He looks away from me. The tips of his ears turn pink, though, and his lips press into an angry line.
Nobody is looking at me, for that matter. They’re avoiding eye contact like I’m some kind of feral dog that needs to be put down. And that’s when I realize precisely how many people are witnessing this. How many of my fellow students are tapping out distress signals on the phones they’re cradling surreptitiously on their laps.
I can almost feel the Facebook posts springing up around me.
ZOMG. Some nobody just bitched out Blake Reynolds.
LOL did u hear she was on food stamps?
I look down at my stained sweater. She was dressed like a homeless person. I shit you not.
It’s going to be all over the internet in a matter of minutes.
“Are you done, Miss Chen?” Fred asks sarcastically.
I’m almost hyperventilating in panic, but then I realize how ridiculous I’m being. The one good thing about being a Tina Chen at Berkeley is that I’m indistinguishable from any of the other dozens of Tina Chens around. I can be as inappropriate as I want. I’m not googleable. I bow my head, letting my hair fall around my face like a curtain.
Someone else’s hand is in the air. “I think that’s really unfair to Blake,” someone up front pipes up. “We all know how hard he works, and how hard his dad works. They’ve definitely earned everything they have.”
Fine. They don’t want to acknowledge me as a person. Nothing’s really changed. I don’t have the time or the energy to care. But apparently, the class has turned into a referendum on Blake, and now everyone has to have their say.
“I really like the tap-to-call feature on my Tempest,” another girl puts in. “It’s genius. Blake deserves everything he has.”
It goes on like that for a few minutes. I take copious notes throughout the entire debacle. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck shit shit shit shit fuck fuck fuck, I write in my notebook in my neatest cursive. Everyone—Fred included—falls all over themselves to say how great Blake is. And then the tone shifts.
“I think some people need to stop blaming others for where they are. If some people stopped wasting energy on playing the victim, and started doing something instead, they’d get a lot farther in life.”
I hunch in on myself, preparing for even worse.
“Hey,” Blake says sharply.
He’s just two feet away from me. I’m not going to look at him.
But his tone is icy. “This has gone on long enough. Come on, guys. Enough of this crap. She’s right. We all know I won the nepotism lottery. I’m not an expert, and if I said something stupid, I’m glad she was willing to point it out.”
Silence falls in response. At the front of the class, Fred clears his throat, maybe now remembering that he has a job besides savaging students. “Right. Let’s…uh, let’s move on.”
And I? I do not want to feel grateful to Blake. I hate that nobody even recognized me as a person until Blake spoke up. And when I tilt my head to the side… I hate that he looks at me, that he gives me a silent nod, like he’s granted me his permission to criticize him.
I didn’t need his permission.
After class lets out, I take my time leaving so I don’t have to fake nonchalance on my way out.
The girl in front of me stands and then turns to me. “You know,” she murmurs in a low furtive voice, as if wanting to make sure nobody else hears her, “I thought you had a good point. I’m glad you said it. I didn’t want to.”
“Thanks.”
But I don’t want to talk, and so I wait until she goes. I consider whether my pen belongs in the front pocket or the side pocket of my backpack. I make sure my notebook is securely placed next to my textbooks. I check the zipper. Twice.
By the time I leave, the classroom is empty.
The hallway outside isn’t, though. There’s one person from class still there, and he’s the last person—the very last person in the world—that I want to talk to at the moment. He’s leaning against the wall, looking even more like a businessman than a student. He looks at me now. His eyes are the ridiculous blue of ocean waters on some tropical beach. They make me think of a spring break that I will never be able to afford.
“Hey,” he says.
I’m not sure how to respond. My hands are still shaking. I don’t think I can keep it together through a longer spat with him. I should have kept my mouth shut in the first place.
I give him the barest of nods and keep walking.
“Hey,” he repeats. “Tina.”
That does stop me. Fred didn’t know what to call me. How does Blake Reynolds know my name?
Slowly, I turn to him. I’ve never talked to him before today. Maybe he emailed someone while we were in class? One of his…people. Someone like Blake has to have people, right? He parked in an official visitor’s spot with impunity. Getting a class roster would hardly pose a problem.
But wait. Even if he got my name off the official class roster, he wouldn’t know I go by Tina. He’d only know my legal name—Xingjuan Chen.
I swallow.
And then he does something I’m not expecting. He gives me a sheepish smile. It’s so different from the cocky grin that he normally wears that I take a step back.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what?”
He shrugs. “You’re right. It’s not my place to say it doesn’t matter what people say about you. And I should have stopped that before it turned into a pile-on.” He indicates the room we just came from with a tilt of his head. “I was just taken aback.”
He looks at me like he expects me to shrug it all off, like I’m supposed to pat him on the shoulder and say that it’s okay.
But it’s not. And the fact that he thinks it can be just makes me feel worse. Nothing about my life is okay right now, and he can’t change that.
“Can I…” He takes a deep breath, and then, that cocky smile is back on his face, like he’s sure of himself again. “Can I get you coffee or something as an apology?”
