by Walter Jury
Now I stare at my empty hands.
Christina fills them with her own. “I could come in if you want. You know, cut the tension a little?” She grins, her blue eyes glittering with fun. And more than a little hope. I’ve never introduced her to my dad, and I know she wonders why.
My fingers close around hers and I squeeze gently. The expression on her face is making my chest ache. “Nah, it’s fine. I know you have to go.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her that, though he couldn’t even pick her out of a crowd, my dad despises the very idea of her. He hates anything that distracts me, and according to him, that’s all Christina is, which is grade-A bullshit. I’ve told him so. Over and over again. Now I avoid the topic. Which means keeping her away from him, because I can’t stand the idea of him putting her down in some subtle I’m-the-smartest-man-on-Earth kind of way. He’s not nearly as subtle as he thinks, and Christina’s perceptive and would pick up on it.
Just like she’s picked up on it now. Her face falls for an instant, enough to make that ache in my chest turn sharp, but then she forces the corners of her mouth up again. She’s going to let me get away with it, even though she deserves better from me and we both know it. I am simultaneously filled with gratitude and dripping with guilt. She leans forward and kisses my cheek, leaving a little smudge of cherry lip gloss on my skin, a tiny treasure I’ll carry with me through whatever’s coming next.
“Call if you want to talk, all right?” she says. “I’ll be playing Barbies for the next three hours and could probably use the break.”
“I’d gladly switch places with you.” I tug on her hand, unable to let her go, wishing I could spend the whole evening in this enclosed space with her. Her kiss is sweet. Her hands on my neck are so warm. She smiles against my lips and puts her hand on my chest. I’m sure she can feel my heart pounding.
“Now you’re just avoiding going inside,” she accuses, but there’s no bite in it.
I close my eyes and inhale her scent, cherries and almonds. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” She’s completely right.
She touches my nose with hers. “See you tomorrow?”
“Absolutely.”
And then I open the door and unfold myself onto the sidewalk. Rooted to the spot, my duffel hanging from my fist, I watch her pull away from the curb and slip into traffic. I don’t take my eyes off her car until the taillights disappear around a corner, and then I know my time is up.
I walk through the lobby and take the stairs, because taking the elevator is pointless. We live on the bottom three floors and the front door is just one flight up. I stand outside for a few moments, knowing I’m being a flat-out pussy.
And of course, he doesn’t wait for me to be ready to face him. He doesn’t like waiting. He opens the door.
Tall and lean, an unreadable expression on his smooth-shaven face, my father rakes his slate-gray gaze from my toes to my shoulders. It takes less than a second for him to collect, weigh, parse, and analyze my failure. Without meeting my eyes, he says, “I waited to warm up dinner. I expected you an hour ago.”
I follow him into the living room and drop my bag on the couch. Johnny Knoxville, our irritable cat, the only thing my mom left behind when she gave up on us four years ago, gives me a surly meow and jumps off his favorite cushion. He prowls over to my dad and rubs against his legs, leaving black fur on Dad’s crisp khaki pants.
“I wasn’t sure you were home,” I lie. “I know you’re going to Chicago for that board meeting.”
The corner of Dad’s mouth twitches up. “Which I leave for tomorrow, as you know.”
I look away from his cool, assessing stare, his black-brown hair cut military and neat, his perfect posture. “I’m not that hungry anyway.”
It’s like he doesn’t even hear me. He goes into the kitchen and pulls our prepared meals from the fridge. I recognize from the label on the box what I’m getting tonight. Meal Number Fourteen. Two cups of pasta, two slices of wheat bread, large spinach salad with two ounces of sunflower seeds and one ounce of low-fat dressing, eight ounces skinless grilled chicken breast, eight ounces 2 percent milk. All measured out carefully, down to the milligram. Tailored to my unique nutritional needs, as determined by Frederick Archer, aka the guy who runs my life, aka my dad.
He pokes a fork through the plastic film over the pasta compartment and pops the dish into the microwave. “Did you supplement with the protein gel after your last match?” he asks, his voice completely controlled, as usual.
“Yeah, of course.” My supplements are still in my bag . . . unconsumed. I was too busy drowning in defeat to remember.
He raises his head and gives me a penetrating, you’re-full-of-shit glare. But all he says is “You never eat enough on competition days, and you need to replenish. You probably have at least three hundred seventy grams of carbohydrate left to consume today. And protein. At least fifty—”
“I can’t eat all that tonight. Seriously, I just want to—”
“Tate.” His voice skewers me. “You’re going to be hurting tomorrow. And if you’re careless like this, you’re going to lose muscle mass.”
I walk to the table and sit down. He turns his back and returns his attention to our food, knowing the argument is over. He’s got broad shoulders and a V-shaped torso, ripped and lean under that custom-made oxford shirt of his. I’m built like that, too, lucky me, but I haven’t filled out yet. I’m nearly as tall as he is now, thanks to what felt like a thousand years of piercing growing pains, but I’m still all lank and no bulk. I’ve fought and scraped for every gram of muscle mass I’ve got, and I have no intention of losing it. Which he knows.
