Chapter 8
eight
LOCKE
I try my hardest to be the first person out of class. The classmates who sit next to me have already attempted to initiate conversation, and I’ve already awkwardly shut them down. The longer I stay in the room, the more people will think there’s an opportunity to talk.
If they actually wanted to talk about me, as a person, I’d be more open to conversations.
I’m not surprised when it happens again, before I get halfway out of the lecture hall.
“You’re the McCarthy son, right?” The only other student left asks with a wide grin. His curly red hair is out of place and flattened on one side from pressing into the wood of his desk. This is the most awake he’s been since our classes started a few weeks ago.
“Unfortunately,” is what I want to say. I don’t.
I simply straighten my spine, nod, and try to work through the anxiety bubbling in my stomach.
“Wow. Super cool.” He smiles, too enthusiastic for someone who sat through hours of theoretical principles. I stare at his nose ring to avoid eye contact. “Word’s been getting around that the VK heir was in our cohort.”
He laughs and I strain a smile. Pretending to be interested is the quickest way out of these situations.
If they think you’re interested, they’ll believe your bad excuse to leave.
But if you make it obvious you’re uncomfortable, they push.
They don’t let up because they think you don’t understand them, never the other way around.
“Been here all semester.”
It’s meant to be sarcastic, but he laughs louder, like we’re friends. It grates on my nerves and makes my palms sweat.
A hand comes up to pat my shoulder. If I could hide, I would.
“I got that now, my bad. Don’t tell our prof, but I’m not really paying attention during class,” he whispers, like it’s a secret.
Must have lots of money to be so lazy about a program this competitive.
“So I didn’t notice anyone in class that first week.
But people started spreading news after you were seen at the mixer. With princess Rosie Mendoza, too.”
I’m so uncomfortable.
I’m not surprised people started discussing me at Brookstone after the event. The mention of Rosie by name, though, makes my eyebrows raise. He used princess, too, just like Jeremiah did when he was talking down on her. My skin starts to itch.
I don’t want a full conversation with this guy, but he offers it to me anyways.
“Of course she’d get to you first. Not really surprised, but I didn’t know she works that fast.” He snorts. My face scrunches.
“By that you mean?”
The longer he speaks, the more he sounds like Jeremiah. I figured Rosie had a history with him she didn’t want to share with me. That’s okay.
But a random guy in my cohort—with a totally different major than hers, who really shouldn’t know who she is—also thinks he can speak this way. It’s annoying and strange. I don’t like the self-righteous glint in his eye, either.
He pats my shoulder again. The discomfort grows. “Well, you know. She’s pretty infamous in the program for… a lot of things. She’s dated around too.”
I take a step back. It’s not subtle, but being near this guy has me feeling another level of disgust.
Throughout my life, I’ve met more than enough people like this.
A man who speaks about the women in my father’s office happens to own part of the company.
It’s not anything new, but it never sits well with me.
Women try to do their part in an industry already set up against them and get brought down by stereotypes and immaturity.
My little sister would never be in a STEM program. I hope her communications classmates don’t subject her to conversations like this. But the first time I imagined someone treating Billie the way the men in this industry treat women, I saw red.
Crimson shades are invading my vision now, while this guy continues to chuckle like it’s funny.
“Hey, no judgement if you’ve been with her. I don’t blame you. Me and my older brothers think it’s funny that girls are trying to get into engineering, but more ass to look at, right?”
He bumps his elbow with mine. My back straightens, but not because of some obedient McCarthy bullshit. It’s so I can be the one to look down at him, pointed stare through the glasses sitting high on my nose.
“No. That’s disgusting.” His face falls. I won’t let my resolve slip, but there’s a voice in my head reminding me this guy must have some pull somewhere, if he can casually sit through classes and has an in on the Brookstone gossip.
My conscious screams that boys like him only find joy in tearing others down because they have nothing else to offer the world. I want to say it to his face, but the weak part of my brain reminds me of my father.
“Rosie is my friend.” I grit out. If I open my mouth as wide as I want to, I’ll say a thousand not-so-nice sentences to him. “Nice meeting you,” I say before heading to the exit, and I hate myself for it.
I want to say more. I should say more. For everyone who is talked about and can’t defend themselves, this is where I have the privilege to protect them. At least with words.
But I can’t. There’s a pounding in my head when I walk up the lecture hall steps and out the door, ignoring the calls of a classmate who is undeserving of the position he’s in.
I’m that, too. Undeserving. Of having so many opportunities, when I hate how I got them.
I hate that being my father’s son means hiding what I really think and what I really want to say to appease him.
I hate that despite the power it gives me, he manages to take it away.
He controls every part of my life, and it’s the only kind of fatherhood I’ve ever known.
Dad finally calls me into his office on Saturday.
In comparison to the hustle and bustle of his real employees, I don’t do much.
Like a shadow, my sole purpose is to follow him around mindlessly.
I’m only acknowledged when he wants me to be.
As soon as he steps into the spotlight around his peers, I’m irrelevant again.
Regardless, I dress in a suit that will impress everyone but him and appear like he asks. There are hundreds of better ways to spend my Saturday, but this is what will help get back on Dad’s good side. I comply.
The sunlight in his large office is dying behind the city’s skyline before he spares me a full sentence.
“How have your classes been?”
