medium · Enhanced ACT reading
The narrator recalls an exchange with her grandfather.
When I told my grandfather I had been accepted, he set down his cup and said, "Good. Now you can stop pretending you wanted it." I laughed, because that was how we spoke to each other—each remark a small dare to be contradicted. But he did not laugh, and he did not look away, and in the quiet that followed I understood he had not been joking, or rather that he had been joking in the way he always did: saying the truest thing he knew and trusting the lightness of his voice to carry it past my defenses. He had watched me apply, the way you watch someone wade into cold water—certain they will turn back, half hoping you are wrong.
The narrator's statement that her grandfather "had been joking in the way he always did" primarily serves to:
- reveal that the grandfather habitually used a light tone to deliver observations he meant entirely seriously.
- suggest that the grandfather rarely said what he meant and relied on the narrator to guess his intent.
- establish that the narrator and her grandfather routinely deceived each other to avoid conflict.
- indicate that the grandfather was, in this instance, uncharacteristically unable to maintain his usual humor.
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