Trade Me Read online

  My dad may be something of a mean fucker, but he’s a mean fucker with prescient vision, brilliant business sense, and an almost preternatural ability to know precisely what needs to be done at any given moment. Hundreds of people depend on his decisions.

  I switch the apple yet again to my other hand. Four.

  And the truth is… I know why he wants me to run the launch. It’s not about wanting a vacation or needing to slow down. It’s not even a manipulative attempt to yank me out of school and pull me back into his orbit.

  It’s because a little over a year ago, Peter Georgiacodis—Cyclone’s Chief Financial Officer, my father’s best friend, the only person who could face my dad down and remain standing, and, incidentally, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a second parent—had a massive heart attack two nights before the launch of our third-generation tablet.

  My father would never admit that preparing for our upcoming launch has afflicted him with anything so weak as lingering grief. He would never tell me that the memories are getting to him. He’d certainly never talk about fears of his own fleeting mortality. But when he says that he needs me, I suspect that’s what he means.

  If he were just a mean fucker, if all he had to offer was cash, I could tell him to piss off. But it’s not about the money. Imagine that Darth Vader had the chance to raise Luke as his son. Imagine that he spent every day with him, loved him, and taught him everything he knew. Imagine that he put Luke first every day of his son’s young life, even though he had an empire to run and galactic rebellions to squash.

  It’s easy to shout “I’ll never join you!” when some random asshole makes ridiculous claims about your parentage. It’s harder when that asshole loves you with a world-bending ferocity. And it’s downright impossible when you love him back.

  Dad and I stare at each other for a moment, both of us desperately wishing the other will change.

  “Compromise,” I finally say. “I’ll draft the launch script. I can do that and stay in school. But you’re still the public face of Cyclone. You stay in charge. You run it. Not me.”

  His eyes bore into mine.

  I want to do everything for him. I want to be everything he thinks I can be.

  But… Dad, I have a problem.

  He doesn’t need to hear about my problem. I’m going to take care of it on my own, and when I do, I’ll come back. At that point, I’ll be the person he believes I can be, not just the illusion of a son he can rely on.

  He lets out a long breath. “Fine. I can work with that. I’ll have George set everything up. Thanks, asshole.”

  “You got it, you bastard.”

  He ends the conversation.

  And in that moment, I realize what I’ve agreed to. It’s not the work that convinced me I needed to get away from Cyclone. I don’t mind work. But Dad’s not the only one with lingering grief issues. He’s just the one who is managing his issues in a reasonably healthy manner.

  Agreeing to script the launch will put me back in the heart of memories I can’t forget. And unlike my dad, I have a problem.

  I remember staring at Peter’s casket, seeing Cyclone employees, industry contacts—a crowd, really—surrounding him. And that’s when I started to feel trapped. There were hundreds of people there, and he knew all of them—every single one—from work.

  I switch the apple back to my left hand. Five. That’s the rule. I have to switch the fruit from hand to hand five times, slowly, before I eat it. By the time I’ve done that, the apple will have reached body temperature and I can decide if I want to eat it and make it a part of me.

  But my hands are flushed and hot. The apple’s too warm now, as if it’s absorbed all the heat of my emotions. If I eat it, that conversation will become a part of me, and I’ll never escape it.

  So I do the same thing I did after Peter’s funeral: I go for a run instead.

  I eschew sweatpants in favor of running shorts and a T-shirt. The weather monitor on my watch informs me that it’s fifty-two and raining, but I feel hot. I feel the illusory weight of a hundred stares on me as I jaunt outside and fall into a warm-up jog. At first, my muscles are sluggish and the rain is frigid against my bare thighs.

  I run harder. I’m a little hungry; maybe I should have eaten that apple after all. But here’s a trick of physiology, one that I learned in high school even though the teachers didn’t put it this way. The fight or flight response shuts down the parasympathetic nervous system. It’s complicated, and physiology is not my bag of tricks, but it all comes down to the same thing: Your body can’t digest food while you’re running. If I could run all the time, I’d never get hungry.

