Chapter 12 #2
For the next few minutes, I navigated the conversation for him.
007: Wanted to know where you are.
Alec: What did you tell him?
007: That I wasn’t your keeper.
Alec: Bet he loved that. Thanks for covering for me.
007: So where are you?
Alec: On a road trip.
Less than a minute later, the phone buzzed in my hands again, but this time it was an incoming call.
“James Bond is calling,” I told Alec. It was such an absurd statement that I had to press my lips together to stifle a laugh. “Should I answer? Maybe he’s going to admit that Ethan Hunt is an all-round better spy.”
Alec chuckled and held out his hand, so I hit the talk button and pressed the cell into his palm.
“What’s up?” Alec answered. He paused for a second before saying, “To Seattle.”
This seemed to excite whoever was on the other end, because I could hear their muffled response.
I unconsciously leaned on the center console, trying to listen to the other half of the conversation, but my mind caught up to what my body was doing, and I forced myself to sit back in my seat.
Pulling my prep book back into my lap, I attempted to give Alec some privacy even though my ears were still perked.
“Safe House? What are you guys doing there?” Another pause. Another nod of the head. “Thanks for the offer, man. I’m not entirely sure what the plan is yet, but I’ll keep that in mind… Okay, sounds good. Later.”
He ended the call and dropped his cell into the cup holder. I looked at him expectantly, hoping for an explanation. For starters, who was this Double O Seven person, and what in the world did Alec mean by Safe House? But I didn’t get an answer.
Alec glanced at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement. He was clearly having more fun keeping me in the dark than alleviating it.
“So,” he said, “Come up with two truths and a lie yet?”
***
“Man, you sure study a lot,” Alec said, eyeing my flash cards with disdain. They’d come with my ACT prep book, a pack for each section of the test, and I was currently reviewing the science ones since it had always been my worst subject in school.
An electromagnetic wave with a wavelength longer than that of X-rays, but shorter than that of visible light is in the ______ part of the spectrum.
“I have to,” I told him. “Stanford has one of the lowest acceptance rates in the country.”
My feet were propped up on the dash, and the sunlight streaming in through the windshield felt like an electric blanket against my skin.
I wondered how long it would take before my legs started to burn.
My shoulders were tender from yesterday, and even the slightest movement turned the straps of my dress into stinging razor blades.
“So how come you want to go there?”
“It’s where my dad went,” I said, turning the card over.
The correct answer is:
Ultraviolet
Alec tilted his head to the side, like he was trying to make sense of this. “Just to be clear…we’re talking about the dad you don’t remember because he ran away to Europe, right?”
“Yup.” I flipped to the next flash card.
“Okay, explain.”
“Well, when my parents first met, my dad was this hotshot lawyer who saved my mom from a lifetime of waitressing. Took her from a one-room apartment in a bad part of town to a nice house in Orange County, where she learned to depend on him. So when he left, he left her worse off than before. Suddenly she had no means of support and two kids to raise,” I said.
“She has an okay job now, but I remember a time when my mom worked eighty-hour weeks to keep the lights on and put food in the fridge.”
“I’m sorry, but…I still don’t understand.”
“All my mom wants is for me and Rose to have a better life than she did, but my sister was too busy partying to get passing grades. It killed my mom to see her waste her potential, and I won’t make that mistake.
After everything Mom has done to provide for us, I owe it to her.
And the only way I know how to do that is to become a successful lawyer like my dad.
I have to follow in his footsteps: go to the same school, intern at the same firm.
That sort of thing. I know it sounds irrational, but it’s been my plan ever since Rose left. ”
The car was quiet except for a the crooning of a country singer and Boomer’s monstrous snoring. Alec cast a skeptical look in my direction, as if he thought I was joking. He opened his mouth, and then closed it.
“That’s crazy,” he said after some time.
I stared out the windshield. “Maybe, but doing this will make my mom happy, and she hasn’t had a lot of that in her life.”
In the distance, I spotted the red-and-blue flash of police lights. There must have been an accident ahead of us, because traffic was starting to stack up.
“But what about you? Will that make you happy?” Alec asked as a black sedan cut in front of us, squeezing its way into the faster-moving lane.
“I won’t mind becoming a lawyer, if that’s what you mean.”
