So Grid was right, Rush thought, silently taking in what Ammu had just admitted. This really is a Homeland Security thing. Ammu isn’t in charge at all.
“Ammu,” Rush begged. “Please don’t take this away from me. If they were going to let me go before, there has to be a way they’d agree to it now. Something I can do, or something I can promise? It’s not just a game. It’s my career, Ammu. It’s my future.”
“I know,” Ammu replied gently. “You can still go. Your future awaits. You simply would not be allowed to return.”
“It isn’t really a choice then,” Rush said, slumping his shoulders forward and hanging his head. “If I go home early, my dad’s gonna think they kicked me out. He won’t let me go to the invitational anyway.”
“Ah. In that regard, at least, I can still be of some assistance,” Ammu replied, smiling sadly. “You would be sent home with an explanation that the first stage of the program has been so successful as to be redesigned, that you will be invited to participate in future stages during your bright college career, et cetera and so forth. You would not, of course, be under any such obligation, but it would suffice to appease your father, I think.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. It is in their best interest for people to believe that the program has been a success. For funding purposes, if nothing else. The ruse would be for the program directors as much as for you.”
A success, and completely normal, Rush thought. I bet there won’t be anything about summoning gryphons in that letter, either. But, of course, that wasn’t a thought he was about to share.
“As you can see,” Ammu finished, “the choice is genuine. If you go home, there is no reason why you would not be allowed to attend the gaming conference. You simply would not be permitted to return.”
“How long do I have to decide?” Rush asked, his head swimming.
Ammu stared at him for a long moment, and Rush knew the answer from his silence even before he heard him say the words aloud.
“You must decide now, before we return to the lodge. Even as we speak, our time is running short. I can not apologize enough for the situation I have put you in,” Ammu said, his voice clearly conveying his regret. “This was not my intention.”
Rush sat on the bench in silence, wondering how this could be happening. If they had offered him this choice even two days ago, he would have leaped at it. But now… now he wouldn’t just be leaving some weird kid named Roman and a five-star resort with no Internet. Now he would be leaving Sketch and Disco and Grid and Tick-Tock and Gears. He would be leaving the baby gryphon he could never see again, and who knew how many other magical creatures from Ammu’s book—a whole mystical world he would never be able to explore.
But gaming was all he had ever been good at, at least until now, and the ICIC was hardly a career plan. It was like Grid had said, this was just a government program—Homeland Security would use them for the summer and then send them home. Hell, they might even have to promise never to communicate with each other again. And then where would he be?
The answer came to him in a flash of clarity: he would be exactly where he was now, heading home, only it would be after the invitational, without any other future to look forward to. He would have the same damn hole in his heart he was feeling now, but with nothing else left to fill it.
“How am I going to tell the others?” Rush asked, the depth of his pain showing in his eyes. “How am I going to tell Sketch?”
Ammu smiled sadly, recognizing that Rush had made his choice. “We will tell them together,” he said, his voice somehow still gentle and reassuring even with Rush’s whole universe crashing down around him. Together, they stood and began the long, slow walk back to the lodge.
38
Careers
“No! You can’t!” Sketch was the first to react, and Rush was afraid the kid might blurt something out to give away their escapade of the night before. But even shocked and upset, Sketch wasn’t stupid. He just stared at Rush with a look that managed to convey pain and anger and betrayal all at once.
“I am afraid he must,” Ammu said quietly, “but I need you all to understand that this was not an easy choice for him to make, and that it means nothing about his feelings toward any of you.”
“Sure it doesn’t,” Sam said bitterly.
When Ammu had ushered them all into the classroom, Mackenzie had known something was wrong, but she could not have imagined Rush was leaving. He stood next to Ammu in front of the whiteboard, where Mackenzie just stared at him, her face betraying nothing. She was as hurt as the rest, but she wasn’t about to show it. If she could say goodbye to her father on one mission after another, she could say goodbye to Rush.
“It doesn’t,” Rush said adamantly. “I don’t want to leave. But they said I had to pick between this and the invitational. I didn’t really have a choice.”
“You had a choice,” Sam spat back. “You just chose not to stay here.”
“It’s not that simple,” Mackenzie said quietly.
“No, it is not,” Ammu confirmed. “Our friend has a rare chance to pursue his dream of a gaming career, and he might never have such an opportunity again. Our sorrow, of course, is genuine, and it is natural to react to that pain. But what we must try to do—what we must always try to do—is to see his pain, not just our own. He was faced with a difficult choice—bound to incur sadness, no matter what he decided.”
“And he had to do what would make him less sad,” Kaitlyn offered.
“Not necessarily,” Ammu said, shaking his head. “Rush? Would you say that leaving the program is making you less sad than staying would?”
“No,” Rush agreed, seeing where Ammu was leading him. “I’d be much happier to stay.” He said this directly to Sketch, begging him to understand.
“Then why not just stay?” Sketch demanded.
Because this might be my only chance to get out from under my father’s shadow, Rush thought to himself. Because when this summer is over, if I don’t have my gaming career in place, I’m going to have to go back home and apply to colleges and intern at some huge, boring company and turn into my father, just like my brother did, and I’ll do anything I have to do to avoid that, no matter how much it hurts, even leaving the best real life friends I’ve ever had. But he didn’t know how to say any of that. Instead, he just stared at the floor, silently hoping they wouldn’t hate him for leaving.
“It’s OK,” Mackenzie said finally. “I’ve always wanted to serve my country. If they told me I had to choose today, now or never, I’d leave, too, even though I wouldn’t want to.”