  I can’t run all the time, but I can try. I run until the ache slips from my quads, until all sense of hunger dissipates. With every step, I imagine my body searching for energy, needing to find it somewhere. There is nowhere it can draw that energy from, nowhere except my body itself. I run, and with every step I get smaller. If I run hard enough, I tell myself, maybe one day I can run myself into someone else altogether.

  Deep down, I know it doesn’t matter how fast I run. I’m fucked up at any speed. Deep down, I know I have to get out. But I don’t know which direction is out any longer. I wish I could outrun myself. I wish I could trade this stupid problem for anything else.

  Running is a double-edged sword. It’s a huge part of the problem that has me so badly tangled. But it also rewinds my day, leaving the worst of it on the trail behind me. It takes me back through my conversation with my dad, leaching the emotion away. It takes me back through a lunch I barely ate, back through this morning.

  God, this morning.

  Sometimes, you build someone up in your mind. Yes, I noticed Tina’s legs first. And her hair second—I’m a sucker for long hair, and hers, when she lets it down, falls halfway down her back, thick and straight and dark, catching light and releasing it in little glints. But she’s also smart, focused, and determined. Tina seemed exactly the kind of girl I’d go for if I had my shit together. There’s something that’s sexy as fuck about a woman who knows what she wants. She seemed like the kind of girl who would see through my bullshit in a hot minute.

  Look at that. I was right.

  I go over her words, again and again, letting the truth in them hurt me as much as the ache in my lungs.

  You do know what it’s like to get something in exchange for nothing. You’re an expert at it.

  Nobody here would care about a word you said if your family was on food stamps. Try trading lives with me. You couldn’t manage it, not for two weeks.

  She has no idea how right she is. Hell, I can’t even manage being myself.

  Try trading lives with me. You couldn’t manage it, not for two weeks.

  Try trading lives with me.

  It starts as a stupid, wistful idea, based only on the fact that I want to get out and I can’t. Try trading lives with me.

  Fuck. I totally would. I want what she has. I want that certainty. That determination. Me? I’m just a pair of legs and lungs, moving, moving, moving, for fear that if I stop I’ll vanish. But this idea doesn’t go away.

  Don’t get me wrong; it’s not a solution. I don’t have solutions, not anymore. But some of my best ideas, my most brilliant answers, have come to me when I mixed things up and got out of my head. Maybe all I need is a different perspective. A radically different one.

  Try trading lives with me.

  I want, I want, I want. And maybe what I want, most of all, is someone who will finally see through my bullshit. Someone who will kick me in the ass and tell me to stop fucking around like this. I have a problem and I don’t want it.

  Try trading lives with me.

  I would in three seconds. Any way I could.

  3.

  TINA

  By the time I get home at seven, the rest of the day has eroded the worst of my morning memories. Another hour of classes, five hours at the library…my mind only has so much emotional space. The events of the morning are impossibly far away
when I open my laptop. The hinge catches; I adjust it and idly check my email.

  From: Maria Lopez

  Subject: Something you’re not telling me?

  For a second, I have no idea what she could mean. Maria is my best friend and roommate. She knows everything about me—or at least, as much as any one person can know. Then the events of the morning come rushing back: me opening my big mouth, the class, Blake Reynolds.

  I thought I was safe from the prospect of Facebook blowing up—but then, Blake did know my name. I open a new tab, check my notifications…

  Mabel beat my score in an online game. Jen from high school tagged me in a three-year-old photo. There’s a half-dozen likes on my post this morning about wearing my lucky sweater. Other than that? Nothing.

  I let out a breath of relief, switch tabs, and click on Maria’s email. You left your phone at home, the body of the message reads, and your mom called seven times that I could see. Everything okay with them?

  Oh, thank God. Just that.

  No worries, I reply. That’s just Mom. I’ll talk to her. After a moment, I add: I had kind of a shitty day though. Someone got mud on my sweater.

