This last bit she said to herself, which Sam couldn’t help but feel was more typical of their interactions than the alternative.
“You’re not seriously taking that bag to the homeless shelter, are you?” Sam settled onto one of the designer-selected bar stools at the high counter, staring at her mother across its glistening, Italian-marble surface.
Jennifer stopped short and looked up at Sam in confusion. “Why on Earth not?”
Sam raised one eyebrow and tilted her head as she made a show of looking her mother over from head to toe. Jennifer Prescott was, at all times, the very picture of elegance. All four of Sam’s great-grandparents on her mother’s side had been immigrants from China, and although Jennifer herself had been born in San Francisco and didn’t speak a word of Chinese, her lineage showed in the milky-smooth complexion that belied her age. Her thick, black hair was expertly coiffed, her make-up was artfully applied, and her long, gym-toned legs were shown off to maximum advantage by an Akris Punto leather and jersey miniskirt that would have been perfectly at home on a fashion model.
“Because it’s Chanel, Mom. You paid more for that bag than most of the women in that place have ever spent on a car.”
“I don’t appreciate your attitude, young lady.” She pronounced every syllable with irritated precision, but both her voice and her manner remained otherwise subdued. Even angry, Jennifer Prescott maintained an air of quiet sophistication. “We’ve donated a lot of money to that organization. Just because someone else is poor doesn’t mean we can’t have nice things.”
“I’m not saying you can’t have nice things. I’m saying you’re going to get yourself mugged.” Sam grabbed a handful of cherries out of a decorative bowl in the center of the counter and popped one into her mouth.
“Really, Sam. I put those out for guests. If you’re hungry, there are leftovers in the fridge from last night. Some brie, I think. And, of course, the duck.”
“Of course, the duck,” Sam said, rolling her eyes and getting up to spit the cherry pit directly into the trash. “Charity dinner last night, board meeting tonight… what’s tomorrow? Book club meeting on How to Live with a Wealthy Woman’s Guilt? If that isn’t a real book, you should write it, by the way.”
“Honestly, Sam, what would I possibly have to feel guilty about? Your father works hard for a living.”
Dad might, but you don’t, Sam thought to herself, but that was a line even Sam wasn’t willing to cross.
“I don’t know,” she said instead, “maybe the baby cow that died for your outfit?”
Jennifer’s eyes narrowed dangerously, but she replied without raising her voice in the slightest.
“I really don’t have time for this, Samantha.” She ended the conversation as abruptly as she had started it, dismissing her daughter by shutting the bag she had been digging through and sliding it brusquely over her shoulder as she turned toward the door.
“Of course, you don’t,” Sam muttered, but even if she had said it loudly enough to be heard over the sharp click of her mother’s heels, Jennifer Prescott was already out the door.
? ? ?
Ugh, what time is it?
5:17 a.m. The answer came to her mind unbidden, as it always did. Sam had an innate sense of time that defied all logic. Her alarm wasn’t set to go off for another hour and thirteen minutes, but she knew her father would be up by now, getting ready to leave for ‘the city.’ At least she could sit with him while he drank his coffee.
Stretching sleepily, she half-crawled and half-fell out of bed, grabbing one of the pairs of jeans that hung haphazardly about the room, yanking a sports bra on over her head, and choosing a T-shirt from the clean laundry she had ‘put away’ for her mother by dropping the entire pile in the middle of the floor. It was a fitted black tee with an adorable white kitten on the front—with miniature daggers lashed to its tiny claws and big white letters that said, “Don’t Even Try It.”
Sam grinned as she pulled it on. It was one of her favorites.
She padded downstairs in her bare feet to find her father in the kitchen, just as she had predicted. He was sitting at the black marble counter, already showered and shaved, reading the morning paper, his fresh cup of coffee resting in front of him, with a handful of cherries in his right hand. Sam grinned as he spit a cherry pit directly into the trash.
“Mom said those are for guests,” Sam warned him.
Her father rolled his eyes and slid the bowl toward his daughter, who grinned even wider and popped one into her own mouth.
“So what’s up, Buttercup? How goes the life of the twenty-first-century teenager?”
Sam shrugged. “Same old, same old.”
But Michael Prescott was not about to give up that easily.
“I’m sure you can think of one measly thing you can share with your father. It can be entirely insignificant. I’m not picky.”
It’s all insignificant, she thought, but she loved her moments with her father too much to ruin them.
“We’re taking some new test today,” she said instead, between cherry pits.
“Oh? On what?”
“It’s not on anything. Well, I mean, obviously it’s on something. But it’s not for a class. It’s some new standardized battery they’re trying out.”
“Really? What kind of battery?”
“No idea,” she replied, shrugging. “They’re just using us to test it. It won’t count this year.”
“So let me get this straight. You’re going to school to take a test to test a test that isn’t testing you on anything?”
“Pretty much. Welcome to my world.”
Her father chuckled. “You want out of it? Sounds like a ditch day, to me.”
Sam grinned. Michael Prescott looked at education the same way he viewed everything else: as a means to an end. As long as Sam was keeping her grades up, he saw no reason to adhere to the school’s attendance policy any more strictly than the law required.
She was about to leap at his offer when a sudden feeling in her gut brought her up short—a profound sense of… importance—and she paused, taking it in, her hand halfway to her mouth with another cherry.
“Sam? You OK?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” She placed the cherry back in the bowl. “It’s just…” She hesitated, hardly believing what she was about to say.
“Thanks, Dad, but I think I have to go to school today!”
? ? ?
By the time Sam reached the school’s broad, white-washed sidewalk, she was already regretting her decision. The strange feeling that something momentous was about to happen had vanished as soon as she had arrived, and now the hulking red-brick building loomed over her, promising nothing but heartache and boredom in approximately equal measure.
There were thirty-seven wide, shallow steps in the walkway, and she climbed every one with an increasing sense of disappointment.
One, two, three, four…
Where had that strange sense of urgency gone? It had been such a beautiful feeling, to think that for once in her life, something she was about to do might actually matter.
Nine, ten, eleven, twelve…