He holds his hand out to me, like I’m supposed to shake it. When he does, his coat—impeccably tailored gray wool—pulls back from his sleeve. For a second, with his hand outstretched, I see dark ink against his wrist, the edge of a tattoo that seems completely at odds with everything I know about him.
For just that second, I wonder if I’m imagining it. His life has been an open book to the world ever since his father first put him in a television commercial at the tender age of twenty months.
Everyone knows everything about Blake Reynolds, boy prodigy, certain successor to Cyclone Systems. Everything…except I’ve never heard of that tattoo.
I take another step away from him, putting my hands behind my back.
“Let me explain something,” I say. “You get to park in a spot reserved for the Chancellor’s Office.”
He grimaces. “Yeah. I usually don’t. But when I started school, he…um.” He trails off, as if realizing that now is not the time to remind me that the entire university administration is no doubt slavering over the potential endowment boost his attendance represents.
“By contrast,” I say, “I have an hour between this class and my next one. If I can’t knock off one of my assignments in that time, I will be up until two tonight.”
His smile fades.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re probably a legitimately decent person. But I don’t have time for your apology.”
“Two-second version, then. I’m sorry I was clueless. I’ll try to do better.”
He looks at me, his eyes serious, and that damned something, that coiling awareness in my stomach starts up again. It almost makes me mad that he won’t let me walk off steeping in my anger. No; he has to take that away from me, too.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” I say, and I start to leave.
“Tina.”
I turn back reluctantly.
“You were right about almost everything you said,” he says. “But there was one thing you
were really wrong about.”
“Oh?”
He gives me another one of his smiles, and this one seems to curl around me, catching me up in a wave of warmth. “You said that I didn’t notice people like you.” His voice lowers. His eyes are relentlessly blue, and they cut into me. “That’s completely false. You’ve never been invisible to me. I saw you the first day we crossed paths, and I’ve been seeing you ever since.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. Against my better judgment, that little spark of something ignites in my stomach. A flame dances, ready to catch fire.
But I have to be vigilant.
“On the contrary,” I hear myself say. “This morning, you cut in front of me in the parking lot. You were three inches from me. And…” I hold up my sleeve, showing the damage.
He winces.
“So when I said you didn’t see me, I meant it. Literally.”
His eyes shut. “Shit.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’m used to it.”
2.
BLAKE
The kitchen window of my house high up in the Berkeley Hills overlooks fog-shrouded waters, interrupted by the bulk of San Francisco to the south and the illuminated towers of the Golden Gate Bridge further north.
Twilight is coming and I haven’t turned on any lights. I’m surrounded by granite and stainless steel, and I’m considering the benefits of an apple that I’ve rinsed, when my phone rings.
To be precise, it’s not actually my phone. It’s the highly experimental video chat app on my even more experimental watch.
My pulse picks up a few beats. I love my dad. But there is, after all, a reason why his ring tone is the ominous-sounding Imperial March from Star Wars. He’s difficult, demanding…and I’m not about to make him wait. I tap my watch, accepting the call.
He appears on the tiny watch screen. Reduced to thumbnail size, he looks exactly like his publicity photos. His eyebrows are thick and bushy; his hair is turning to salt and pepper. Other than the hair, though, he looks a lot like me. Same wiry build. Same blue eyes; same Roman-centurion nose.
“Blake.” He must be at one of his standing desks, because he paces back and forth, his head shifting. In the back of my mind, I notice that the video is finally following his movements with nary a glitch. He frowns at me. “You’re backlit.”
“Julio,” I say. “Lights.”
My kitchen lights come on in a dazzle of brilliance—all of them, from the bright, recessed LEDs overhead to the warm under-cabinet lights that catch the gold flecks in the granite counter.
At the exact same time, the lights in my dad’s office shut off.
“Goddammit,” Dad says. “There’s an unintended consequence. Julio, lights.”
Obligingly, his experimental computerized environmental system turns his lights back on—and just as obligingly, mine plunges my kitchen back into darkness.
Dad lets out a sharp bark of laughter. I cross the room and flip the lights on old school with my elbow. “Okay, I’ll file the bug report. What’s going on?”
I’m holding the apple in my hand opposite the watch. I got it from the fridge a minute before and it’s still cold against my skin. In a few minutes, my hands will warm it up until it’s body temperature. I pass it to my watch hand. One.
“We have to talk about the Fernanda launch in March.” Dad growls when he talks, an effect so powerful that unless he makes an effort to sound friendly, he comes off as perpetually angry.
I know him well enough to know that’s just the way he talks, but still, a hint of anxious anticipation gathers in me at his tone. “It’s only a few months away.” His eyes spear me. “I think you should run it.”
I swallow, feeling a pit open up in my stomach. This is far from the first time he’s pushed me to take on a larger role in the company, and it won’t be the last. And this particular role?
“Come on, Dad. Nobody wants me to do the whole launch. That’s not how these things work.”
One of his eyebrows rises. “Bullshit. These things work the way I say they work.”