  Her response comes a few minutes later. Noooo!! Will it wash out?

  Don’t think so. It’s okay, though. See you soon.

  I pick up my phone. Sure enough, there are twenty-three missed calls and no messages. My mother is not the most patient person in the world. It’s a good thing she and Dad are happily married, because if she were in the dating pool, she’d be the sort of person who would call the guy she liked a dozen times in a half-hour.

  But instead of calling her back immediately, or even starting on my second project like I should, I pull up a third browser tab. A multicolored search logo greets me.

  I’m going to regret this, but…

  Blake Reynolds, I type. The search result pulls up a brief entry to the right, which features a fairly recent shot of Blake, alongside several of his younger photos. This includes a baby picture that is unfairly cute. Blake is the Vice President of Interfaces at Cyclone Systems, currently on leave. His birthday is February 14th. Of course. Even the universe thinks everyone should love him.

  Beneath that, there are links to a smattering of news articles, his official page at Cyclone, a book review, and a YouTube playlist titled “The Best of Blake,” maintained by BlakeFan1283. With some trepidation, I click on the last one.

  It’s a collection of ads, product launch clips, and interviews.

  The first item in the playlist, of course, is the famous and now well-aged Cyclone ad, the one that broke them out of the server business when they started in on consumer electronics. The computer depicted reflects its age—this is obviously a high-end machine for the time, with a bulky CD-ROM drive and dual floppy disks. The camera focuses not on the tower itself, but on the user: an adorable, pudgy, blond toddler.

  On screen, baby Blake grasps the mouse and starts a program. As it opens, he claps his hands in clumsy baby glee, laughing out loud.

  “Cyclone Systems,” the announcer intones. “Computers so easy, even a baby can use them.”

  There are a slew of adorable commercials of Blake, all of which have been named and labeled by his fans. I click on “Sorry,” which has two million views.

  Blake, maybe five years old and still sun-blond, stands in what looks like his room. He’s packing a backpack, filling it with a sweater, a candy bar, a roughed-up teddy bear. By his sniffles, and the note the camera pans over, he’s obviously running away from home. Child Blake squares his shoulders and hefts his bag.

  The next shot is of him jogging down a residential sidewalk, swiping away a single tear. The camera comes close, focusing on his waist. There’s a beep, a green light.

  Little Blake stops and takes out the very first ever Cyclone multi-use pager.

  Sorry, Blake. The message reads. I love you.

  Blake turns to look over his shoulder. His expression clears. There’s one last sniffle. Then he turns and runs home.

  “Cyclone Systems,” the announcer intones as Blake runs up a tree-shaded lawn and launches himself into his father’s arms. “Still bringing families together.”

  It has never occurred to me before, but using your adorable son to sell your company’s products is a special kind of fucked up. I almost feel sorry for Blake until I remember that in compensation, he now has more money than God.

  The next clip starts automatically. This one is an interview between nine-year-old Blake and David Letterman. Blake is wearing a suit and a bow tie; he shifts from side to side in his seat, restless and yet smiling.

  Before the interview progresses beyond introductions, though, my phone rings. I jump, like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t, and pause the video.

  “Tina!” My mother sounds happy when I answer. She doesn’t say anything about the twenty-three missed calls. “You’re so busy these days. Sorry to call and bother you.”

  I shift my phone closer to my ear. “You’re not bothering me.”

  I turn away from the grinning child Blake, frozen on YouTube, to contemplate my room.

  Technically, it’s not just my room; there are two twin beds crammed in here. Also technically, it’s not a room. It’s a converted garage, for very relaxed definitions of the word converted. Large carpet remnants mostly cover the concrete floor; there’s a rough bathroom and shower in the back. It’s a lot cheaper than the dorms. It’s also a lot farther from campus.

  “How is everything?” I say. “Did you get my check?” Thirty dollars. I know there are some students who can drop thirty dollars on a single night in a bar, but I find that kind of extravagance bewildering. Thirty dollars is more than I spend on food in a week. It hurts to write that check, but that thirty dollars means gas to the pharmacy and the Medicare copay for Mabel’s ADHD medication. My little sister just started high school, and now everything she does will be part of her record for college. She does well when she’s on her meds. But my mom doesn’t always believe what doctors tell her.

