by Tess Sharpe
But there’s another side of me, the reckless side, that’s all about wonder and discovery, that wants something else.
There’s always been this thirst in me…this desire for adventure that comes only with the kind of risks I rarely take. I talk myself out of dangerous things more often than I do them. I was the designated driver and walker-home of my girlfriends more than I was drinking this year. I absolutely refused to go bungee jumping with Regina during spring break, and I can’t remember the last time I skipped a day of sunscreen.
Careful Claire—that’s me.
What would happen if I weren’t so careful? Just once?
Who could I be?
What could I do?
I look down at Sally. Half buried in cork bark, her eyes narrowed, she looks decidedly annoyed that I’ve disrupted her day like this. I’ve had her since I was eight. When I was little, she was kind of my only friend, apart from Karen. Things got better when I made it to high school, but for a long time, Sally was the holder of all my secrets, all my hopes, all my dreams. She’s the reason I let Professor Broadhurst talk me into applying for the Bright Minds internship, even though I have nowhere near the pedigree to get that kind of attention.
The Masrani Corporation has taken Dr. John Hammond’s revolutionary work and put it into action. To be a part of that, even if it means a summer of getting the scientists’ coffee—which, let’s face it, is probably what the internship is about—would be the ultimate opportunity. It would mean interacting with amazing creatures that only a handful of people have ever seen up close. A monumental chance to do historic work that could benefit the world—the kind of opportunity that shouldn’t exist, because really, dinosaurs shouldn’t exist.
But now they do.
When they announced Dr. Hammond’s breakthroughs after the photos of the first dinosaurs surfaced, I was twelve. Some people called it a nightmare, especially when news got out about what happened with Dr. Hammond’s first park, the one that never opened.
But for me, it was like a dream. It still is. It’s the impossible fantasy and the wild frontier of scientific innovation. It’s the chance to re-create the past and forge it into the future…to experience the very start of something enormous—the beginning of a new cycle of evolution itself.
How could anyone pass that up?
So I write down the reckless, impractical path—Bright Minds. I bite my lip, making sure Karen isn’t looking at what I’m writing, before I scribble at the bottom of the napkin: Let Mom and Dad find their way back to each other.
I fold the napkin thirteen times, just like Dad taught us. Karen glances at me out of the corner of her eye, but she doesn’t say anything as I tuck the little square into my pocket.
An hour later, we pull into a rest stop. After we’re done using the facilities, Karen digs a lighter out of the glove box (because Dad is always prepared), and we sit down at one of the cement picnic tables.
I take the folded napkin out of my jeans and hold it up as Karen flicks the lighter. The square catches fire, and I drop it onto the table, watching the flame curl around the paper, burning the ink—and my wish—to smoke.
“Are you gonna tell me which one you wrote down?” Karen asks.
I bite my lip, looking down at the gray and black curls of ash. I blow gently, and they break apart, skittering off the table and up into the air like a swarm of mosquitoes.
“The Bright Minds project,” I blurt out, not even able to meet her eyes when I say it, because I’m embarrassed to, when it’s so out of reach. “It’s stupid. They have, like, twelve hours left to let me know. The acceptance letters probably went out weeks ago.”
But there’s a light in my sister’s eyes that makes the skin on the back of my neck prickle. And then she’s smiling in a way that’s pure “I told you so,” and a frantic kind of hope rises inside me, like an animal scratching at the door in a snowstorm.
“They did, actually, get sent out weeks ago,” Karen says. “There must have been a holdup at the post office, because this just arrived at Mom and Dad’s before I left to get you.”
Karen reaches into her purse and pulls out an envelope.
A big envelope.
The kind of big envelope that acceptances and welcome letters come in.
My heart’s thudding.
She slides it across the picnic table. It’s flipped over, the address side down, and the first thing I see is the seal on the flap.
Bloodred. A T. rex pressed into the wax.
My fingers close around the envelope, and the future I’ve always wanted is finally in my grasp.
When Karen and I finally get home, the sun’s sinking behind the hills. It’s weird, or maybe it’s not, that I feel kind of nervous as we turn onto our street.
Mom’s waiting on the porch before we even pull into the driveway, and she hugs me a long time, stroking my hair. Dad comes out from the back, beaming when he sees me, and Earhart, my dog, is right behind him, her tail wagging so fast it’s almost a blur.
I hug Dad. “It’s good to see you, sweetie,” he says. “The drive went okay?”
“The drive was good,” I say. I bend down so I’m eye level with Earhart, rubbing between her ears as she closes her eyes.
She’s a mutt but clearly has some Lab and Rottweiler in her. She’s not just named after the pilot—she has this scar on her left ear that’s in the shape of a heart. She also has the cutest little eyebrows, and when she came into the rescue I volunteered at in high school, I knew she was supposed to be with me. She was so scared when she first arrived, any noise she wasn’t used to would send her into shaking fits. Sometimes, at the rescue, you’d get the full story of a dog, because they were taken out of abusive situations or because someone had to surrender their animal for whatever reason and bringing them to the rescue was the best thing they could do. But with Earhart, we had no idea about her past, so earning her trust took time. She’d been found wandering down the highway with a bad case of mange and her right eye terribly infected, probably from a tangle with another dog. The vets who worked with the rescue had to remove her eye, but other than a few depth perception issues, it’s never seemed to bother her.
