Carry Me Home (13 page)

MONEY AND WOMEN

A week after she’d turned Cal down—if he’d even been all that serious, which she doubted, because one thing was for sure, he loved to tease her—and here Zoe was sitting next to him again. His shoulder, in another white button-down shirt, touching hers again. His broad thigh, in black Levi’s again, which she guessed was his version of dressing up, so close to hers in the folding chair that she could have laid her hand on it. If she’d wanted to, that is. There was just way too much of Cal, looking way too dangerous. Way too distracting.

Worse, they were on stage, and she was supposed to be listening to Luke, because he was introducing her. In another minute, she was going to be standing at the podium and addressing about five hundred high school students, so she’d better start concentrating. On something else.

Luke had called on Tuesday afternoon when she’d been in her office, trying to focus on writing up her findings for the Union City consulting job so she could get paid, and trying not to fume about Amy’s problems. She had to stop getting so invested in her students’ issues. She’d done it over and over again as a teaching assistant in grad school, and here she was doing it again, because she just couldn’t help caring. But she’d gotten Amy housed safely, and that was all she could do.

“I wanted to get a jump on the whole scholarship deal,” Luke had said on the other end of the phone, and she’d brought her attention back to the call with an effort. “Or whatever it turns out to be. On the increasing opportunities for Idaho students in science and engineering, we’ll call it. How does that sound?”

“Well . . .” she began.

He sighed. “You’re right. Boring. The minute I got my butt in this chair, I could feel the boring start. I’ll think of something better. And that’s why I need your help. I want to get them fired up about those hard classes they’d just as soon avoid while they’re still planning their schedules for next semester. Would you be willing to come talk to them for a few minutes? I can yap at them until my face turns blue, but there’s nothing like hearing it from a real live professor. Not to mention a real live woman.”

“When would this be?”

“Well, that’s the deal. Friday morning at eleven. Short notice, I know. But you don’t have to prepare a whole speech or anything,” he hurried on. “I’ll have the teachers talking, too. Just get up there and say a few words, maybe answer a few questions. Show them it can be done.”

Which mattered, so she’d said yes, of course. And somehow, she hadn’t been surprised to find Cal sitting in Luke’s office when she’d arrived, or to find out that he was speaking, too. But then, he was the one giving the gift. It only made sense.

“I’m not going after Cal, though,” she told Luke when the three of them were sitting down, with Luke looking incongruously authoritative behind his desk in a button-down shirt just like Cal’s, dress slacks—and cowboy boots, of course.

“Excuse me?” Luke said, exchanging a glance with Cal.

“I mean, I’m not following him talking. Speaking,” she said, trying not to blush. “I’m not going right after him. He’s too hard an act to follow. Literally.”

Luke smiled. “Yeah, that’s been pointed out. Never mind. I’ve got a couple teachers between him and you, talking about those fascinating AP classes. You’ll be a big step up. You’re the grand finale. And you’re right,” he added with a sigh, “if he hadn’t so inconveniently been the one to give all the money, I’d never have invited him.”

That startled a laugh out of Zoe, and caused Cal, leaning back in his chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him, to put his head back and groan.

“No respect,” he told the ceiling. “Not one damn bit of brotherly love.”

“Because no matter what he says about engineering,” Luke said, “half the guys in the auditorium will be hearing, ‘Come play in the NFL and get money and women!’”

“How about if I tell them they can get money and women by going into engineering?” Cal suggested. “Remind them of all those software millionaires?”

“I thought this talk was partly
for
girls,” Zoe pointed out. “Women are at least half your audience.”

“Hmm,” Cal said. “Good tip, Professor. Quick rethink here. What do I have besides sex and money? That’s a toughie. I normally keep it right there, and bang, I’m done. You’re actually going to make me work for it.”

“Oh,” Luke said, “I think that goes without saying, doesn’t it?”

“You know what they say,” Zoe told Cal. “Things you work for are better.”

“Oh,” Cal said, with a silky promise in his voice that made Zoe shiver despite herself, “I’m kinda counting on that.”

“Sex and money, huh?” Luke said after pausing a beat for an answer from Zoe that didn’t come. “You need me to show Zoe your bank balance? You imagining that’s going to do the trick?”

“Nope,” Cal said. “Somehow, I have a feeling it’s not. I’m doing my best here to figure out what will.”

“Anybody ever tell you that you’re inappropriate?” she asked him, even as the tingle started. She crossed her legs in the deep-blue sweater dress she’d worn today in the hope of his being there. She hadn’t wanted to admit it, but it was true. He was still looking at her, his eyes not drifting south to her legs, because in spite of all his teasing, he was polite. He was, in his own bizarre way, a gentleman. She knew, though, that he’d watched her cross her legs, and that he’d liked it. “That you’re . . .” she said, and stopped. She shouldn’t get drawn into this again. Not here. Because then
she’d
be inappropriate.

“An arrogant SOB?” Luke finished. “Yeah. He’s heard it.”

Cal sighed. “And the pro athlete is, what? Zero for three? Four? I’ve lost track.”

“I told you,” Zoe said loftily, trying not to giggle, because Cal brought out the strangest reactions in her. “I like your brother better.”

Cal shot a glare at Luke. “Don’t even think about it.”

Luke put up both hands. “Not saying a thing. Not doing a thing.”

“Yeah,” Cal said. “That’ll be the day.”

Now she was on stage, and the students were applauding, although not too enthusiastically, as Luke finished his introduction. It was nothing like the ovation they’d given Cal, but no surprise there.

She got up, walked to the podium, and adjusted the microphone downward.
Way
downward.