  There’s a little bit of a pause. “Yes, yes,” my mother says. “We got it. This is why I had to call you.”

  My heart sinks. “What happened?” I try to sound calm. “Is Dad okay? Did something happen to him?” I can remember the last time Dad’s leg acted up. It’s a painful, visceral memory—of Mom working two jobs while trying to keep her other projects afloat, of my father refusing to go to the doctor because he couldn’t afford the visit. Of the infection that followed and a late night trip to the emergency room when his fever wouldn’t break. They’re still paying down that debt.

  “No, not your father,” my mother says. “It’s Jack Sheng. You know Jack, right?”

  I smile involuntarily. “I don’t know Jack.”

  The idiom sails over Mom’s head. “That’s right. You never practice anymore.”

  I make a noise in the back of my throat.

  “No, no,” my mother says, “this is not a guilt trip. I promised you, no more guilt trips.”

  I pull back from my phone slightly and look at it askance. She did promise me there would be no more guilt trips, but let’s face it, if it were possible to make a living running a guilt travel agency, Mom would be rich. She can send me on a round-the-world guilt cruise on two minutes’ notice. If I complain, she’ll tell me that it isn’t a guilt trip; it’s a guilt journey. I should know the difference; I’m in college now.

  “About Jack Sheng,” she says. “His petition was denied. The IJ said his testimony was not credible. Why is Jack Sheng not credible?”

  Listening to my mother talk always used to confuse my childhood friends. She speaks English with a thick accent. After my parents’ petition for asylum was granted, allowing us to stay in the US, she devoted all her spare time to helping friends navigate the immigration system. And Mom has many, many friends. Those friends also have friends, and both Mom and her many friends are on the internet, which raises the enterprise to a whole new level of acquaintanceship.
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br />   After years of helping others, her vocabulary is larger than most people would expect. It’s also peculiarly specialized.

  Long experience allows me to translate my mother’s immigration shorthand. One of my mother’s many, many friends/distant acquaintances/internet message board buddies from her Falun Gong practice also tried to get asylum in the United States. The immigration judge—that’s the IJ my mother refers to; she’s picked up all the immigration lingo—didn’t believe that her friend had actually been persecuted by the Chinese government for practicing Falun Gong, and so denied his request for asylum. So Jack Sheng is going back to China.

  “I don’t know why Jack Sheng is not credible,” I say, which is the simple truth. I stand up, pushing away from the frozen video of smiling child Blake, and cross the room to lean against the wall.

  “Of course you don’t know. I don’t know, either. There is no legitimate answer.” I can imagine my mother waving her arms, tucking the phone between her chin and face. “This is the question we must ask. Why is Jack Sheng not credible? We have to raise money for an appeal.”

  I pull my arms around myself. “Mom…” It’s not so much a protest. I have forty-three dollars and twenty cents in my checking account right now, and that has to last until my next paycheck, nine days away.

  “I know, I know,” Ma says. “You’re a student. You don’t have so much. I’m not asking for your help.”

  I nod, even though she can’t hear that.

  “But I gave your check to Jack Sheng. So don’t be surprised if you see his name on the back.”

  I swallow hard, leaning against the wall. Even with that support, my legs have all the strength of a rapidly falling soufflé. I slowly sink to the floor. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. And—I remind myself—I can’t scream at my own mother.

  “This month,” my mom says, “Mabel can just try harder.”

  God, it hurt so much to send that thirty dollars. That thirty bucks I sent means I can never take the easy way out and order pizza when I’m too exhausted to cook. It means that on Saturday nights, when my friends are taking time off to recharge, I’m the one frantically trying to get a head start on my homework for the coming week, because God knows I won’t have the time on weekdays. That thirty bucks means I never, ever get to take a break.