Chapter 2
2
As I ride on the train back into New York, I take a deep breath, doing my best to push the entire experience out my brain. To forgive and forget—again. To not let the twisted rage eat me up. I’m usually good at seeing the bright side of things. I’ve worked a lot on my mindset. Gratitude is always the best way to be positive about life in general, and I have a lot to be grateful for.
But letting my father off the hook again for shutting us out of every part of his life is hard. It hurts. Today it hurts more than it has in a long time.
I guess that’s what I get for trying to force something that he’s made it very clear he doesn’t want to do.
He won’t call, obviously. It’s best to rise above it and put it out of my mind, especially the part where my dad is a deceitful asshole of a multi-millionaire.
There’s no point mentioning any of this to Josh.
In fact, that would be an exceptionally bad idea. It’ll only hurt him if I tell him why I went out there and that, once again, our father hasn’t chosen us. So I do what I’ve done so many times before: I shove the morning’s revelations back into their little cage in my mind, securely lock it and mentally throw away the key. Done and dusted. Time to make peace with it and move on.
When I get back to our apartment, it’s quiet. Josh will have finished his early shift at the café where he works on Saturday mornings. He’s probably holed up in his room by now, working on the three-giant-screen computer set-up he’s got going on in there.
It’s part of the reason I insisted he get a part-time job, just to make sure he gets out of the house on weekends and doesn’t spend all his time coding or whatever it is he does.
I used to worry about how much time he spent staring at screens, like every parent (or close enough) does.
But Josh is savvy enough to know how to handle his time. He has a group of good friends he hangs out with (often gaming with them, but whatever). As long as he’s getting good grades, I don’t bug him about the rest of it.
It was easy to see from an early age that my brother was going places. He almost got expelled from school when he was twelve for hacking into the school’s database and changing all his grades to A’s. But I somehow convinced the principal to give him one get-out-of-jail-free card. Which she did, as long as he promised to use his powers for good instead of evil from now on. She punished him by giving him an after-school job building an online check-out system for the library, which was so good they ended up franchising it and selling it to a few other school libraries. Josh got a cut of the money, which he spent on high-tech computer equipment. He was written up in Young Entrepreneur magazine and put on their “young coders to watch” list.
I encouraged him endlessly to try as hard as he could, to aim high and try to get into a top school that would propel him into the kind of shit-hot job he’s capable of. Maybe I was a little too overzealous at times, but he knew why.
Somehow, it must have sunk in. He ended up getting accepted at Dartmouth, Cornell, Yale and Columbia. I don’t think either of us could believe it at first. He’d really done it.
He decided on Columbia because he can live at home. I told him I don’t care how much room and board costs and that I’ll figure out a way for him to have the full college experience if he wants it.
Josh said there’s no way in hell he’ll let me pay for his entire degree. Tuition is one thing but room and board is an extra cost that Josh said we don’t actually need to spend. We argued about it.
The thing is, I have enough money. At least enough to get started. I can take out a loan if I need to, to get him through all four years. The price tag for Columbia is insane, of course, but it’s worth it.
And since I’m not going to college, at least not for now, I can focus on what’s best for Josh.
I thought about college. My grades were good enough and I was interested in studying music or graphic design. But it felt frivolous to spend that kind of money on something I wasn’t sure I needed. I felt like I was getting my life experience through different channels, and that those channels were working for me enough to justify sticking with them.
I make money through downloads of my music and from the small-venue shows I do around New York, which almost always sell out. But most of my money comes from advertising products through my social media platforms.
I’m a musician and an “influencer” and I have a huge following. As much as I hate that term, I have to admit it’s a pretty sweet gig. I post around ten times a day, basically just showing how I live my life and play my music.
Because I have a combined total of almost ten million followers through TikTok, Instagram and Spotify, companies send me their products and pay me to promote them. This is usually as easy as staging a few photos and recording a few videos.
It’s taken me a lot of time and effort to get my platform to the level it’s now at, but it still sometimes feels like a weird way to make money.
I don’t love selling myself 24/7, but I also don’t mind it. I’m good at it. I mostly enjoy creating the content. And I have a very good reason for doing it: my brother. I need to earn money, so I can help him realize his full potential.
Just because I’ve been Josh’s legal guardian for the past four years doesn’t mean we don’t act like siblings most of the time. He’s still a pain in the ass who leaves his shit everywhere and argues with me like a typical teenager.
Josh doesn’t take for granted the sudden change in our fortunes. When my first song blew up online and our lifestyle began to turn around, he appreciated it—more than a lot of kids would have. Because we knew what it was like to struggle.
Two years ago I bought us a two-bedroom loft in Soho. It’s small but was still a ridiculously huge improvement from the Bushwick basement we lived in until we could afford to move.
“Josh?” I step into the sun-drenched hallway. His sneakers are inside the front door, so I know he’s home.
“Hey,” he calls out from his room before sticking his head round the door. He leans a shoulder against the doorjamb. “How was yoga? Did you take an extra class?”
“Oh. No, I had some stuff to do for work. How was your shift?”
“Busy.”
“I need your mad photography skills when you have a minute.”
