All of the floodlights flicked on when Raina attempted to pull her car into the driveway.
“Whoa, that’s all new,” she murmured. “You housing maximum-security prisoners inside your house?”
Yes, the maximum-security prisoner was me. “There are snipers in watchtowers around us that you can’t see,” I whispered.
She burst into laughter.
“You can let me out here. The codes to the gates are complicated.” I scrambled out of the passenger seat and leaped out into the rain. “Thanks for letting me come out with you. Let’s do it again soon.”
Her brow knitted so close together they almost formed a unibrow. “Wait, you have more than one gate?”
“Yeah, it’s something my dad installed a few months ago. We’re always testing out his products. We also have a helper robot now, courtesy of Digitools. He pretty much sucks, though. I’ll message you later. I’m getting drenched.”
Raina beamed. “Yes! On your new phone! And after school on Wednesdays a bunch of us walk to the new diner down the street. It’s always empty. I think we’re the only ones who keep that place in business. You should come.”
It’d been so long since I was part of any group. “Yeah, I guess. Have a good night!”
“I’ll take that as a Kate ‘hell yeah!’”
She waited until I went through the outer gate before she backed out of the driveway. I slowed my pace down the hill even though the rain pounded down harder, thinking about whether hanging out with Raina and her friends my senior year would even be worth it if I was leaving anyway. Rekindling old friendships and making new friends was a lot of effort. But hanging out with Raina was so much fun and definitely worth doing again. Going out with real people on Wednesdays had to be better than staying at home with Jeeves.
As if he read my mind, Jeeves opened the front door for me. “Welcome back, Kate. Regretfully, I must inform you that you returned after your curfew by five minutes.”
“C’mon, Jeeves, are you going to tell my dad?” Jeeves had just undergone a software installation a few days ago that gave him the ability to pick and choose which minor infractions he would upload because the server storage was filling up quickly and getting overloaded with insignificant reporting, like robot deliveries that were only ten seconds late. Birds and squirrels repeatedly triggering alarms. Minor curfew infractions. I pleaded, “I already feel like this is a prison. Please don’t send the data. Please?”
“Your home is pleasant, with a steady temperature of seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit and moderately low humidity. The floors are clean. These are not prison-like conditions.” He blinked once. “Perhaps you mean the household policies. The rules. But there is no similarity with living here and being in a penitentiary.”
“Please don’t report this,” I begged.
He paused. “This infraction, being your first and being so minor, will not be uploaded.” He turned on the lights in the hallway leading to my room.
“Thanks, Jeeves.” I puffed my cheeks and blew out.
He rolled up to me. “Your father is awake and in the kitchen, eating a ham-and-mustard sandwich on wheat bread, drinking Yamazaki whiskey on the rocks. Have a pleasant evening, Kate.” He whirred to the corner of the room and went into sleep mode.
Japanese whiskey was Dad’s BFF when work stressed him out. The last time he pulled out a bottle was when he was unexpectedly promoted to CEO due to a shareholder ousting of most of the executive team at Digitools. But it wasn’t the new job title that drove him to drink hard. It was the product launches that were fast-tracked to make the shareholders happy when the software wasn’t nearly ready.
The product launch that made the news (in a bad way) was meant to be simple one: when a Digitools security alarm was triggered, instead of alerting the police, it would immediately send real-time texts to authorized neighbors/friends/family so they could check on the situation. Aside from the flood of complaints the company received for false or unwarranted SMS alerts, one snooping elderly neighbor of one of the shareholders was attacked during a home invasion. Startled by the sound of the curious neighbor rattling the back door, the prowler armed himself with a metal rake he grabbed from the utility closet and went on offensive attack. The old woman was hospitalized and sent home, lucky to only have long scratches down her arms. The prowler got away with the rake.
My dad glowered at me. “It’s late.” Unkempt, with deep, dark circles under his eyes, uncombed graying hair, and a newly formed stomach bulge, he barely looked like CEO Dad. More like a weather-battered, old sea-captain version of him.
He scratched his dark stubble, then looking downward, pressed his palms into the white marble counter. “Where’d you go with Raina?”
