If I'm Being Honest(10)
I’ll never forget his exact words: “that kind of thing.” As if everything his daughter wanted and hoped for and needed could be casually compacted into “that kind of thing” and dismissed.
Only when I was older did I learn that “busy” wasn’t a made-up excuse. He runs a venture capital firm in Philly where he handles a worldwide portfolio of technology investments. He graduated from Wharton at the top of his class, and his firm’s invested in over two hundred companies with a market value of $2 billion. I’m taking Economics in the Entrepreneur’s Market this semester to be eligible for his firm’s internship this summer. While working with my dad won’t be like living with him, it’ll be something. It’ll be a chance to follow in his footsteps, hopefully in the direction of success like his. It’ll bring me into his world, if not his life.
Which I can’t help wanting. I’m not naive—I know he’s a jerk. But he’s the only other parent I have. To my mom, I’ll always be a tool to extort my father. To him, I could be worth more. I just have to earn his respect.
I run through crosswalks and past parked cars, from Oxford to Olympic. I know the way home by heart. I’ve run probably every block of the neighborhood since my dad moved Mom and me into our current apartment six years ago, when I started at Beaumont Middle School. I pass two dumpling restaurants next door to each other, the smell wafting invitingly through the doors. Someone’s spray-painted a mural of Seth Rogen looking wistfully at what I think is meant to be a female Yoda. Three girls are taking selfies in front.
I feel tired when I reach the elaborate Korean Baptist church, but I keep going. Near the end of the run, my phone buzzes, and I come to a halt, scuffing the toes of my shoes into the curb. I open my email to find a message from Chelsea Wyndam, a name I vaguely recognize. She’s one of my dad’s personal assistants. Because Daniel Bright rarely writes his own emails, obviously. Never to his daughter.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Carol
Mr. Bright said he’d handle it.
A little of the pressure eases off my chest.
When I get home a few miles later I find Mom on the computer, her eyes red and puffy. Though she hasn’t changed out of her bathrobe, she has job listings up on the screen.
I don’t need to ask what happened. I know. Dad handled it. He called and threatened to withhold the rent if she doesn’t get a job. He probably told her she was pathetic, told her she was fortunate to have been beautiful enough to win a night with him eighteen years ago. He probably reminded her that the second I’m out of the house, she’s on her own, and she’d better hope I take care of her because no one else will.
I’ve heard it before.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she says as I walk past. I know what’s going on here. Whenever Dad tells her she’ll depend on me, she’s unusually contrite. She knows if she loses me, she loses the roof over her head. Part of me wants to fire back something nasty at her. But I know better.
“It’s okay. Just try, Mom,” I say from the hallway. “Try to prove him wrong.”
I walk into my perfectly orderly room and out of the uncertainty of my mom’s life. I can’t change her, can’t control any of it. All I can do is make sure I don’t end up the type of person who gives up in the face of a challenge. Who lets other people tell her who she is.
I peel my shirt off over my gray sports bra. Before I toss it in the hamper, I recognize the grass stain on the sleeve and remember when I fell in the rain and landed on my shoulder. Andrew was running with me. He helped me up, and we walked home even though it was pouring.
You’re a bitch, Cameron Bright.
Andrew’s wrong, and I won’t just sit here and hope he comes around. I won’t be my mom, waiting on the couch for things to go her way. I want him too much for that. I’m going to prove to him exactly who I am. I’ll do whatever it takes.
Five
BEAUMONT PREP REALLY WANTS TO BE ONE of the venerable prep schools of Connecticut or New Hampshire or wherever. We have a coat of arms, and wooden tables in the dining hall give the school a historic character. But we’re in California, where historic isn’t Gothic or colonial. The architecture is mission-style, the buildings beige and the roofs red-tiled. We don’t have uniforms either. Thank god.
I walk up the steps and between the precisely trimmed rose bushes flanking the front entrance, earning more than a couple of admiring stares from my male classmates for my clingy T-shirt dress. I parted my hair on the side, and it all hangs down on my right shoulder. I duck directly toward my first class.
Walking into Ethics, I finalize the plan in my head. I need to prove to Andrew that I’m a good person. When I know he’s watching, I’ll walk up to Paige and offer the most generous apology humanly possible. I only have to wait until fourth period, when I have class with the two of them. Andrew will understand he had me wrong, and he and I will be an item by the end of the day.
While Mr. Chen hands out today’s thought experiment—the Trolley Problem—I find my seat next to Morgan. I turn, wanting to be certain Paige is here today, and a momentary panic fills me when I don’t find her.
Until the girl in the back in a knee-length black dress and scuffed Converse raises her head. Paige has re-dyed her hair into a mildly less offensive shade of red and chopped it into a messy bob. I can’t imagine why. If she thinks a crappy haircut will catch Jeff Mitchel’s attention, she’s in for a rude awakening.