Venice (bxb)

1. Atherton

            Families in the cartel business aren't too keen on education. It's the same ideology that let Larker Conigrave pull Venice and Jason out of school during CommonApp season. It's the same reason Via didn't object to it.

            The quick raps on his door woke Venice up. For a second, he thought he was still dreaming. This wasn't the room he'd been accustomed to waking up in for the past eighteen years.

            He didn't move to check who knocked—instead, picked up his phone to check on his application statuses and transcript requirements.

His three empty supplemental boxes described the emptiness he sometimes felt in himself. The lack of substance. The lack of anything meaningful inside him.

            Which mentally fucked person at Brown was going to give his application the time of the day?

            And as Venice felt like maybe he should go down to the living room and at least prove his existence to his family, his sister, Valentina, got into a massive argument with their father about her sense of dressing which might've been too erratic, even for Venice's taste.

            To be fair, Larker, their father, had only commented on her dress in passing and it didn't surprise anyone when Val got like this. She'd inherited her father's spontaneous swing of emotions. Ven would call her bipolar but that would just be factually incorrect.

            Elodie clicked her tongue at her niece's insolence, "Puccino, no, we don't speak to our fathers like that."

            "You're just saying that because he gives you money now."

             Ven saw it coming. So did Jason. They grew up arguing with Valentina. This was her signature move. This is how she backed you into a corner.

            "Okay," their mother shut her laptop in a way that the metal-to-metal contact made a blunt sound. "Go to your room, Valentina. You're done for the evening."

            Valentina's face had been placid, something Ven had always noted as psychopathic to their mother and Jason. While he's always had Jason's acquiesce, their mother disagreed, characterizing Valentina's personality as honourable rather than egotistical.

There was an uncharacteristic imbalance of power in their home. Their mother's opinion and permission always overpowered their father's—in matters of both business and parenting.

            As Jason explained it to him, "Great Grandma Rosa built the business from the ground-up back in 1948. She was married to this man called Alberto who used her for citizenship and fled the state the moment he had it. She started peddling weed in Louisiana. She was the Queen-Pin."

            "The Queen-Pin, huh?" Venice had echoed, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. They were outside Jason's home in El Dorado Hills. Uncle Tim had followed the smooth whir of Ven's car outside. The three of them rode around town, aimlessly, exchanging anecdotes and questions about the late 40s.

            It seemed like the sons of the Conigrave family paid respect to their grandmother's acumen by following their women into any blue-collared oblivion. Not that Venice didn't think his mother was truly brilliant.

She was too brilliant to be innovatively selling illegal firearms on a blockchain she'd coded from scratch. Via was single-handedly transforming the cartel business.

            Jason nudged him outside while Via seethed in her quiet, intangible fury.

"I gotta show you something."

            Ven followed his cousin out to the patio, expecting to be shown something when Jason fell butt-first onto the teak-crusted deck.

            "What are you showing me?"
             Jason tapped the spot next to him. Venice complied, crossing his legs beneath him.

            "You're a weird man, Jace."

            "Weird together, man. You and me."

There was a whole world of warmth in the way Jason shouldered him as the sun set behind their backyard's compound wall.

            Atherton and Long Island were an entire continent's length apart so Venice couldn't help but notice how the view looked different. It didn't matter that subconsciously Ven knew this was bullshit. That it would look exactly the same from any part of the world.

            But what did matter was that he was far away from home and he might never achieve the things he set out to. That perhaps, the emptiness of his supplementals would be a foreboding theme in his life. No substance, nothing special, a blanket ban on tenacity. A self-proclaimed shell of a human.

            So he was allowed, to think that at least the sun was shining differently. That the view was, in a sense, exquisite.