I plopped down on a barstool. “We went roller-skating. It was fun.”
He studied my face, squinting a little, like he was looking for any sign of lying. “You hanging out together now?”
“More like, I’m hanging out with her again, like I used to.” Surely he didn’t need me to spell that the last time we “hung out together” was at Mom’s wake.
Dad took a gulp of his drink and winced. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about before I fly out tomorrow.”
Something about this didn’t sit right with me. His serious tone, his heavy drinking, him wanting to have a conversation. My stomach twisted into pretzel knots.
He poured more alcohol into his glass but didn’t bother to add more ice before he sipped. Just straight, zero rocks. “At my company, things are happening. Big things. I’ll be traveling a lot for a few more months, but once the ink dries on some of these upcoming deals, I’ll try to be home more, hopefully before you go off to college.”
He was barely home these days anyway, and now he was going to be gone all the time? Dad was more like a roommate than a parent. He came and went as he pleased, made sure the bills were paid and groceries were delivered. Our relationship had become completely transactional.
Thunder rumbled nearby, and the deafening, roaring crash distracted me from my thoughts. He spoke again, in a booming voice almost as loud as the thunder. “You’re guaranteed an internship this summer at Digitools, in whatever department you want. We can work together from this point on, father-daughter corporate dynasty.”
“But I was going to do community theater in June—”
“Kate! Be sensible for once!” He plowed over my words. “It’s time to take your future seriously. I’m putting you in the leadership program at Digitools before and after college, so you get fast-tracked in management. So you can have a real future.”
Out of the kitchen window, the sky lit up so brightly that it looked like morning. The thunder crashed again, so close this time it made the walls shimmy.
This internship was an ultimatum. Not friendly daddy-daughter discourse about what my future entailed. He presented it like a business transaction. Or more like a hostile takeover.
He chugged the rest of his drink. “You’ve got a sharp mind. You just need some grit. When I’m back from Tokyo, I’ll be pretty busy, but I can carve out time to talk to you about which summer job you’d want. Maybe you can be in finance or marketing. Or both. Maybe even product development, like how your old man started out.”
He made a final attempt to extract lingering drops of whiskey from his tumbler, even patting the bottom to loosen any straggling liquor. With a light clink, his glass went down into the empty sink. His sandwich sat on the white porcelain plate, untouched.
I mustered up the guts to say something. “I…I want to do theater camp this summer.”
“Enough with your stupid theater shit. I’m not paying for that.” He yawned. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. No, wait, I’ll be on the phone with the London office for a few hours. Maybe I can get breakfast delivered here before I head to the airport.”
“You’re not coming to my performance tomorrow night?” My stomach sank. I knew the answer. It was the last weekend performance, and the one time I’d get to be the lead instead of just an understudy.
He made a face like he smelled something rotten. “What? I’ll be on a plane. Not all of us have the luxury to do acting. Some of us need to pay for the roof over our heads.” Before I said anything else, he answered a call on his Bluetooth earpiece and walked out of the kitchen.
After so many years succeeding at his job, he’d learned the art of always having the last word.
A hollowness widened in my chest, so big it could swallow me whole. The thunder outside roared close to the kitchen window, and another bright flash of lightning across the sky soon followed.
The sky boomed at the exact moment I made up my mind. I would go to New York earlier than expected, before the summer began. Staying here would suffocate me.
I took the thunderous applause from the sky as a sign of the universe’s approval.
* * *
“You really killed it tonight,” Understudy Henry Higgins said to me the next night. We were backstage, sweaty from the performance we’d just finished. “You ready?”
I nodded. We walked out onstage.
Taxi-hailing whistles and roaring applause filled the auditorium. I smiled and bowed as the crowd gave us a standing ovation.
“Kaaaaaate!”
“Elizaaaaaa! Henryyyyyyy!”
“Encore!”
“Bravo!”
The Saturday show had sold out. The stage director had said it was standing room only, but I didn’t expect all of the people in the aisles and in the back near the exits. All of these human fire hazards were there for us. They’d risked getting trampled during an emergency evacuation for us!