He takes the time to put our food on actual plates instead of leaving it in the plastic compartment trays we usually eat from. I get up and grab us some forks and knives, because I can’t stand to watch him anymore and I need to do something or else I’m going to bolt. When I return to the table, he’s already sitting down, cloth napkin in his lap, four ounces of red wine in a glass next to his plate, long fingers drumming drumming drumming. I think that might be the only bad habit he’s got, if you don’t count busting my balls on a regular basis, that is.
I lower myself onto the chair, noticing for the first time the searing pain in my right leg, a gift from Cow-Eyes and an excellent reminder of how pathetic I am. I grit my teeth and keep my expression bland, but my father’s gaze misses nothing.
“You were hurt today.” He never wastes time asking questions he already knows the answer to.
Which saves me the trouble of answering him. I shove a forkful of pasta into my mouth and chew.
“You didn’t get it wrapped after the match.”
Chew chew chew swallow. Bite of spinach salad, bitter on my tongue. Chew.
His jaw tightens. He takes a sip of his wine. My eyes stray to the trophy case across the room. The display lights are on, spotlighting an empty space that isn’t really empty. It’s filled to bursting with my failure.
I tear my eyes away from it. Bite of bread, nutty sweet. Chew.
He smooths his napkin over his lap. “And Chicão didn’t bring you home.”
I raise my gaze from my plate. “He called you.”
“No, I called him.”
I exhale heavily through my nose. Here. We. Go. “Checking up on me.”
“Is it so far-fetched that I’d want to know how my son did in such an important competition?”
“No more far-fetched than the idea that you might call your actual son to find out.” I feel a strange sensation between my fingers and realize I’ve crushed my bread to gooey dough in my fist.
He nods, pressing his lips together. “Logical enough. I thought it might be better if I got the information in advance from a third party.”
I drop my mutilated bread onto my plate. “Because you thought I’d lie?”
“Because I t
hought it would be easier on you.”
“Does it look easy?” My heart is thudding against my ribs, and my stomach is tight.
He sighs. “Actually, it looks unnecessarily difficult. Chicão told me about the semifinals. He said you could have beaten the guy.”
Yes. Yes, I could have. “That’s crazy. That guy won the whole freaking tournament. By submissions. It’s not like—”
“The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows,” he says calmly.
My laughter has a sour taste. I hate this game. “You’re quoting Buddha? Come on, Dad, you can do better than that. How about a little Sun Tzu? Nothing like The Art of War over dinner.”
“It might have helped if you’d considered Sun Tzu’s teachings before your match. Sounds like your opponent did. ‘Pretend inferiority and encourage your enemy’s arrogance.’ Ni ting shuo guo ma?”
Great. Now he’s questioning my intelligence in sarcastic Chinese. My eyes are burning. I want to punch something. Mostly because he’s so fucking composed, and I’m on the jagged edge, hanging by my fingertips. Oh, and also because he’s right. Again. And I’m wrong. Again. Again. A-fucking-gain.
“Shi ma? Ni zhen hui taiju ren,” I snap as I shove away from the table. “So sorry I didn’t bring you a shiny prize for your shiny case. Sorry I’m not perfect like you are.”
He winces, and it kind of freezes me up for a second, like—did I just affect him? But then it’s gone, and his expression is smooth again. “I don’t need you to be perfect,” he says. “I need you to be your best. If you can look me in the eye and tell me you did your best today, this conversation can be over.”
He waits. And I sit in my chair, arms folded across my chest, my leg throbbing in earnest now, my eyes glued on my still-full plate. Unable to say anything, because I’ve got my words bottled up so tight that I’ll explode like a grenade if I open my mouth.
He takes a few bites of food, chews each one forty times before swallowing. Then he says, “You’ll train an extra hour each day for the next few weeks. Chicão has cleared his schedule. In addition to your morning workouts, you’ll have a sparring session with him after school, before you meet with your language tutors.”
Holy hell, he’s just pulled my pin. I shoot to my feet. “I can’t! I already made plans with Christina to help her with her chem—”
“No,” he barks, his eyes sparking with fury at the mention of her name. “This is much more important.”
“She is important,” I shout. “I promised her, and I’m not going to let her down.”
Now he’s on his feet. There might be a few silver hairs at his temples, but he’s nowhere near past his prime. He could probably kick my ass without breaking a sweat. It would almost be a relief if he tried, because I want to hit him right now.
“Nothing is more important than your training,” he says in a low voice. “You—we—have a responsibility, and the stakes are far higher than you can—”
“Screw my responsibility! I don’t even know what that is!” Rage fizzes and pops through my veins, the heat of it coursing along my limbs. “You’re always talking about it, and you don’t even realize how stupid you sound.”
I puff my chest out and lower my voice an octave. “Bearing the name of Archer is a great responsibility, Tate, one you must prepare for by subsisting on a diet of grilled chicken and pasta and by turning your brain inside out on a daily basis.”
My father pinches the bridge of his nose. “Tate, stop.”