Alec frowned. Whether it was due to our conversation or the current traffic, I couldn’t tell. “I don’t see it.”
“Why?” I teased. “Don’t think I could rock a pantsuit?”
“Because you shouldn’t make a decision that will affect the rest of your life based on someone else,” he said. “You should do your own thing.”
“But it is my own thing,” I told him. “This is going to sound silly, but I’ve dreamed of becoming a lawyer ever since I was a little kid and saw Legally Blonde.”
“You also wanted to be a spy,” he pointed out. “Dreams change.”
“Not all dreams.”
He glanced at me, his gaze sharp and knowing. “Then why don’t I believe you?”
I looked at the flash card I was clutching, trying to come up with a way to explain myself.
The energy an object has when it is stationary is known as its ______.
“Look,” I said. “Maybe I’m not as enthusiastic about the plan as I was when I was thirteen, but I’ve spent the past four years of my life working toward this.”
Alec shrugged. “So what? Plans change. You have to learn to adapt.”
Was he being serious right now? “Alec, I can’t not go to Stanford.”
“Sure you can,” he replied. “Your problem isn’t that you have to go. It’s that you’re afraid of not knowing what you’ll do if you don’t.”
“That’s not true, and even if it were, I think it’s a reasonable concern. Boomer’s known he’s going to be an engineer all his life, and ever since Asha’s blog blew up, she’s wanted to be a digital communications major. What would I do? I don’t have any interests like that.”
“Yeah you do,” Alec said. “You’re artistic. What about your jewelry?”
“But where’s the career in that? I need to be able to support myself when I graduate.”
Even though I was no longer focused on studying, I turned over the card.
The correct answer is:
Potential Energy
Alec pursed his lips. “I don’t see the point in pursuing a career that doesn’t inspire you. If you don’t know what that career is yet, so what? Isn’t that the point of college—to figure things out? Felicity, you’ll never be happy if you’re busy chasing someone else’s success.”
I turned away from Alec.
I knew he meant well, and that he was only trying to help me, but he didn’t get it.
And he never would. He hadn’t grown up in a household that struggled to make ends meet.
Even before Alec Williams became a multi-platinum-selling musician, his family had been loaded because of his dad’s business.
He could afford to chase his dreams. I wasn’t so fortunate.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said at last. “But not everyone can enjoy that luxury.”
***
Theoretically, we should’ve made the drive from San Francisco to Seattle in one day, but a never-ending traffic jam put us way behind schedule. I could tell Alec was struggling to stay awake, and at seven o’clock, he stopped at one of the interstate rest areas so we could discuss our options.
“How much longer do you think?” I asked as Alec found a parking spot.
The lot was empty with the exception of a family and their minivan. The dad was in the process of repacking the rooftop cargo carrier, while the mom tried to wrangle all five kids back into the car. Watching them was stressful.
Alec dropped his hands from the wheel and stretched. “We still have four hours to go.”
With a yawn, Boomer leaned up between the front seats. “There’s a vending machine over there. If I grab a soda, I can probably handle another shift.”
“I have my license, you know,” Asha said. “Why don’t you let me take over? I can make it the rest of the way.” She sounded as enthused at the prospect as I felt about being stuck in the car for another two hundred and fifty miles.
“Maybe we should stop for the night,” I suggested.
“Where?” Asha asked, but what she meant was how.
We’d gotten lucky that Kelsey was nice enough to let us stay at her house, because none of us could afford a hotel.
Well, not including Alec. But I didn’t expect him to pay for our rooms. He was already doing so much for me. I couldn’t ask for anything more.
“Actually,” Alec said, perking up in his seat. “I know a place we can stay. Hold on a sec.” He plucked his cell out of the cup holder and climbed out of the car. Whoever he was calling answered right away, because Alec said hey before moving out of earshot.
“Who do you think he’s talking to?” Asha asked.
I shrugged off her question, although I was curious too.
It was strange that Alec needed to make his call in private, especially considering he’d had a heated conversation with King over the phone in my presence.
I hadn’t learned anything about the mysterious Double O Seven person who’d texted him earlier or what Safe House was.
Why was Alec being so secretive?
The conversation only lasted a minute. “All right,” said Alec as he slipped back into the car. “We’re good to go.”
“And where exactly is that?”
His smile grew crooked. “You’ll see.”