The entire cast nailed their parts, including me as Eliza Doolittle. The songs, the lines, the accents, all of it—just perfect. I beamed as Henry Higgins and I bowed a second time.
The curtains came down, and the bright overhead lights flicked on. I scurried off the stage to the changing room. No point in lingering while my other proud castmates had their photos taken with their loved ones. Smiling moms, dads, sisters, brothers, and grandparents flooded the stage, many of them congratulating me on my performance as I passed them on my way backstage.
My eyes brimmed with tears while I crammed my belongings into a canvas tote bag. I’d put this performance on the family calendar when the show dates were confirmed. Posted the school flyer on the fridge for Dad to see in between business trips. I’d even programmed Jeeves to send my dad a reminder a week prior. Even after our conversation last night, there was a part of me that thought…maybe.
But he didn’t come.
The loose tissues on the top of my bag grew wet with my fallen teardrops. I dabbed my eyes with them so my mascara and liner wouldn’t smear.
Faking a smile, I squeaked brief goodbyes on my way out.
“Nice job, Kate!” Randall, the lighting and sound engineer, saluted as I walked past.
Two of the freshmen in the ensemble gave me hugs. “You were so good! Congratulations!”
“You were way better than the other Eliza,” Samuel, the choreographer, whispered to me.
I smiled and responded with an enthusiastic “Thank you!”
As I clip-clopped down the hallway in my painfully high chunky heeled loafers, someone called out to me.
“Pardon me, Kate!” Mrs. Andrea, our veteran theater director, waved me down. Soft-spoken and a grammar stickler, she exuded formality with everything she did. She never laughed, ever.
“Did you enjoy yourself tonight, dear?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes. I did. Ma’am. Thank you for the opportunity, Mrs. Andrea.”
She nodded. “Your performance tonight was exceptional. Simply outstanding.”
Blushing, I dipped my head and smiled. “Thank you. I practiced a lot.” So did Jeeves. He ran my lines with me. At least he was good for something.
“This evening, a fire burned in you that I hadn’t seen in a long time—bright, lovely, and warm.” A wry smile twitched on her lips. “Your best performance yet. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. You deserve it, dear.” She paused, considering, then added, “If by chance you need a letter of recommendation for college applications, I would be happy to help you.”
Wow. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Andrea. You spent time in New York, doing theater there, right? Could I stop by after school next week to ask you about that?”
Nodding slowly, she said, “Could I, or may I?” There was that grammar stickler thing. “Yes, please stop by after school anytime. I’d be delighted.” With a slight bow of her head adieu, she adjusted her silk scarf and headed back to the auditorium.
Giddy from her praise, I pushed open the emergency exit door closest to the auditorium. The buzzer blasted above my head as I escaped into the crisp autumn air.
The door also hit Raina smack in the ass. She turned around and pressed a huge bouquet of exotic flowers into my chest. A fancy one, without any carnations. “Well, Eliza Doolittle, that’s the last time eh do anything nice for yeh.” Worst English accent ever.
“Awww, you shouldn’t have,” I said, the tears coming back in full force. But these were happy ones. Not daddy-issues tears this time.
Raina grabbed my shoulder. “I knew you’d try to sneak out. You killed it tonight. Your mom would be so proud.”
I hugged her tight. Mom would’ve been front row center, cheering and clapping the loudest.
“Can’t. Breathe,” Raina gasped. I loosened my grip. “I can take you home if you want. I’m parked in the fire zone. Probably illegal but whatever, maybe not on a Saturday night.” She ran ahead of me and opened the front passenger door. “’Ere you go, mah lady.”
“Oh God, stop it!” Laughing and crying, I sank into the seat, pulling the canvas bag onto my lap. When she came around the other side, she asked, “Wanna go celebrate?”
Just minutes before, I’d fled out the back door of the auditorium because I wanted to go home and be alone. But turns out I’d actually wanted the opposite of that.
“Yes! But no roller-skating.”
She paused to think. “If you’re hungry, we can make ice-cream sundaes and nachos at my house.”
There really was no better way to end the night.