While Earhart loves me, her real true love is Sally. As soon as she sees the travel terrarium in my hands, her ears prick up, her tail whipping back and forth. I laugh. “Yep, I brought your buddy home,” I tell her, and Earhart licks the plastic outside of the terrarium enthusiastically.
Sally flicks her tongue out, unperturbed by the sloppy drool.
My dad shakes his head. “That dog,” he says, grinning.
I pat Earhart on her head one more time for getting up.
“Your dad’s been grilling all day,” Mom says as we go inside. “And I made that herb bread you love.”
“Sounds great,” I say as Earhart scampers in front of me, spinning in circles, trying to keep her eyes on Sally.
“I’m going to call Pete,” Karen says. “He’ll bring Zach over.”
“I’m gonna put Sally upstairs, then I’ll come out,” I say.
When Karen gets back and we sit down for dinner, I watch my parents closely for any sign of trouble, but they seem fine. Dad’s a little distracted helping Zach cut his chicken, and Mom’s focused on me, especially when I tell the table I got the Bright Minds internship. I can tell by the way her lips flatten just so that she isn’t thrilled.
Karen and I break out the bubble machine from the garage after dinner, and we play bubble tag in the backyard with Zach, who rolls around in the grass and shrieks with laughter every time a bubble bursts in between his hands. Earhart barks delightedly every time he does it. It’s nice to be home.
But it’s also kind of strange, after Karen and Pete leave with a sleepy Zach and I put my boxes in the garage instead of my room and toss a suitcase on the bed. Like I don’t quite fit in this space anymore.
Earhart’s the only thing in it that feels like mine. She curls up on the rug next to my bed, and in minutes, she’s snoring blissfully.
I guess that’ll make one of us.
My mom’s kept my room the same. She did that with Karen’s room too. Until she got married. I didn’t want her to do that with mine, so when I left for school I told her she should turn it into a sewing room. She makes these beautiful quilts, and she should have the space for her sewing machine and all her supplies instead of the corner of the living room she has now. But she kept saying I’d need my room when I came home to visit. And then, of course, I didn’t, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I press my palms against my eyes, trying to drive away the guilt.
When Karen gave me the envelope, I was so happy. But now that I’m here, alone in my room, I’ve already begun making a pros-and-cons list in my head. All this change the past few years…it obviously messed with my parents. And now that I know they’ve been having problems, I’m suddenly questioning things. Do I really want to go so far away, leave my family when there’s a crisis?
But what could I do if I stay? My parents don’t even want me to know they’re having trouble. Am I supposed to stay here and pretend I don’t know? Because that would be awful.
Am I supposed to go and trust they’ll work it out?
I let out a long breath and turn off my bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness. I stare up at the intricate solar system I created on my ceiling in eighth grade. I spent so many hours looking up at these glowing stick-on constellations in high school, studying hard and waiting to get away to college. And now I’m right back here, looking up at the stars and waiting to get somewhere else.
If I stay, I’ll regret it. That’s the truth. I’ll lose momentum and fall behind. I’d catch up, because I always find a way, but it would be hard. I would hate it.
But I also hate that I don’t want to stay. I hate that it isn’t an easy choice, like it was for Karen. Her ambitions fit into staying. But mine never have.
Being ambitious is like being consumed. Like something’s gnawing at me. Sometimes the desire fades, but other times it’s so intense, I’m afraid it’ll burst through my skin, all gnashing teeth and feral hunger. I think it should scare me, because it’s a part of me that’s hard to tame. It’s a part of me that grows every day. The more I learn, the more I see, and the more I see, the more I want.
* * *
The next morning, I get up early. I step over a snoozing Earhart, careful not to wake her. The house is quiet. It’s Saturday, and Dad is not a morning person.
But Mom is. When I go downstairs, she’s already in the kitchen, cup of coffee in hand.
I walk over to the pot and pour myself a cup, and I see her raise an eyebrow.
“You know I was sneaking coffee all through high school,” I say, and her mouth twitches like she wants to laugh, but it goes against the Disapproving Mom Code.
She sits down at our kitchen table—Dad built that, too, out of reclaimed barn wood. It’s old and just a little rustic, and it reminds me of him more than anything else in this house. I can tell by the way Mom tilts her head that she wants me to sit down across from her. That she wants to talk.
You know that dreadful kind of anticipation you have when one of your parents is getting ready to break something to you? It feels like when you’re hurrying down a flight of stairs and take the last step, and it’s just…not there. Your stomach drops and you realize you miscalculated, but it takes a moment for your body and your brain to line up. It seems to last forever, that moment, and you’re just falling, falling, in this long, horrible drop that feels endless.
I hate that feeling.
Is she going to tell me they’re getting a divorce? Was Karen wrong? Has counseling not worked?
