Chapter 9.
The tent is smaller than it should be. The air smells faintly clean.
“You have five minutes,” the woman seated across from Wyatt says. She doesn’t introduce herself. Not even a first name.
“Please use this time to answer my questions truthfully. Can you do that, Mr. Jordan?”
“Yes,” Wyatt says. He tells people what they want to hear. Then he watches for the tell in their eyes.
The woman watches him the way a good bartender watches a drunk—patient, unfooled, already aware of what’s going to happen next. A tablet on her lap shows a moving line every time he speaks. Her voice is loud and brassy, filling the small tent.
“Have you asked yourself why you’re here?” the woman says.
“I think we’ve all asked ourselves that question,” Wyatt says.
No reaction out of her.
“Well, without embarrassing you, it’s because we believe you might have greatness in you,” she says. “Has anyone ever told you that before?”
“Just one person, honestly,” he says.
“Your father perhaps?”
Wyatt laughs.
“No,” he says. “Never my father. It was someone who actually cared.”
“Would you mind telling me who?”
“As a matter of fact,” Wyatt forces a smile, “I would.”
The line on the tablet twitches, just a tiny spike. Like resistance is a data point.
“What qualities do you possess that might have led us to our opinion of you?” she asks.
Wyatt hears the trap: Brag and you’re arrogant, be humble and you’re fake.
“I know people always followed my lead, in class and in sports, even socially,” he says. “Not because I ask them to. It just . . . happens.”
Wyatt smiles at the woman.
“I even got elected class president in the first grade,” he adds.
No reaction.
“I’ve already explained why we believe you should be here,” she says. “But before you leave, I’d like you to tell me why you accepted our invitation.”
He’s about to tell her he never likes to miss a party.
He won’t let life happen without him in the center of it, even if it’s just to show the old man .
. . but manages to stop himself. Read the room, he tells himself.
Tell them what they want to hear. That’s what you’re best at. Even in a room as small as this.
“I want to matter,” Wyatt says. “I want to be useful. Not just smart.”
The tablet line steadies. The woman takes notice.
“Let me put it to you another way,” the woman says. “Is there anything about you, despite our extensive research into your background, that we don’t know about you that we should?”
“No,” Wyatt lies again. As he says it, he feels the wristband give the faintest pulse.
I hope I’m right about that.