Chapter 2. In Which the Apocalypse Is My Mom Yelling at Me in Public
IN WHICH THE APOCALYPSE IS MY MOM YELLING AT ME IN PUBLIC
“Disqualified,” Mom says, slapping her phone down on her cluttered executive desk, right in front of me. “What—and I mean this with everything I have, Rory—the fuck?”
I shrink myself down as I sit in her CEO office, avoiding eye contact with the refrigerator-sized poster of me framed on the wall. IF OUR CHILD MASTERED CALCULUS AT AGE FIVE, SO CAN YOURS! runs overtop my head.
When Mom called me after the JSHS Nationals, commanding me to report to headquarters, I knew she’d heard the news.
Maybe from an email from JSHS, or from one of her hundreds of academic connections.
The moment my smoothie collided with Luca’s head, four volunteers swarmed me, disqualifying me for instigating physical violence.
Physical violence? It was just a smoothie. The way Luca has violently beat me since our first encounter at the DECA’s regional business competition three years ago is a million times worse.
“Rory,” Mom snaps.
“What was that?” I say quickly, ice-cold fear flowing through my veins.
Mom’s nose flares wide, which is quite a feat when both of ours are so pointy and narrow. Her cheeks and lips are bright red, which could be dwindling makeup from her ten-hour workday. Or she could be close to exploding.
Outside her office, two nosy employees curiously peer through the window. Likely because they’ve spotted my face—the one that stares at them in every marketing flyer and campaign they create.
“Look at what I’ve put in front of you,” Mom says.
I lean forward to inspect her phone screen. A video plays silently on loop.
A video of me.
What really makes my heart drop is the like count.
A hundred thousand. Then there’s Professor Hiller, walking past me.
Then the smoothie in my hand, and then it flying through the air, and then—I wince as the smoothie slaps Luca’s head with an intensity that rivals strong nuclear force, a hundred trillion, trillion, trillion times stronger than gravity.
I didn’t fully realize that in the moment.
The video zooms in on Luca next. Despite the smoothie dripping down his body, his eyes are spread open wide, and his brow is arched in disbelief. And then—
He laughs.
Repeatedly, as I get disqualified by volunteers, Luca laughs, his deep brown eyes crinkling at the sides. His gold rings gleaming in the track lights. His shoulders shaking in that heavy leather letterman jacket full of patches showing off his never-ending fucking accomplishments.
I mean, accomplishments. No swearing. Not even in my mind. Mom claims I’ll slip during an interview someday if I do. I almost always catch myself, but it’s impossible with him.
A hollowness digs itself into my chest. After I was disqualified, I didn’t stick around to register Luca’s reaction. I didn’t pick up my smoothie or poster board on the way out. I left it all behind and took the 2 Train back to the Financial District alone, too on the verge of tears to care.
My eyes drift toward the caption.
Maybe that prince boy isn’t so smart after all?
“How long has this been up?” My voice is barely audible from the dread twisting my insides. Too many eyes have seen this video. Too many have witnessed the perfectly carved mask of the Prince Kid crack.
In seventeen years, I’ve never screwed up. Why did Luca have to be the one who ruined my streak?
He takes everything from me.
Mom grabs her phone back so aggressively that I flinch.
Her hairspray struggles to hold on as she abruptly straightens, a few curls escaping and flying into her face.
Her thick black brows, thanks to our Irish blood, already make her appearance threatening.
But the raccoon-inspired eye shadow on her pale skin and around her bright blue eyes, both of which she passed on to me, sharpens her more.
“Wrong question,” she says. “Deduce the problem.”
Right. What’s done is done.
The JSHS National Competition will no longer be on my university applications.
The subsequent prize of being accepted to Harvard’s Research Science Institute August program is gone.
The odds of being accepted into Harvard’s physics program the following year have dwindled.
Most annoyingly, my dream of defeating Luca after he beat me thirty-five times—now thirty-six—will never come true now that the competition season is over.
Months of work wasted, and with only me to blame.
“I got distracted,” I mutter.
“You got distracted.”
A notification on Mom’s phone interrupts her, and she disappears into her CEO world. Once a triple car honk from the Pearl and Wall Street intersection shoots through the open office window, she remembers I’m sitting at her desk.
“I already told you it would be risky to keep pursuing this research of yours,” Mom says, simultaneously responding to a text or email. “It’s not as respected as clear-cut mathematics. You were already at a disadvantage. Now you’ve succumbed to the first and most important distraction.”
