I dislike being interrupted when I'm about to kill someone.
My father has no idea how long it has taken to get my team of donkey-knobbers in order, and he keeps yelling my name though I've yelled back at least a gazillion times that I'm busy.
Then he enters my bedroom.
I swivel around in my office chair. He takes up the entire doorway.
I shove back my headset. "What?"
He raises an eyebrow. Sure, I sounded more irritated than I meant, but seriously, he has no idea how much he just wasted my entire morning.
"Sorry," I mutter, glancing ruefully at the computer monitor.
Jesse's character is bouncing around in a succession of defense moves as an impromptu dance. Some other player—I have no idea where we picked him up—is wasting rounds on a stone wall. My third teammate is AWOL.
I really hate these guys.
"Get off the computer." My father folds his arms. "We're going to the Walker's."
"Can't Karl just send someone to pick me up later?" I glance at him, hopeful.
He shakes his head. "No, you're going with me."
Jesse sends me an in-game message: Watching hobbit porn again? Hurry the fuck up, noob.
I type a reply: Not nice to call your mom a hobbit.
"Now, Dimitri," my father says in the tone that doesn't allow for further argument.
God dammit.
I exit the game, drop my headset onto my desk, and stab the power button on the monitor. My father is already heading down the hallway. I shuffle after him.
My dumb team is going to screw up the match. Jesse will bow out as soon as he realizes I'm gone, and the other guys couldn't hit even if everyone was standing still.
I trail my father across the living room and out the front door to the Saturn SC parked in the carport. He has at least a dozen cars, courtesy of Karl.
Karl is pretty cool. I just don't like that it's practically an all day trip to visit his house. Mansion. Whatever.
Every time my father has to go out of town on a business trip, I stay there. Well, until recently. Now my father lets me stay home if I want, but I nearly always wind up at the Walker's anyway.
They have everything.
I crawl into the passenger seat and wait as my father circles the car, kicking the tires. Then he pops the hood and tinkers. He always does that. After he's certain we won't break down in the middle of the desert, we hit the road.
I turn to him. "My birthday is in three months. I'll be sixteen."
"I'm aware," he says.
We both know that's a lie. There's no point arguing, though.
"Do you think Karl will buy me a car?"
Hell, I would even settle with one of my dad's vehicles, but I don't want to screw myself out of a new one.
My father doesn't take his eyes off the road. "Yes, I imagine so."
I study him, trying to discern if he's serious or not. Wait. He's always serious.
I'm getting a car!
I fight back a grin. Despite all of the questions filling my head—if Karl will let me pick the model, if my ridiculous curfew will be lifted—I keep quiet. The no-fail way to turn my father against an idea is to talk too much about it.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Do you remember what I told you about my work for Karl?"
I look over at him, my excitement dwindling. "Yeah, you have a . . . contract or something . . . with him."
My father keeps focused on the road. "Yes, and what else about it?"
I shove down all the car-related thoughts and grudgingly try to dig up the buried details about my father's job. We haven't talked about it in forever, and even then the conversation ended with a lot of unanswered questions.
"Um, Karl takes care of our family as long as we work for him." I chew the inside of my bottom lip before adding, "And I'll probably take over the contract someday."
"Not probably . . . You will be taking over the contract." Same tone. No arguments. "And what did I tell you about when you work for him?"
"That I need to watch my mouth." I bat my hair out of my eyes. "That I shouldn't argue with him."
"You shouldn't argue with anyone." My father looks my way, but it's only to punctuate his sentence.
I groan, shaking my head. "Silvia is so annoying!"
"She's lonely out there, Dimitri. Karl doesn't let her have any other friends."
"I'm not her friend," I practically growl.
One day, Myers and Briggs will add a seventeenth personality type just for her and call it "Asinine".
"Be nice to her," my father says. "What was the other thing I told you about working for Karl?"
I remember it, but the discussion had been nearly as awkward as the time when my father tried to tell me about sex. At least the Internet cleared that one up.
My father raises his eyebrow.
I look down at my lap and mutter, "Don't show . . . if you're afraid."
He nods, and silence drapes over the car. I want to make a joke about him being a lion tamer, but he doesn't even laugh at George Carlin. So I settle back in my seat and shove all the questions into their box.
All but one: What happens if I don't want to work for Karl?
The question slithers around my brain, daring me to ask again, but I already know my father's answer.
I wasn't born with a choice.
Whatever that means.
There's nothing left to say, so I use my cell phone to search the Internet for what type of car I want. I don't really read anything, though. The mood has been killed, which sucks because the only thing exciting about turning sixteen is getting my own vehicle.
I have no idea what to study after graduation, and time is running short. Jesse wants to be an aircraft engineer. I don't know how anyone can pick a career out of a hat and just assume they'll be good at it, let alone happy.
We reach the mansion two hours later. The giant solid metal gates retract in front of us, and then close behind us.
My father drives up the carport and parks. I step out, pocketing my phone, and head toward the back of the mansion. If the pool isn't in use, I'll take a dip while my father handles his work. As long as Silvia isn't out there. She never stops yakking.
From beside the car, my father says, "Dimitri, let's go talk to Karl."
[Available on Amazon.]
