even . . . B?”
I shot a pleading look at Rafael the moderator. Rather than moderate this cringeworthy dialogue, he looked at me in earnest. He, too, wanted to know if I was bisexual.
Kat jumped to her feet and flung her chair back. “Oh hell no, I’m way too busy for this fake diversity rah-rah bullshit. We have a game to launch and a trade show coming up soon. If you need me, I’ll be at my desk.” She stormed out, mumbling, “Why do I fucking work here?” She slammed the door hard enough to make the walls and table shake.
I leaped up too. “Kat and I have the same deadlines. And . . . I’m not bi.”
Ian shrugged, and Rafael handed me a diversity questionnaire to fill out and mail to him by the end of the week.
I clomped back to my desk in a hurry and skimmed the three questions.
Do you feel singled out for being a minority at Seventeen Studios?
(Yes. Please refer to the bisexual discussion.)
Do you agree with this statement: “Gaming is for guys.”
(No.)
Please explain.
(I shouldn’t have to.)
Is there anything Seventeen can do to help you feel more comfortable and welcome at this company?
(Yes. Put Ian and the rest of you executive idiots through diversity and sensitivity training.)
What a joke.
I crumpled up the paper and threw it in the trash. Walking back to my desk, Kat’s last words played back over and over through my head. Why did I fucking work here?
Honestly, I couldn’t think of an answer anymore.
Chapter Seventeen
My parents weren’t paying attention when I pulled up to the arrivals area at Sea-Tac airport. They were arguing about something. Without even saying hello, they continued their bickering in Korean while I opened the trunk and put their luggage in. My mom sat in the back and Dad got in the front.
“How was your trip?”
My dad made a harrumph sound as he pulled the seat belt across his chest. “You ask your mom!” He crossed his arms and stared straight ahead.
“Um, okay. Mom, what happened?”
“He mad because he say I forgot to buy his heart medicine. And now we have almost empty bottle. We need to refill here.”
My dad had a pretty serious heart attack a few years ago, but he recovered like a champ. Since then, though, he had to take daily medication, a blood thinner, to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
“Dad, why didn’t you refill it yourself? Mom isn’t the only one who knows how to do that at a drugstore.”
My mom yelled, “Yes! I’m not his maid!” while my dad shouted, “I am older. She need to help me.”
Yet another one of their pointless fights where they ping-ponged angry words and then refused to speak to each other.
They needed to cut this shit out. “I think it’s good for you two to discuss this with each other. About why Dad expects you to fill his meds, Mom. And, Dad, why you depend on Mom to do this for you. But you can do this at your hotel room, and not with me in public. I’ll drive you to the hotel and you can check in early. We can eat around there and skip brunch. Too bad, it was going to be at an all-you-can-eat crab place, your favorite kind of restaurant.”
Mom and Dad looked at each other and came to a quick nonverbal peace treaty. “We want to eat crab.” My dad gave me a sad puppy-dog look, upset that I could so easily yank away this privilege from them. I wasn’t going to reward their bad behavior.
Mom chimed in. “We not angry anymore, Melody.” She reached into the front seat, grabbed my dad’s hand, and then she swung their arms a little bit. “See? We are friends. Drive us to crab brunch.”
I picked out this seafood brunch buffet because of the number of high reviews, and because my parents couldn’t get good seafood where they lived in the South. They could eat hundreds of dollars’ worth of Alaskan crab legs in one sitting, so foodwise they’d be in heaven. Whenever my parents went to any buffet, they went straight for the seafood section. They never had salad. Or rolls. Sometimes my dad would have clam chowder. “Salad is waste money,” he’d say, as he cracked open crab shells with his steel-trap-strength teeth, ripping out the juicy flesh with surgical precision.
The table was ready when we arrived, and the hostess seated us near a bay window overlooking Puget Sound. The hanging fog