Josh is used to being my photographer. He used to complain about it, but when I told him how much I can make from a single post, he stopped complaining. I pay for our lifestyle (and college) and he helps me with my content. He knows he’s getting a pretty sweet deal.
He walks over to the fridge where I know he’ll drink the orange juice from the carton just to piss me off. I’ve tried my hardest to train him to behave like he’s not a Neanderthal but by now I know it’s better to choose my battles.
“What are you selling this time?”
Yep, here it goes, orange juice carton in hand…
I force myself not to react. “Organic Nation Yoga sent me their latest line so I’m going to set up my yoga mat on the balcony. It’s nice enough to shoot out there today.”
“Maybe I should skip college and become a pro photographer. You could employ me.”
“You couldn’t handle me as your boss. I’d stick to being a tech genius if I were you. It’ll be much easier.”
“True. And much less annoying.” He grins and I’m struck by how grown up he is now. He’s 6’1’’ and he’s filled out a lot over the past year. My brother has grown into a good-looking almost-man. But I can still see the little boy in him when he smiles.
I want so much for him to get everything he deserves out of life. “I’ll meet you outside.”
Within a few minutes, I’ve changed into the buttery-soft shorts and sports top with the built-in bra the sponsors sent me and have rolled out my yoga mat onto the tiny but fabulous balcony of our apartment. Now that the weather’s warmer, I’ve moved all my plants outside again. We have a table and chairs and a seating area with a south-facing view. I’ve strung strings of pendant lights, so at night it looks like a magical little outdoor room.
Josh moans something about how I’m interrupting his flow, but once my phone is in his hand he slips into his usual bossy art director role with ease.
I work through some poses, looking over my shoulder and down at my fingertips but never directly at the camera, posing so it looks like a photographer has just stumbled across me mid-practice. Josh has a knack too. He knows what it takes to get the shot.
“I’ve got about a dozen.” He hands my phone to me and waits as I scroll through them.
“Just take a few more.” I get into the lotus position. “Make sure you get the plants in the background. And the water bottle on the table. They want me to promote that too.”
Josh takes my phone again and takes a few more. As he scrolls through the pictures he’s taken, I realize half a second too late that I don’t want him scrolling too far. But I can see by the look on his face that he has. And he’s riveted—and shocked—by what he’s looking at.
Why the hell didn’t you think of that, you idiot!? You should have deleted them! You shouldn’t have taken them in the first place.
I’m so used to Josh helping me with my content, I completely forgot I have a ticking time bomb sitting only a few swipes back.
“Josh—”
“What the fuck is this?”
I get up—which takes me a few seconds because I’m still in the lotus position—and by then he’s already zooming in. “Josh.”
Josh’s eyes are dark and his glare is full of questions. “Why do I get the feeling you skipped yoga class this morning, Ivy?”
Damn it
“I didn’t skip it. I just took a detour after.” I reach for the phone but Josh is so much taller than I am he easily holds it out of reach. “Give me my phone.”
“You went to his house? When? Today?”
I’m trying to snatch my phone back out of my brother’s hands, but he just holds it higher. He’s got a good five inches on me plus he’s strong as hell now.
“Did you see him?” His question is more hurt than angry. Both emotions are twisted up and awful-sounding.
“No. I didn’t see him. I went to tell him…that you’re graduating and that you got into Columbia. Because I’m proud of you. And I was hoping?—”
Josh holds up a hand in a stop gesture. “If you continue that sentence I’m going to smash this phone to smithereens, Ivy. You were hoping what? That he might be proud of me too? Well, let me guess. He isn’t. There, mystery solved. I could have saved you a trip.”
“Please don’t smash my phone. We need it. Can I please have it back?”
“Sure. Right after I email these photos of our asshole father’s Bahamas bank account to myself. What do you know, the snake is even more loaded than we thought.” He continues swiping. And then he goes quiet.
“Josh?”
He’s staring at the photo of our twin brothers. “And here are the little apples of his eye. Getting their own framed photograph on a shelf and everything, how touching.”
Josh turns away from me and strides across the balcony. For a second I think he’s going to throw my phone over the edge out of anger, but then he sits in one of the chairs sort of heavily.
“Josh, it doesn’t matter,” I say gently. “We know why. He wasn’t in a good place when we were young. He and our mother ended up hating each other and he just wants to forget about it and move on. Just like we’re doing.”
“If you’re over it then why did you go to his house?”
“To try for the very last time and now I’m done. We don’t need him. We’re okay and we’re only going to get more okay. Now, please, give me my phone.”
After Josh finishes sending the photos to himself, he gets up. He walks over to me and he hands me my phone.
“Thank you,” I tell him, searching his eyes for some kind of sign that he’s okay. “Josh?”
“What.” It’s not a question. It’s a deep, emotional scar.
“I love you.”
He stares down at me, his golden eyes stormy. They aren’t really words we throw around that often but I want him to hear them. And now feels like a good time.
“I love you too. And if that prick shows up at my graduation I’ll fucking throttle him.”
With that, he walks back to his room and slams the door.
I look up as the sun disappears behind a bank of dark clouds, forming in gigantic looming puffs at the edges of the blue sky.
A storm is coming. I wish the metaphor didn’t feel so damn ominous.
I sigh without meaning to.
Parents.
They really fuck you up.