I don’t think there is anyone in the world who could argue that my dad is not a great man—or, at the very least, a powerful one. Over the course of the last three decades, he built a Fortune 500 company from almost nothing. He’s right; the world bends to him, not the other way around.
I used to think that was cool.
“I know you want me to take on a larger public role, but I’m busy with school.”
He could point out that we scheduled the product launch to coincide with my spring break. Instead…
“Fuck school,” Dad says succinctly. “College serves only two purposes. It teaches people to bleat on command, like sheep, and it lets assholes think they’re ‘finding themselves’”—he illustrates this with air quotes—“by getting degrees in Russian Literature before they head into the real world and land jobs as insurance adjusters. You’re not a sheep, and you’re not going to be an insurance adjuster. Why do you give a shit?”
When my dad was my age, he’d already dropped out of Yale, started Cyclone, and made his first ten million dollars. Having avoided what he calls “stupid bullshit” all his life, he can’t figure out why I’m interested in it.
“I’m just as much a sheep if I follow in your footsteps,” I tell him. “Maybe I do want to find myself.”
“Hippy crap.”
“Maybe I have secret dreams of being an insurance adjuster,” I deadpan. “The forbidden is always tempting.” I switch my apple to the other hand. It’s the second time I’ve moved it.
He snorts. Other parents tell their kids they have to go to college if they expect to amount to anything. My dad has been telling me the opposite all my life, threatening me with a career as an insurance adjuster as if nothing worse could ever happen.
He regards me skeptically now. He’s forty miles away and his face is just an icon on an inch-sized screen, but I can still feel the force of his gaze. When he coughs, stocks plummet around the globe. It’s hardly surprising that he can make me feel uneasy with just a look. He’s that kind of man.
I’m not.
“It’s been six months since you left,” he finally mutters. “This is a really inefficient method of finding yourself, and I’m pretty sure it’s bullshit. You’re not trying to find yourself. You’re trying to lose yourself. You’re afraid that you can’t fucking do this.” He gestures widely to the office around him. “Well, I know you, and I say you can. Hurry the fuck up, Blake. I’m not going to be on top of my game forever. I need you. Run the goddamned launch.”
For the last year, he’s been offering opportunities like this to me. For the last year, I’ve had dreams where I say yes. Nightmares, really, ones that wake me in a cold sweat. During the last year, he’s pushed and prodded me. Every time we’ve had some version of this conversation, I’ve imagined telling him the truth.
I can’t do this, Dad. I have a problem.
But I haven’t told anyone that. Most days, I try not to admit it even to myself. And I already know what he will do if I tell him. He’ll look at me, frown, and toss out one of his foul-mouthed aphorisms. Something like problems are for pussies.
Right now, at least I’m standing up to him, and he respects that. If he knew the truth? I don’t want to see him disappointed in me. Not now. Not ever.
“Not on top of your game?” I joke instead. “Shit. What do you need? A vacation?”
He doesn’t laugh at this. He folds his arms. “Maybe. Maybe something like that.”
I roll my eyes. I know exactly what it’s like when Dad takes a vacation: He doesn’t. For the last thirty years, he’s worked and worked and worked without stopping, waking up in the middle of the night to leave messages for his chief engineer about every last improvement he’s dreamed up. Going to some beach somewhere doesn’t change his habits; it just means that his key staff have to change time zones to match his schedule.
When I was a kid, the prospect of inher
iting Cyclone felt like it would be the winning move in a worldwide game. Today, I know it takes strength. Determination. A will stronger than steel.
In other words, it’s going to take someone other than me.
“I get it,” he says. “You’re scared. You’re using school as an excuse. You think you can’t do this. You’ve bought into this bullshit that just because you’re twenty-three and barely an adult, blah blah blah, you can’t do this. Well, that’s fucked up. Stare your fear down. Come on, Blake. Cyclone needs you.” He frowns. “I need you.”
It’s a paradox. If I’m not strong enough to say no to my dad, I’m surely not strong enough to run the company. If he manages to break me down, I’ll know I can’t do it.
I also know that in a long-term battle of wills between my father and me, I will never, ever win. Nobody does. The only solution I can see is to get strong enough to take over before he breaks me down.
“Dad. I can’t.” The rest of the sentence is on the tip of my tongue. I have a problem.
But he’s already rejecting this with a dismissive chop of his hand. “Can’t is for assholes.”
Can’t is the only word I have. Going away to college was a stopgap measure, the best I could come up with to buy time to fix this thing. It’s not working. If this keeps up, he’ll break me before I’m ready. I switch my apple back to the other hand. Three.
I know my dad sounds like a mean fucker, but that’s just the way he talks. He doesn’t play games. He loves me; he wants me to be happy. Cyclone made him happy, and so now he wants to give it to me. He expects me to continue his conquest of the world.
“Look,” he says. “We have a vanishing window here. The Board of Directors will let you take over in the name of continuity and public trust at this point. The longer you stay away, the less weight that argument carries.”
“You own 12% of Cyclone stock,” I point out, “and everyone fucking worships you. The Board of Directors will do whatever you damned well say.”
“Hmmm.” He frowns, but doesn’t disagree.