He’s ruffling through papers on his desk, not throwing me a glance, and it’s still the most attention he’s given me in weeks.
Whenever he casts me to the side, I tell myself it’s better that way.
I prefer being separated from his expectations and the pressure to perform.
But then a day like this comes back around, where he has me watch him do everything but be a father, and like a habit I hang onto every word he’s willing to spare me.
I readjust my glasses and lean forward on my toes, closer to his desk. “Good, sir.”
“I hope so. Since you insulted my friend and switched out of his class. Remember that?” He looks at me for barely a second. Pointed through his lashes and impossibly cold.
I fucked up. I feel it before he says it.
“I remember.”
And I forgot to find said professor at the mixer last week to apologize. It was at the top of my list of things to do for my father, and I forgot.
He doesn’t, though.
“Do you remember what I asked of you? Or do you intend on disrespecting him and me?”
I have his full attention now; Papers tossed on his desk, near the framed pictures of him and his favorite business clients. The people he cares about the most in the world.
I suspect they know exactly what my father wants to hear. Most of the time, I’m pretty good at that, too. Not lately.
“I-” It’s a trap. Either way I’ll get reprimanded. Wrong for remembering, wrong for forgetting. Always wrong.
“Which is it?” His desk chair loudly scrapping against the tiled floor acts as a command to brace myself. “Are you dumb or are you stupid?”
My temples are starting to throb. I want to be honest. It was a mistake, and a small lapse in memory doesn’t justify such harsh things said to your son. But I’m not strong enough to speak my mind.
“I apologize, sir.”
“You and these fucking apologies. Tell me what an apology does for me. Does it un-waste my time? Does it have a conversation with my friend, and explain to him why you possibly decided to switch your classes?”
“No.”
“No, because you were supposed to do that. Now tell me why you haven’t had a conversation with him—like I told you to—and what could possibly be so important that you forget the one thing I ask of you?”
In the safety of my own mind, I yell at him. That in my first month of grad school, visiting a man who has no importance to me doesn’t fall anywhere near the top of my priorities. Especially not when the only reason I’d give him any attention at all would be to apologize for switching classes.
I forgot because of everything that happened at the mixer. Being ambushed by one of his weird fanboys, meeting other professionals in the department who recognized me, so I felt like I had to put on the Perfect McCarthy Son act to impress them.
And, mostly, being around Rosie. When I’m with her, talking about minuscule things that make us happy, it gets easier to forget my father. Him and his pointless “tasks” are filed on the opposite side of my brain.
I don’t say of this, though.
I’m dutiful and well-polished, and not at all brave.
“I apolo-”
“If I hear one more fucking apology come out of your mouth, Locke, I will make your life a living hell. I’ve been nice enough to give your shortcomings the benefit of the doubt.
Shit like this makes me think it was pointless, because you’re still becoming a screw-up.
” He points a finger at me, and I glance down at his foot. Still.
I feel sick.
I never thought the way my father treated us was normal, but in recent years I’ve begun to understand how horrible he is.
I don’t know whether I’m angrier he’s being so cruel to me, after I’ve spent my entire life trying to satisfy his expectations, or if I’m angrier at myself for expecting more of him.
A hand comes up to his graying hair, tugging while he shakes his head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. How am I supposed to trust you with this company if you can’t do the things I ask?”
My jaw tightens. Aside from this, I can’t think of anything he’s asked of me I haven’t fulfilled. He’s acting like I don’t have over twenty years of mindless loyalty to him behind my name.
I don’t say anything.
“One semester. You get this one semester,” he says, holding his finger up for emphasis. “I don’t have more time than that to spare. Grant is still being difficult about joining the company, and if you’re going to be another son I can’t rely on, then what do I keep you around for?”
The heat around my neck spreads to every part of my body. Dad circles his desk, continuing to hold his finger up.
“One semester to prove you’re worthy of the money I spend, this company, and of the McCarthy name. If you can’t, you’ll be on your own from then on.”
I take a deep breath and turn my eyes towards his feet. No movement. Nothing to indicate he’s bluffing. I don’t know why I still check, as if he’d ever bluff when it comes to me.
I’ve thought about what life would be like if I was born someone else’s son.
What it’d be like growing up with a dad who saw me as more than a back-up plan, and a mom who cared about her kids enough to protect them.
In every iteration, I never considered the money.
It’s never been about the money when I snap into place and do as I’m told.
Even in those fantasies of a happy family and people who love Billie and I the way parents should, it always felt wrong. Because being Keller McCarthy’s son is so engraved into me, in my blood and my DNA and my personality, I can’t imagine being anything else.
Gulping, I nod. I don’t try to apologize again. “I understand.”
“Good.” His finger moves from in front of my face and to the door. “Some of the head developers are having a meeting in a bit. Have my assistant give you the details and sit in. Take notes. Then report everything back to me by the end of the day.”
It’s the last thing I want to do. Being in meetings without him is always awkward. They know I’m just there to spy for my father. I never push back, though, and I won’t start today.
“Alright.”
“Go.”
No goodbye. Nothing at all for me to pretend he might feel bad about being so harsh, or that this isn’t just a way to threaten me into shape. While walking out his office door and accepting I won’t get home until well after 7pm, I remind myself not to have such high expectations of my father.