Junior Year Box Set

The key to making it all work was to do it and make it look natural. I think that’s where football helps me. To pass a football well, you have to do a hundred little things right. What separated the excellent quarterbacks from the good ones was that they made the hundred little things effortless. There are a lot of people who come to Hollywood with the dream of making it big. They may have even been the stars in their high school productions and were told they had what it takes. The same can be said of quarterbacks. I don’t think you can really quantify the difference, but you can see it on the screen.

Like everything that counts, you have to put the time and effort into it to be any good. So, instead of hitting the beach, I was in learning new lines that were just written. The sad part was we could probably expect some more changes right before we shot the scene. That was the last characteristic that made a good actor: the ability to adapt to change.

The good thing about getting better was that it took less time for me to learn my lines. Leah and I were done in a couple of hours.

“What are you doing after this?” Leah asked.

“I wanted to get some surfing in. Then I planned on some dinner.”

“Would you mind if I went with you?” she asked.

“Do you surf?”

“I did grow up here. Do you have a board I might borrow?” Leah asked.

“Yeah. I surf at Rita’s beach house. They have everything you might want. Let me go back to my trailer. I need to get my driver, and we can be on our way.”

“Sure, I’ll get my car and follow you.”

I returned to my trailer to get my sunglasses and collect Fritz. When I got there, Fritz was sound asleep on my couch. I could see he was working hard.

“Freeze, maggot!” I yelled.

Fritz fell off the couch and glared at me.

“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” he grumped.

“Come on, let’s go surfing.”

That woke him up. I pointed out Leah and told Fritz she’d be following us.

While we drove to the beach house, I called my mom. She told me that the bank had come down on their price on the farm and was prepared to finance it. Mom said we could close on it by the end of the year. She told me my grandma would be willing to help get the farm up and running, but wasn’t sure if she wanted to do it full time.

Caryn would be setting up another company separate from my umbrella company, David Dawson LLC, if we did this. She wanted to name it Dawson Farms. The deal I had with my grandma, uncle, and Mr. Hass was under a separate company.

“David, the bank has another plot of land on the other side of the river they want to add to the deal. If you take it, they’d be willing to discount it to forty-five cents on the dollar compared to what it’s valued at. They need to get it off their books,” Mom said.

“The only problem I foresee is that getting equipment to it would be a pain. I would bet it’s nearly ten miles to get from farm to farm,” I commented.

“Actually, it’s twelve,” she said. “I had John and Mr. Hass look at it, and they have both a short-term and a long-term solution. The short-term is to lease it out to a farmer down the road who’d be willing to rent the land from you on a year-to-year basis. The long-term solution would be to put in a bridge to connect the two farms.”

“Did Uncle John run some numbers to see if this will work?” I asked.

“He’s working with Caryn on that. I can make the offer contingent on an inspection. That should give us a couple of weeks to decide if we want to go through with it. We need to get the bank started on the loan if we want to close before year-end.”

That told me why Mom was pushing the deal. She’d even given me an out, if the numbers didn’t make sense.

“Okay, get the ball rolling and let everyone know when we need to have a decision on this. Thanks for everything you’ve done on this,” I said.

“You’re welcome. I’ll advise everyone that we’re moving forward. Your dad will sign the contract.”

I smiled. This was something I didn’t entirely understand and was glad my mom was looking out for me. I wanted to make sure I gained the knowledge myself at some point. My family wouldn’t always be around to look out for me.

◊◊◊

Surfing was fun. A few more high school boys showed up than usual. I also noticed some girls who came to watch us. Leah was a lot of fun. Only one paparazzo was lurking. Leah had worn a skimpy bikini. I expect she knew there’d be someone there to take her picture.

I got to know the surfer who’d purchased the custom board. His name was Al Faulkenburg. He was a good surfer, and all the others seemed to be okay with him. Al was a smaller guy, maybe five-five, with long hair. He obviously thought he was cool. Sometimes smaller guys try to puff themselves up. At least, that was the vibe I’d gotten off him.

“I looked you up on IMDb and told some people that we surfed with you,” Al said.

I had some red flags go up. Al had been a jerk to me when I first started surfing, but now that he had looked me up, he was acting like my friend. My conversation with Uncle John came to the forefront of my mind.