The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,40

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