I’m white-knuckling my coffee cup as I sit down across from her, thinking maybe I should’ve added sugar to get through this. Normally I drink it black, just like she does.
Surely Dad would be here if she was going to tell me they were splitting up. And Karen. They’d tell us together. Right?
This must be about something else. I remember how she got progressively quieter last night every time Bright Minds was mentioned.
Of course. She wants to talk me out of taking it. I feel more relieved than I should.
She smiles gently at me, in that fond way that has me bracing myself. My mom loves me. I just don’t think she really gets me. My dad and I have more in common. We’re quieter, stubborn; we like to observe.
Mom and Karen have things in common. They’re both creative and artistic; they go to that ceramics studio on Fourth Street and paint bowls and plates. I have a soap dish Mom painted with little girls picking daisies painted on it. It’s beautiful. Every time I look at it, I’m reminded that she loves me, but there’s just this…space between the two of us. We’re somehow out of sync, and we never quite seem to line up in the same place at the same time, with anything close to the same ideas.
I’m not creative in the way they are. I’m not artistic, and I cannot go with the flow or whatever.
I am scientific. I am methodical. I like to fix things. And I’m determined enough to do it. To find the problem and pull it out from the roots so it doesn’t return.
My mother is determined in a very different way. She’s sweet and caring and wants everyone to get along. Conflict is one of her big no-nos. There used to be a list of them on the kitchen chalkboard when Karen and I were little.
But life’s about conflict, isn’t it? History is. Evolution is.
And right now, in our little kitchen, conflict has arrived at the door. I invited it in, my desire for more getting the better of me.
“I wanted to talk to you about this internship,” Mom says. She’s being so careful, I think she’s maybe as nervous as I am right now.
“Okay,” I say, trying to keep my voice level.
“I am incredibly proud of you for being chosen for Bright Minds,” Mom continues. “But you’re going to wait, aren’t you, until you get news about the rest of your applications?”
“Of course,” I say.
I don’t know why I don’t tell her right away that I’ve already been accepted to the other internships. That if I don’t call in to one of the law firms by Monday, I’ll have missed my opportunity. It’s not like me to leave things to the last minute. But I had to wait out the Bright Minds deadline.
And here I am. Even now, my fingers tremble at the thought of that red wax seal.
Mom lets out a noise I’m not sure she’s aware of, this tiny sigh of relief that makes my stomach twist. “I’m glad to hear you’re going to consider all your options,” she says, like that’s not exactly what I’ve been doing.
Frustration snaps in my chest like silk in the wind. I made pros-and-cons spreadsheets last winter when I chose which internships to apply for. I have pros-and-cons lists from last night, even, because I am never not thorough. But my mother thinks I need to consider all my options.
“Most people would say that turning down Bright Minds and a chance to work with Simon Masrani would be a big mistake,” I blurt out.
“I’m not telling you to turn down anything,” she says quickly. “And…I am not most people. I’m your mother.”
Did Karen feel like this on her first summer home from college? This weird teeter-totter of having spent a year finally being the ruler of her own life, but staying in her childhood bedroom again, under our mother’s hand-stitched quilts—and under her thumb. Not quite a child, but not quite an adult in her eyes. She still feels the need to tell me what to think.
But I’ve never needed to be told what to think. She should know that by now.
This dance Mom and I are doing—I don’t like it. I don’t dance. Literally or metaphorically. And I’m not going to dance around this. Misleading her is no use. Springing it
on her right before I leave would cause an even bigger mess.
“I’ve heard from all the internships,” I say. “I’ve gotten acceptances from every place I applied. I’m going to need to decide very soon, and right now, I’m leaning toward Bright Minds.” I try for a casual tone but completely fail at keeping the edge out of my voice.
She bites her lip. It’s such a familiar sight—I do it; so does Karen—that it makes me ache. I don’t want to worry or disappoint her. But I think I’m going to have to.
“Tell me why,” she says.
I open my mouth to protest that I don’t need to justify it, when she hurries on: “Honey, if you want me to be okay with you flying off to an island in the middle of nowhere to interact with dinosaurs that a now-deceased billionaire doctor created out of amber or mosquitoes or something, then I need you to help me understand.
“You’ve always been so focused,” she continued. “So…intense. That’s not a bad thing,” she added hastily, catching the look on my face. “But even as a little girl, your drive…” She sounds almost bewildered in her admiration, and it shouldn’t hurt, but maybe it does a little. “It’s amazed me, all these years. You did so much good in high school working with the rescue, and now you’ve got your pick of internships. I know you love animals. But dinosaurs…they’re a little different from working at a pet rescue.”
I wanted to laugh at the understatement. She was trying so hard and not getting anywhere, because she didn’t understand the draw of Isla Nublar. She wouldn’t make the choice I wanted to.
“Wouldn’t interning for a law firm or the judge be a better choice if you want to get into politics?” she asked. “Dinosaurs aren’t going to help you get to Congress.”
“The Senate, Mom,” I correct her.
“Right,” she said.
Like I said, my mom is sweet. She really believes I can somehow become a senator—as a woman with no pedigree, no family connections, no money—out of nowhere.