But I can’t. I’m on a roll. “You’re already a junior in high school, and you speak only eleven languages? Not good enough. I speak twenty-three for some incomprehensible reason. And forget about your girlfriend. Sure, she’s the best thing that ever happened to you, but it’s probably wise to think of her as a living, breathing waste of time.” I wag my finger at him. “But don’t worry. You can work out your frustration on the mat with a sweaty Portuguese man who wears too much Old Spice. You’ll never be as perfect as I am, but maybe I can turn you into a cheap imitation.”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “Tate, calm down.”
I’m right in his space now, which is tempting fate, but I’m too far gone to care. “And I’ll never actually tell you why I put you through this, Tate,” I say from between clenched teeth. “It’s part of the fun. I’ll give you a bunch of bullshit about family responsibility, sure, but it’s really because I’m a scientist, and I care about you exactly as much as I care about all my other experiments.”
My breath is sawing in and out of me. I’m close enough to him to see the tiny scar at the corner of his chin and the flash of fire in his eyes as he stares steadily at me. He doesn’t move, though. Doesn’t flinch or back up or shove me away. He just stands there. And when he speaks, his voice is rock solid and dead calm. “I’ll tell you everything when you’re ready, son. Unfortunately, today you have proven that you are far from ready.”
His blunt words are sharp as knives, and they deflate me, leaving me sagging. Another Sun Tzu quote comes to me, and like always, it’s too late to do me any good. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the height of skill.
No one’s more skillful than Frederick Archer.
I nod, buckling under the weight of defeat, which is heavy enough to make me slow but not enough to let me sink through the floor. “Thanks, Dad. Enjoy your dinner,” I mumble.
I turn on my heel and slowly walk to my room, thankful he can’t see the grimace on my face as I force myself not to limp.
I OPEN MY DOOR IN THE MORNING AND FIND MY BREAKfast on a tray. Meal Number Six. Two cups iron-fortified cereal, banana, eight ounces milk, eight ounces orange juice, blue vitamin pill. Also, a note from my dad saying he’ll be back from Chicago late tonight and a reminder that Chicão’s coming this afternoon to give me my first extra training session. Nothing about yesterday at all.
Nothing except the bottle of Advil he left sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, next to a glass of water.
It might be Sunday, and I might have been through hell yesterday, but that’s no excuse to slack off. I walk my aching leg to our workout room and don’t come out until I’ve punished myself adequately. It takes about five miles on the treadmill and an hour with the weights, thinking all the while about the family responsibility and what the hell he could possibly be talking about, coming up with absolutely nothing except a headache the size of Manhattan. Then the cleaning lady shows up to do her thing, filling the apartment with the scent of 2-butoxyethanol and sodium petroleum sulfonate—Windex and Pine-Sol—and making my already-pounding head feel like it’s going to detonate.
Ah, but just before it does . . . Christina shows up at my door, wearing a short skirt and carrying a box of doughnuts.
No one can tell me I don’t have the best girlfriend in the world.
“Hello.” I pull the door wide to let her step into the entryway, unable to wipe the huge smile from my face.
She flips open the box and raises an eyebrow. “I thought you might be in need of a sugar high.”
I’m still grinning as I snag a glazed monstrosity from the box and take a huge bite. My dad would have a stroke if he could see me now. “You have no idea,” I say with a full mouth.
Once we’ve each polished off a pastry, I take her down to my father’s lab, partly because it’s the only way to escape the cleaning lady, and partly because I enjoy the fact that he has no idea I can get in here. And also because alone time with my girlfriend is a rare gift, and I have no intention of wasting it.
“Just out of curiosity, how did you figure out how to get in here?” she asks as we approach the door. “I thought your dad was super-secretive about this place.”
I wave the fingertips of my right hand at her. “That’s what this is for.”
She squints at the almost-transparent film over my index finger, a thin strip of plastic I fetched from my
room on our way down here. “And that is . . .”
“His fingerprint.” I slide my finger into an opening in the control panel next to the door, then use my other hand to punch in my dad’s code, which took me six solid months of hacking to figure out. “It’s his fault, really. He’s the one who started teaching me chemistry when I was still in kindergarten.”
“Is that why you’re so good at it?” she asks, lifting my hand to the light. She’s a senior, and though she breezes through every other subject, I’m tutoring her in chemistry.
“I guess. It’s not that hard.”
Christina rolls her eyes as I carefully slip the transparent tape off my finger and place it in a little plastic case I pull from my pocket.
“Really,” I say. “Take this here, for instance.” I wave the plastic case at her before putting it away again. “When you touch something, your skin leaves behind all sorts of stuff—amino acids, isoagglutinogen, potassium, and a bunch of other compounds. You can’t see any of it, of course, and it can be wiped away easily. But it’s there and available if you know how to find and use it. All it took to gather the fingerprint was a lightbulb, some foil, a bit of superglue, this strip of tape, and some vodka.”
She gives me this raised-eyebrow look. “Vodka?”
I shrug. “Okay, maybe vodka was just the beverage of choice for the evening.”
She slaps my arm because she knows I’m full of shit—vodka’s one thing we definitely don’t keep in the house. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll catch you?”
I tug her through the door and pull her close, sliding my fingers through one of her dark blond curls, tracing its path around her collarbone. “My father will catch me someday, and then we’ll have it out. In the meantime, it’s a great place to explore.”
