8
1439 Words
wo months earlier.
The campus was loud the way it only ever was on graduation day, everyone spilling out of the hall in their gowns, families clustered on the lawns, photographers positioning people who couldn't stop moving long enough to be photographed. Emily found me near the steps and grabbed my arm and we took about forty pictures we would never look at and laughed at all of them.
"Okay," Emily said, pulling her cap off and fanning herself with it. "I have a proposition."
"The last time you had a proposition I ended up on a roof."
"That was one time and the view was worth it." She linked her arm through mine and started walking. "My father is opening two junior positions at the company. Interior consultancy track. I already talked to him and he said yes and before you say anything it would be us, side by side, like always. We'd actually get to work together."
I was quiet for a moment.
"Victoria."
"I heard you."
"Then say something."
I looked at the lawn ahead of us, the families, the noise of it all. "I can't, Emily."
She stopped walking. "Why not?"
There were several honest answers to that. That I had watched what happened when you let people carry you how it shifted the ground between you without either person meaning it to. That I had been the girl people did favors for my entire life, quiet small favors that came with invisible price tags, and I had learned very early that nothing given freely stayed free. That even with Emily, who was the best person I knew, I could not bring myself to walk through a door she had opened and trust that it would stay open. That I did not fully trust anything I had not built myself, not because I doubted her but because I doubted everything,
I said the simpler version.
"I don't want to owe anyone a start," I said. "Even you. Especially you, actually I don't want it to become something between us."
Emily frowned. "It wouldn't."
"You don't know that. Neither do I." I bumped her shoulder gently. "I sent my portfolio to Lucas Chen's studio six months ago. I've done everything I can to make that application as strong as possible. I want to wait and see."
Emily's expression shifted. "Victoria, Lucas Chen's studio doesn't just look at portfolios. You know that, right? The vetting process they look at recommendations, connections, who vouches for you in the industry. Your portfolio could be perfect and still not get past the first stage without someone in your corner."
I said nothing.
"I'm not trying to discourage you," she said quickly. "I'm just saying come work with me for now. Keep applying. When something comes through somewhere you've earned on your own terms, go. But don't just wait in the air."
"I'll figure it out."
She looked at me for a long moment with the expression she reserved for when she thought I was being stubborn past the point of reason. Then she sighed. "Come on. My family is here. My mother has been asking about you for weeks."
Something in me lit up at that before I could stop it. And then something else followed immediately behind it, colder, and I stopped walking.
Emily looked back. "What?"
"Go ahead. I'll find you after."
She gave me a look that said she didn't fully believe me but went anyway.
I stood on the edge of the lawn and watched her walk toward her family. Toward her mother, who had always been warm to me. And Alexander, who would be around here somewhere to attend his beloved sister’s graduation. A perfect family.
I turned and walked in the other direction.
I had made it about thirty steps when my phone rang.
I looked at the screen.
The number was one I didn't have saved. But the prefix was the Morgan estate line and my body knew it before my brain caught up, a cold thread moving up my spine that had nothing to do with the weather.
I answered.
"A car is waiting for you at the east gate," my grandfather said. "Come to the mansion. Now."
He hung up.
I stood very still for a moment in the middle of the graduating crowd, people moving around me in both directions, laughing, taking pictures, calling out to each other across the lawn. I thought about the last time I had been summoned back to the Morgan mansion. I had been seventeen. The call had come in the same flat tone, the same lack of preamble, and when I arrived, I had been told that my mother had gone missing and that I was no longer considered a member of the family in any formal capacity.
I put my phone in my bag and walked to the east gate. y not?"
There were several honest answers to that. That I had watched what happened when you let people carry you how it shifted the ground between you without either person meaning it to. That I had been the girl people did favors for my entire life, quiet small favors that came with invisible price tags, and I had learned very early that nothing given freely stayed free. That even with Emily, who was the best person I knew, I could not bring myself to walk through a door she had opened and trust that it would stay open. That I did not fully trust anything I had not built myself, not because I doubted her but because I doubted everything,
I said the simpler version.
"I don't want to owe anyone a start," I said. "Even you. Especially you, actually I don't want it to become something between us."
Emily frowned. "It wouldn't."
"You don't know that. Neither do I." I bumped her shoulder gently. "I sent my portfolio to Lucas Chen's studio six months ago. I've done everything I can to make that application as strong as possible. I want to wait and see."
Emily's expression shifted. "Victoria, Lucas Chen's studio doesn't just look at portfolios. You know that, right? The vetting process they look at recommendations, connections, who vouches for you in the industry. Your portfolio could be perfect and still not get past the first stage without someone in your corner."
I said nothing.
"I'm not trying to discourage you," she said quickly. "I'm just saying come work with me for now. Keep applying. When something comes through somewhere you've earned on your own terms, go. But don't just wait in the air."
"I'll figure it out."
She looked at me for a long moment with the expression she reserved for when she thought I was being stubborn past the point of reason. Then she sighed. "Come on. My family is here. My mother has been asking about you for weeks."
Something in me lit up at that before I could stop it. And then something else followed immediately behind it, colder, and I stopped walking.
Emily looked back. "What?"
"Go ahead. I'll find you after."
She gave me a look that said she didn't fully believe me but went anyway.
I stood on the edge of the lawn and watched her walk toward her family. Toward her mother, who had always been warm to me. And Alexander, who would be around here somewhere to attend his beloved sister’s graduation. A perfect family.
I turned and walked in the other direction.
I had made it about thirty steps when my phone rang.
I looked at the screen.
The number was one I didn't have saved. But the prefix was the Morgan estate line and my body knew it before my brain caught up, a cold thread moving up my spine that had nothing to do with the weather.
I answered.
"A car is waiting for you at the east gate," my grandfather said. "Come to the mansion. Now."
He hung up.
I stood very still for a moment in the middle of the graduating crowd, people moving around me in both directions, laughing, taking pictures, calling out to each other across the lawn. I thought about the last time I had been summoned back to the Morgan mansion. I had been seventeen. The call had come in the same flat tone, the same lack of preamble, and when I arrived, I had been told that my mother had gone missing and that I was no longer considered a member of the family in any formal capacity.
I put my phone in my bag and walked to the east gate.
- Writer
