“And how much does it cost?” her mom asked, her voice quiet, one eyebrow raised pointedly.

Laurel was silent.

“Listen,” her mom said, after a pause, “in a few months, that’s something we can consider if you still hate school. But until our property in Orick sells, we don’t have the money for anything extra. You know that.”

Laurel looked down at the counter, her shoulders slumped.

The main reason they’d moved to Crescent City in the first place was because her dad had bought a bookstore down on Washington Street. Early in the year, he’d been driving through and saw a For Sale sign on a bookstore that was going out of business. Laurel remembered listening to her parents talk for weeks about what they could do to buy the store — a shared dream since they’d first gotten married — but the numbers never added up.

Then, in late April, a guy named Jeremiah Barnes approached Laurel’s dad at his job in Eureka and expressed interest in their property in Orick. Her dad had come home practically bouncing with excitement. The rest happened in such a whirlwind Laurel could hardly remember what had come first. Her parents spent several days at the bank in Brookings and by early May, the bookstore was theirs and they were moving from their small cabin in Orick to an even smaller house in Crescent City.

But the months crept by and still things weren’t finalized with Mr. Barnes. Until they were, money was tight, her dad worked long hours at the store, and Laurel was stuck in high school.

Her mom laid one hand over hers, warm and comforting. “Laurel, aside from the cost, you also need to learn to conquer new things. This will be so good for you. Next year you can take AP classes and you could join a team or a club. Those all look really good on college applications.”