I nod, the guilt dragging heavier through me.
She’s right. One week after my sixth birthday, when I became Prince List’s poster child, Mom and Dad used my calculus notebook to write seven distractions that I needed to avoid.
Or what I call them: the Seven Deadly Distractions.
When Prince List relies on my image, giving in to any of these publicly could ruin us.
The first distraction: vulnerability.
Which derives from Mom’s favorite phrase: Don’t care what your competition thinks.
Don’t care if other contestants are jealous.
Don’t care if a judge refuses to see my intelligence.
And, without a doubt, don’t care about Luca.
Otherwise, that vulnerability will be used against me.
It’s more of an aspirational reminder than a committed way of life, since Mom cares about what our direct competitors think as much as I care about Luca.
It’s why we need this reminder so terribly.
The other six distractions, I haven’t touched to this day:
Sleep deprivation.
Partying.
Dating.
Junk food.
Video games.
Social media.
A knock comes at Mom’s office door.
Dad, in his favorite bright white linen blazer and matching flare-legged suit pants.
The outfit is already a bold statement, but his contrasting thick dark hair and eyelashes add to that.
Sometimes it feels like Mom and Dad are running Vogue, not Prince List. He’s holding his laptop, signaling he’s on the way to a virtual meeting in his own office, separate from Mom’s.
Even when they were married, they had separate CEO offices. Still, that professional divide didn’t save them from nearly tanking Prince List during their divorce. The perfect example of the Deadly Distraction of dating.
“I heard back,” Dad says. His tone is less panicked than Mom’s, even though his severe expression signals he’s equally disappointed in me. “It’s not pretty.”
“About?” I ask hesitantly. Whatever it is, I’m not sure if I can handle it. I’ve already experienced too many life-crushing blows.
“The rest of your summer,” Dad says.
“We had backups in case you lost out on Harvard’s program,” Mom says, “but now those backups have pulled out. So, we’ve been pulling strings. At least, trying. We hope to persuade someone else to accept you despite this video.”
Only a couple of hours have passed since the competition, yet Mom and Dad are already making moves. Always efficient, even amid a disaster.
A short, frail laugh leaves me. I didn’t know about these backups. With Luca involved, Mom and Dad apparently planned for me to be a failure. They just had no idea how badly I would fall.
“Someone will accept me,” I insist. They have to. My sanity will slip if they don’t. “I’m still famous for being smart.”
“That’s the problem, kid,” Dad says in a softer tone than he gave Mom. “Now there’s a video of your very famous face throwing a smoothie at a fellow contestant. And not just any contestant: the New York Long Island region’s recurring top pick.”
My desperation simmers back as the last three years of defeats run through my mind.
Every fast-paced question-and-answer contest, like the National Science Bowl that Luca won in Washington, DC, three months ago.
Every online-submission-based proposal, where I at least didn’t have to see him when I lost. Every symposium, like JSHS, where I regrettably did.
Even though I’m Prince List’s genius, and Luca is a marshmallow-brained hockey player.
Where does Luca’s drive to win first place come from when he’s already so busy? To study and compete academically? He must be buying time from a Long Island demon lurking in the back-alley dumpsters with bribes of lobster rolls and bagels.
“I can explain myself,” I mutter. “Write a letter. Something.”
“That would only fix a minuscule part of the problem,” Dad insists, wavering before stepping deeper into Mom’s territory. “This video will affect your college applications, too. You may get blacklisted from quite a few schools. Including Harvard.”
I search Mom’s desk, hunting for proof in the scattered paperwork that I’ve entered an alternate universe.
This can’t be real.
Even if another university would take me in despite this mistake, I have to go to Harvard. Mom and Dad went there. It’s the perfect statement for Prince List. Everyone’s dream goal is Harvard, so that’s my goal. It’s marketable, desirable, and relatable. It’s a walking cliché, and that matters.
More importantly, it matters to Mom and Dad. To me. That’s why it’s the last step to completing The Plan.
To finally earning my freedom with their approval.
“Your father is right,” Mom says. This may be the first time she’s uttered those words.
“Maybe if you were a normal kid, the whisper network wouldn’t have already spread this news to every notable summer program that’s left.
Maybe I wouldn’t have spent my whole afternoon contacting a PR firm to try to scrub this away. ”
“You have a PR team on this?” I ask.