Creek. Look, they’re not even paying attention to the food. So let’s just say: no, I still can’t afford four years, or two years, or a year. No, my grades are still not gonna get me any scholarships. No, Dad won’t kick in. Still. Nothing’s changed except that if I get good shifts and work all summer, maybe, just maybe, I can save up enough to not work for a month or two while I look for a better paying job. I can’t leave them like this. You know why.”
“But if you—”
“You can’t just throw people under the bus to run off and do what you want.”
“But this isn’t something frivolous. It’s... it’s following a dream.”
“If you have to fuck people up to follow a dream, then it’s a bad dream and you shouldn’t follow it,” I said. “I mean, not that you’ve ever had to pick.”
My ears were ringing, and although I was staring down at the picnic blanket she’d designed—traditional red-and-white check on one side, nanopolymer temperature-and-moisture control foil on the far side, warm under us, cool under the food, emitting repellent pheromones to keep ants and wasps away—I was aware that she was staring at me with her mouth open. Past my shame and the pounding blood in my face, I felt a little thrill of pleasure. She was so hard to shock and I had finally said something she hadn’t expected.
Or maybe it was just that it had been said at all, maybe she thought I’d never say it, after a decade of us both realizing that even though she plowed virtually all her profits into new facilities and people, she still had a hundred times more money than we did, and we never talked about it. I had never asked her for money, even five dollars to cover snacks at the movies. I paid my way. My parents, in a thousand ways, had indoctrinated us never to ask for help. No handouts. Ever. Gifts might be tolerated, within reason. So she gave us treats for the kids, took us on trips sometimes, bought clothes or light-up shoes or shrill toys; and not one word was ever spoken.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not trying to be a dick about it.”
“No, you’re not. You’re trying to be a parent. Don’t do that either. Come on. We’re here to celebrate, right? Celebrate your shoebox. What are you going to call it?”
“Well, the Chambers Chamber, if I can get away with it.” She yawned. “I was up all night again writing it up, e-mailing people, translating stuff, doing figures. Getting some weird numbers on each test run, although the wattage stays steady as a rock. And I can’t get rid of that noise.”
“I guess when you start mass-producing them you can bury them under a mattress or something.”
“I was thinking a building. I’ll need time to design a basic structure though. Maybe tomorrow.”
I laughed. A lot of her peers (you wouldn’t necessarily call them friends) teased her about how she got her hands dirty all the time. You were supposed to pay people to do that for you, they said. By this stage in the game. Farm it all out and put your name on the final report. But she hated having anything out of her control, and even, I was sure, resented the little that she had farmed out to Rutger.
I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Hey, gang! Come eat!”
We fell silent and sat there waiting for Chris or Brent to yell back. It was silent except for the burble of running water; a magpie in the tree next to us opened its beak a crack, then seemed to think better of it. And I felt a sudden, strange, cold wave wash over me, so abrupt I looked down to see if I had broken into sweat, but I hadn’t. Johnny surged up from the blanket and planted herself in front of me and Carla, legs spread like a boxer.
“What is it?” I said, scrambling up next to her. Something dark was moving in the trees across the creek from us—not one of the boys. Something else. Dark and featureless enough that for a second I thought it was a black bear, half-hidden by the thick undergrowth. And no bird sang.
I stared at it—a stranger, had to be, a thin man in a black coat and pants. But it didn’t move like a person, and the pale thing atop it wasn’t quite a face. Johnny’s breath whistled