Page 26 of Final Drive

We rack the shell and rinse the equipment, and I hang back while the others go in. There are three messages waiting for me.

Mother: Dinner tonight. 7pm. The Bellingham Club. Your father has reserved the private dining room.

Mother: Please dress appropriately.

Mother: And Reese, come alone. This is a family matter.

The Bellingham Club. Neutral ground where old money conducts its negotiations. I’ve been there a dozen times for galas and debutante nonsense, always in something my mother chose, always wearing the smile she taught me.

“You okay?”

Bo is watching me with the concern already sitting in his face.

“Fine.”

“You keep using that word.” He comes closer and drops his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Family. Dinner tonight, command performance.”

His expression darkens. “You don’t have to go.”

“I do. They’re doing damage control, and if I don’t show, they escalate.” I pocket the phone and pick up my bag. “Better to get it done.”

He looks like he wants to argue, but I’m already walking toward my car. By the time I make it across campus for Business Strategy, the high from practice is completely gone.

Professor Hawthorne usually holds me. He makes market analysis feel like it matters this afternoon instead of next quarter, but today I hear about a third of it.

Come alone. This is a family matter.

My mother knows exactly what she’s doing. Get me on her ground, surrounded by her people, where I either perform the dutiful daughter or get humiliated in a room with witnesses. She’s done it before.

I take notes I won’t be able to read and nod at things I don’t hear, and when class ends I’m out the door before anybody can talk to me. The quad is full of ordinary people doing ordinary things, sprawled on the grass with laptops, cutting between buildings, complaining about classes. This was supposed to be my version of normal. Instead I’m sitting on a bench trying to work out how to survive dinner with my parents while half my life waits for me back at the house.

I read the messages again, as though the tenth pass will change them. I could bring somebody. Turn up with Gray on my arm and watch my mother’s face go white. But they’d read it as defiance, proof I’ve been turned against my own family, and it would hand them the exact story they want. There’s no version of tonight that doesn’t cost me something.

My phone buzzes and my heart stutters before I see the name.

Quinton: Hey, you okay? You seemed distracted in Hawthorne’s class.

Quinton sits two rows behind me in Business Strategy. I hadn’t registered him today. I hadn’t registered much of anything.

Me: Fine. Just tired.

Quinton: The project can wait if you need a break. I meant what I said about being low-pressure.

It’s a kind message and my skin crawls anyway, which probably says more about the last three months of my life than it does about Quinton.

Me: Thanks. I’ll let you know about next week.

By mid-afternoon I’ve run tonight a dozen different ways and none of them end well. I could refuse to go and let them stew, but later means phone calls to the administration and questions about my funding and possibly my mother on the porch of the team house. I could go and grovel, apologize for the dock and promise discretion, except apologizing for choosing my pack puts acid in the back of my throat. I could go and fight, which I’d enjoy for about four minutes. My parents don’t lose gracefully.

I’m in the library pretending to study for my economics midterm when a shadow lands across the table.

“You’ve been on that page for twenty minutes.”

Tyler is standing there with his laptop bag over one shoulder.

“Have I?”