“Not until you tell me about your heart.”
Carol sighed as thoughEllorywere the one being childish. “I’m taking the pills. I’m eating healthy. I’m doing my little yoga. I’m as well as you left me, okay?Nowcan I hear about school?”
Ellory watched the centipede crack for signs of movement and caught her aunt up on the week since her last phone call: The endless assignments and the pop quiz. The sleepless nights and the breathing boil that was Hudson Graves. The friends she’d spent time with and the walks she’d taken. She and Carol didn’t have aGilmore Girls–like closeness that had them swapping secrets over coffee, but the more she spilled her problems into the phone, the lighter she felt.
Maybe that was why she made the mistake of bringing up theWarren Communiqué.
“Do you even have time for something like that?” Aunt Carol’s voice took on an edge that made apologies rise in Ellory’s throat. “You’re struggling in your classes. The newspaper would take away from the time you should spend studying.”
“I know.” Ellory forced herself to laugh. “It was just a silly idea—”
“And since when are you even interested in journalism? You never want to watch TMZ with me.”
Ellory thought of the decorations in her bedroom, colorful posters of Lois Lane and Iris West, black-and-white photos of Ida B. Wells and Marvel Cooke. She thought of her high school promise to herself that if she loaded up on AP classes, she could turn her participation in Newspaper Club from a hobby into something more legitimate at community college. She thought of the battered Moleskine notebook in which she’d practiced her bylines and signature:Ellory Morgan. Ellory J. Morgan. EJ Morgan.
“You’re right. I don’t have the time.”
“Good girl. You’ve been given such a huge opportunity at Warren, and I’d hate to see you waste it. Reporters don’t make money. Lawyers do. Imagine being the first lawyer in the family!”
Ellory once again found it hard to swallow. What had she been thinking? The average salary for a reporter was nowhere near the lowest average salary for a lawyer. She couldn’t very well leave Aunt Carol—who had fed her and housed her, spoiling Ellory whenever she could—to pay for her own medical bills. A free ride to college, and Ellory fantasized about wasting it onthat? On a stupid childhood dream with no money or job security?
It was selfish. It was too selfish, when her parents and aunt had given up so much for her.
“Have you heard from Mom and Dad?” she managed to say around the lump in her throat. “Did they call or…?”
“Not since you left,” Carol said. “I’ll probably call them this weekend. Desmond has been late on the payments.”
Ellory hated when Aunt Carol called thempayments, like Ellory was a job worth however much money her parents were able to wire every month. But all she said was “Well, let me know. In the meantime, I should probably get back to studying. I didn’t score as high as I wanted to on that quiz, and…”
“Say no more, my little academic. I’ll call you next week.”
“Mi gone den.”
“Likkle more.”
The phone screen went black. Ellory shoved it into her bag and then rolled back onto her stomach. A circle of liquid distorted one of the sentences in her textbook. She touched her face. At some point, she’d started to cry.
“Sorry about that,” Tai said, reentering the room and knocking the door closed with her hip. “You won’t believe the—Lor? Is everything okay?”
Ellory swiped at her damp cheeks. They felt hot under her fingers. She didn’t usually cry in front of other people. “I’m good. I’m fine. Maybe a little stressed.”
Her throat still felt as congested as Midtown traffic. Worse, she felt that chill again, that odd sense of familiarity but with a melancholic twist. This wasn’t the instinctive knowledge that would clear her a path through the campus; this was a wound that had scabbed over until she’d picked at it again—though she was certain she’d never brought up her journalistic aspirations with her aunt before. Not that she could remember anyway. It must have been more of a symbolic wound, the knowledge every immigrant kid had that there were only about four career paths that would make their parents and guardians proud. Journalism would never be one of them.
Ellory sniffled and then jumped when a tissue appeared before her.
Tai, kneeling on the other side of her textbook, wiggled the tissue. “Take it. And then go back to your room and get dressed up. We are going out.”
“Oh, I’m not really in the mood to—”
“Did I ask you?” Tai wiggled the tissue again. “You’re sostressed out that you’re crying, Lor. That’s not good. There’s a party tonight. I wasn’t going to go because—well. Look, I think you need to socialize. To have fun. To take abreak. You’re not going to learn anything this way.”
Ellory took the tissue. Her con. law textbook suddenly looked as if it had been written in Russian. A headache was building behind her eyes, the same one she always got when she cried, the same one that would eventually crest into a migraine if she didn’t take something for it now. Tai was right. Yet the thought of seeing anyone else tonight made Ellory want to scream.
“Come on,” said Tai, closing the textbook. “You need this. If I’m wrong, we can leave, whether it’s been five hours or five minutes.”
“You promise?”
“Ipromise.”
