door opens, then closes. I’m staring at the table again. It’s white, has a couple of coffee mug stains and the table isn’t interested in crushing my dreams.
“We’re not doing this to hurt you.” Mom’s voice is soft and sweet. If we were home, we’d be lying on my bed, and she’d stroke her fingers through my hair. I’d be a millionaire if I had a penny for every time this scene has played out between us. “We’re doing this to help you.”
I suck in a breath and slowly release it. The good news is that my chest aches less, so I guess I will survive the stab wound that conversation created.
“Most people your age have a focus by now,” Mom continues, and I wish she’d stop. Do other people’s parents know when to stop? Do they understand that less is sometimes more?
“Whether it be sports or academics or a hobby. We have tried so many different things with you—dance, theater arts, numerous instruments, what feels like a hundred different sports. We have given you a million opportunities for you to find your focus, but you never focus.”
“The coding is different,” I say. “When I’m programming there’s this rush in my blood, and it just feels right.”
Mom gathers papers in front of her and places them in a folder in such a slow motion that it’s obvious she’s thinking her next words through. “We’ve heard this before, and if your father and I weren’t persistent with you helping him with the campaign, you would be graduating next year with a college application that says you have the inability to be focused and responsible. Do you really not see it? One of the reasons you were given a position in the campaign is because we need you to appear focused and driven. By having a steady position with the campaign over the past few years, you look exactly like a determined young lady ready to conquer the world instead of a teen who has no idea what she wants to do with her life. Yes, who your father is could open doors for you, but that’s not what we want for you. Don’t you want to be the woman who opens doors for herself?”
I nod, because I have never wanted things to happen because of my father.
“Life is cruel,” Mom says. “It’s hard. Don’t be sad because your father and I are trying to help you avoid the roads that cause pain. Do you have any idea how much I wanted a parent who was involved and supportive when I was younger? Do you know how badly your father wished he had the opportunities you do? We’re not trying to hurt you. We’re trying to help.”
Pain. It’s something both of my parents understand. My mother had every possession she could think of, but her father was a monster, and Dad’s father died when he was young. While my father had a great mom, he understood hunger pains far more than anyone should. Yes, my grandmother had the land, but sometimes farming the land didn’t pay out like they needed, and she stubbornly refused to sell.
Guilt pounds me like a hammer. “I should have told you about the internship.”
Mom stands, places her fingers under my chin and forces me to meet her gaze. Her blue eyes are soft, the stroke of her finger against my hot cheek softer. “I love you, and I hate being harsh with you, but the next few months are crucial for your father and me. We need you. I can’t help but think that if your father and I were more direct with Henry, like we’re being with you today, that he’d still be a part of our family. Henry made terrible mistakes, and I don’t want to see you make terrible mistakes, as well. I understand what real pain is, and everything I’m saying to you, everything I do for you, it’s to keep you from that pain.”
“Henry’s happy,” I whisper.
Mom grows incredibly sad. “He regrets his choices, and he’s too proud to admit he needs our help. I’m starting to wonder if he’s trying to turn you against us so he can make himself feel better—to justify his own bad choices. I know you love him, and I would never tell you to stay away from him, but I am asking you to be careful. Don’t let him influence you away from us.”
A tug-of-war. Mom and Dad pulling on one side. Henry on the other. Problem is, I remember how distant Henry was the summer before he left. Never home. Angry all the time. Moody. It was as if an alien had taken control of his body. “What did Henry do?”
“He doesn’t want you to know, and we promised we wouldn’t tell. Someday, he’ll come home, and we want to keep our promises. Just think of this as a lesson to listen to us. Henry didn’t and he made a mess. You think you know what you want, but trust me, you don’t. Seventeen is too young. Just let us make the decisions for you. You’ll have the rest of your adult life to make all the decisions you want. But these choices now, they’re too big for you to make and the consequences are too dire if you choose wrongly.”
After all my parents have done for me, all the sacrifices they made, both of them coming from painful childhoods, I have to listen. Bruises for Mom, and a farm that barely broke even for Dad, yet they both climbed from misery to success.
I nod, Mom kisses my cheek and she leaves. I have three minutes until I have to pretend in public that the last few minutes didn’t come close to breaking me.
Focus. Mom says I have none, but I do and I’m going to prove it to them. I have to be perfect over the next few months. Dot every i. Cross every t. Show them how passionate I am about coding and prove to them I have focus. I’ll show them responsible. I’ll wow them at every turn. I’ll do everything they need me to do and more.
In the meantime, I have to lie one more time.
The world is eerily hazy as I cross the room, dig the letter out of my bag and unfold it. This letter doesn’t go to the school, but to the company. My counselor won’t know anything until the fall which means Dad has lost his mole.
I’ll have to tell Mom and Dad, when classes resume, but until then I have three months to write as much as I can on this code. By then, hopefully, I’ll be so far into the project, they’ll be amazed that I balanced a schedule full of being on the campaign trail, fund-raisers and this coding that they’ll have no other option but to permit me the opportunity for the internship.
By the end of this, my parents will see me as a success.
“You stay here.” Cynthia, as it turns out, has an intern. She’s in college, and she points at the spot I’m standing in as if I’m a six-year-old with ADD. “Right here. Until the governor calls you onstage.”
In the convention center, at the front of the stage, there are cameras. Row after row of them, and there are people next to them and people behind them. Also in the crowd are the people who have planned to come and see the governor talk, people who are tired of being in the blazing heat and are taking a break inside, and people who are curious to watch the circus.
Come one, come all. Watch the politician smile and lie. Then watch the poor boy say he’s sorry for a crime he didn’t commit, and while I’m at it, watch me pull an elephant out of my ass.
“Once you are onstage, the governor will shake your hand.” Cynthia doesn’t bother looking up from her cell as she talks to me, and with Axle not around, she’s lost the sweet voice. “You will then turn to the podium. The speech is already there. Read it, I’ll select the reporters, you answer the questions and when you’re done speaking, look at me. I’ll signal to you when it’s time for you to walk offstage, and then you will go backstage and wait in the back room until I tell you it’s time to go.”
It’s the last part that catches my attention. “Why do I have to go in the back?”
“In case a stray reporter would want to talk to you. You only talk to people I approve. If anyone ever approaches you without my consent, you tell them that they are to talk to me. Then you contact me immediately. Got it?”
One more chain locks itself around my neck. “Got it.”
Applause breaks out in the crowd, and a man in a suit shakes hands with people as he