked at Old Faithful Station. That was kind of cool. Even so…