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“Destelle, can you come into the kitchen, please?”
I stiffened at the sound of my mother’s voice, the professionalism of it not settling right for a Sunday afternoon. I sat on the couch, my legs tucked underneath me. Nellie sat to my left, thumbing through her multicolored flash cards. The one in her grip now wasFlamboyant.Lately, she memorized how to spell random words almost obsessively, wanting to expand her vocabulary. Now, she puffed out her pudgy cheeks in concentration.
Jamie sat on the other couch, his novel open in his lap. He flipped through the pages almost abnormally fast, as if desperate to find out what happened next.
I had a book in my hands too, some self-help novel Mom gave me, though I wasn’t really reading it. My parents had decreed that Sunday afternoons were for nourishing the mind. We weren’t allowed in our bedrooms until after dinner. The horror.
“Mom is talking to you,” Nellie told me helpfully. She wasn’t looking at me, her head bent over her cards, dark hair falling into her eyes. I’d always been envious of her hair; she inherited Mom’s fine, straight locks while I got the wild curls from Dad. “It’s probably about your college stuff. You should go before she yells.”
“Spell ‘mind your own business.’”
Nellie arched an eyebrow at me, something she just learned how to do and did it often. She thought it made her look more grown up. “M-I-N-D—”
“Forget it,” I cut her off with a snort, folding over the page I’d been skimming and shoving to my feet. Jamie didn’t even look up from his book, fully engrossed in whatever was happening between the pages.
The few steps from the living room to the kitchen gave me enough time to conjure the perfect expression. Curious, respectful, casual. Eyebrows slightly raised, eyes alert, mouth relaxed.
Mom sat at the breakfast bar, papers spread out around her, and at first glance I assumed she’d brought her work home with her. She did that sometimes, and Dad did more often than not. Days with all the paperwork were good days—they’d be distracted and wouldn’t be as strict with the house rules.
Except as I got closer, I realized the papers weren’t anything work related. One paper caught my eye first.Shang-Wu Scholarship Packet.
Crap.
“I found this in your room when I laid out your clothes for the day,” she said to me without turning. Even though my socked feet hadn’t made a sound on the floor, she knew I stood behind her. It was almost scary. “Unfinished. Actually, you haven’t even started it.”
“You said I had until the fifteenth.”
Mom turned then, holding another packet in her hand. “It’s the seventh, Destelle. And what about the Keesler Scholarship? You haven’t started that one either. Destelle, you do realize you need to writeessaysfor these, right? The Keesler one requires an essay of three pages.”
Scholarships, essays, paperwork. All of it made my brain feel ten times larger than what my skull could contain. “Oh, I didn’t realize.”
“You didn’t?” Mom demanded, peering at me closer. “I would’ve thought you’d be on top of this.”
Being under her scrutinizing eye, I suddenly became panicked.
“It slipped my mind,” I insisted, glad that my hands were behind my back so she couldn’t see them shaking. “With midterms and homework and volunteering, a lot has been slipping my mind. I’m really sorry, Mom.”
Mom’s eyes bounced all over my face, watching for a tell. She looked between my eyes, studied my mouth, my posture. She cataloged everything, gauging whether I was being sincere.
“I know you’re doing a lot,” she said at last, her voice softer by a fraction. “You’re doing so much and maintaining your grades, which makes your father and me proud. It’s hard to think about college now when there’s already so much to worry about.”
That caused my ears to perk up, my thoughts traveling to the shoebox underneath my bed. “Itishard.”
“I can’t even imagine you going away to college. I can’t imagine how life will be without you at the house.” She turned back to the paperwork then, drawing her perfectly manicured nail along the staple in the corner. “Especially if you were to get into Mullhound or Hartford. Oh, you’d be so far away.”
Don’t do it, I told myself sternly, trying to drag my traitorous thoughts back on track.Don’t bring it up. Don’t say anything. Just nod and smile and say what she wants to hear.
“I could always apply to an online college,” I blurted instead, hoping my tone sounded more mildly interested rather than obviously desperate. “There’s one that I have a brochure for and—”
“Online college,” she said with a startled laugh, one that made any anticipation curl up and die. Withered away, disappearing in the wind. “You’re meant for bigger things than that. Law school, for one—oh, you’d just excel.”
I stood there, thankful she wasn’t directly looking at me. I couldn’t feel my expression, so I was sure it wouldn’t be a good one.
“Online college,” she repeated, this time more scornfully. Mom rolled her eyes at the thought, tucking her dark hair over her shoulder. “Why don’t you sit down now and work on these? I think I have one more in my office. I’ll go see.” She pushed up from the barstool, allowing me to take her place.
Mom left me alone in the kitchen, a buzzing sound filling my ears. Sitting down at the breakfast bar forfeited everything that I really wanted. I would be surrendering to the plethora of college applications and scholarships and the idea of freaking law school. A shackle dedicating me to one future, one that I wasn’t allowed to plan for myself.
When I turned eighteen, theoretically I could walk away from all this, turn my back on my parents, and decide on a new path, but doubt rushed in. I didn’t know life outside of this. How would I even support myself if I left on my own? How would I live life all alone? And if I left, would my parents ever speak to me again? I didn’t want to disappoint them, to live with their judgment. Despite how much I hated their control, the idea of their resenting me made my throat close up.
So, with that in mind, I sat down at the counter, seizing a pen.
I was tied to this life with a rope near impossible to cut. Even though Stella gave me the briefest taste of freedom, there was no true escape.
