“Horse poop,” I said. “Perhaps I will become an equestrian.”

Dad scrunched up his face. “Saaket bash,” he hissed. Be quiet.

“I am,” I teased softly. My Iranian name is Saaket, which means “quiet” in Farsi. It’s one of my best jokes: “Be quiet!” “That’s my name!”

Dad didn’t laugh.

“When are you going to get serious, Saaket? This is your life. You need to stop playing games and plan for your future.”

Bingo. It would be his usual lecture. I rolled my eyes and slid lower into the tattered cushion to get comfortable. If there’s one thing Iranian parents love more than chelo kebab and their children, it’s making a point.

“You’re all over the place,” he said, waving his hands frantically. “Look at the opportunities you’ve already screwed up. High school! You get accepted to a very nice high school, but you hardly study. You’re pulling lousy grades.”

Jab.

“Last summer. I got you a job with Majid’s law firm. You quit after three weeks.”

Punch.

“And now, after I pulled every mediocre connection I have to get you an internship at the university lab, you’re giving up before you even start.”

Knockout.

He kept going, as if he hadn’t just put me down over and over: “You know, I was reading a study the other day by a very famous professor at Georgetown . . . Cecily Mallard. She’s a genius, Saaket. Really! They just gave her an award that is specifically for geniuses. The genius award, it’s—”

“Okay, Dad,” I moaned. “What did she say?”

My dad paused dramatically and pointed his finger upward, à la eureka. “Grit,” he said. “She discovered that the best predictor of success isn’t IQ or how wealthy your parents are, or even your grades. It’s grit. Do you know what that is?”

“Nope, but I’m sure—”

“It’s a person’s ability to stick with something. To focus. To really follow through. Tahammol. It’s treating everything you do like a marathon, not a sprint.”

“Come on, Dad, a summer internship isn’t a marathon. It’s, like, the JV track meet that nobody watches. I don’t need a participation ribbon for—”

“You’re missing the point, Saaket.”

“Scott,” I said curtly. “It’s Scott. I’ve been going by Scott since kindergarten.”

“Sorry,” he replied, only half-sincere. “Scott, you’re missing the point. When you set your mind on something, you need to give it a shot and persist.”

“Mouse poop.”

“Yes, mouse poop,” he said, gritting his teeth. “You were excited about it a few weeks ago. You were cracking jokes: ‘poopular’ this and ‘micropoopic’ that.”

I buried my face in my hands, wondering if my dad was at all embarrassed by the words he had uttered in a public place. Probably not.

He sighed deeply, as if I were the one exhausting him and not the other way around.

“You’re almost seventeen years old, Scott. In a few months you’ll be a senior, filling out applications for college. What in the world do you care about? What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”