She looked out at the sea of faces, reminding herself to focus on a few of them, one after the other, to make eye contact, to pause until she had their attention, until they were wondering what was coming next.

“You know,” she said at last, “when I was in high school, the jocks pretty much ruled. That still true?”

Some scattered laughter at that, and she smiled. “Yeah. I thought so. I went back for my tenth high school reunion last year, and a few of those popular kids . . .” She paused, gave it a beat. “Hmm. Let’s just say, and I’m being charitable here . . . a few of them hadn’t aged too well. Oh, present company excepted, of course,” she said, turning and smiling at Cal, garnering another laugh from the students. “But in my class?
Our
quarterback . . .” She shuddered a little. “He sells used cars, does those shouting commercials. True story. Boy, I’m glad I never had a crush on him, huh? What a blow
that
would have been.”

She got another ripple of laughter at that. “So, yeah,” she said with a sigh. “The popular kids and the jocks? They weren’t necessarily all that, in the end. And you know what else was interesting? You know who really ruled the school at that reunion? Here’s a hot tip for you. It was the geeks.”

She clicked the mouse, and a hugely enlarged image of an eighteen-year-old boy in an ill-fitting tuxedo appeared on the screen behind her. Brown hair falling unfashionably over his forehead from a side part, glasses, skinny shoulders, uncertain grin, and all.

“Alan Johnson,” she said. “Voted Biggest Brain, as I recall, back then. You could call that a compliment, but . . . not so much. He wasn’t there, of course, at the reunion. Too busy. His startup just went through an IPO. The last I read, his stock options were worth something like two hundred thirty million dollars.”

She clicked again, pulled up a shot of the same face. The haircut wasn’t much more fashionable, but he’d lost the glasses and was standing with a blonde in a long gown. Had an arm around her, a smile on his face. He looked happier, that was for sure. And he was wearing another tuxedo, cut a whole lot better this time.

“His wife,” Zoe informed the students. “Angela Lawson. VP of finance in his company before they started dating, in case you were thinking he married a supermodel. She was a geek, too, by the way. I know, because I’ve met her. Nice person, and super smart, too, both of which mattered to Alan.”

Another click. A teenage girl this time. Asian, serious, straight hair parted in the middle. And glasses again.

“Karen Nguyen,” Zoe said. “Valedictorian. I’m not sure she ever had a date in high school. She was always studying, or helping out at home, because she didn’t have it too easy. Any students here like that?”

She looked around at a few cautiously raised hands and smiled. “Yeah. Me, too. I didn’t have too many dates, either. Didn’t go to my prom. Know what I did that night? I hung out with my friends, told myself prom was dumb, and tried not to feel like a loser.”

She clicked again to an image of a doctor’s office, all sleek, rounded reception desk, blond wood inlaid with strips of stainless steel, modern seating areas upholstered in pale, glove-soft leather, and glass-block dividers.

“Karen’s a cosmetic dermatologist these days in Beverly Hills,” she said. “Not doing too badly at it, as you can see. Helping her family out, and let me tell you—her skin is
gorgeous
.”

She rode the laughter, clicked once more, and another picture came up. Not a yearbook shot this time, but a casual group, four young people sitting around a table. Three guys and one girl at the front of the shot.

“There you go,” Zoe said. “Four star members of the Math Club, sitting in a corner of the cafeteria, huddled together for warmth to eat their lunch far, far away from the popular kids. What a bunch of losers, huh?”

She got some nervous laughter at that. She smiled back at her audience, then used her laser pointer to focus on each face in turn.

A chubby white kid with wildly curling brown hair. “Software engineer.”

An Asian boy, tall and thin. “Physicist at Lawrence Berkeley Labs.”

A short red-headed kid. “This one . . . well, he kind of went downhill. I’m afraid he turned out to be a corporate lawyer. Got tall, though, somehow. He’s actually really good-looking now. All the girls were flirting at that reunion, not realizing who he was, which we all thought was pretty funny. It
is
funny how people change, isn’t it?”

She turned back to the screen, and the red dot rested on that final plump face. The girl’s mouth was open in a laugh, which was unfortunate. Her braces gleamed, light reflected off her glasses, her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her jeans and T-shirt weren’t doing a thing for her pudgy figure.

“And, of course,” Zoe said, “this one turned out to be a physicist, a hydrogeologist, and, in the end, a professor. Yours truly, Zoe Santangelo, PhD. Math and science geek. Me.”

She stood tall, looked out at them, her gaze sweeping the room again. No laughter this time.

“So, if you think this is all there is,” she said quietly, “whatever you’re going through, here and now in high school? You’re wrong. Cal thinks I’m a bit of jock basher, but that’s not really true. If sports are your thing, that’s wonderful. But what else are you working on? Even if it’s all going well for you right now, even if high school’s just great, you may want to ask yourself what you’re doing to keep your life that good, what steps you’re taking toward the future you want to have. Because one thing I can tell you for sure—it’s not going to stay the same. Life doesn’t work that way. Even Cal Jackson’s life can change. He’s just told you so.”

She paused, turned back to the screen behind her, moved her pointer among the four figures around that table. Happy together, if nowhere else. “And if it isn’t so good?” she asked. “If you’re one of these guys? I’ve got a secret for you, and I want you to listen really hard right now, because this is the truth. It gets better. It gets so much better. You can get better-looking, like Randy—” Her pointer hovered over the red-haired figure again, then moved inexorably on. “Or like me.”

That did get a laugh, a nervous one, maybe.

“Yeah,” she said, looking out at them again, “you bet it’s possible. It’s totally possible. As far as looks go—you can get prettier, you can get thinner, or in the case of the guys, you can join a gym and get bigger. You can get contacts or Lasik surgery, and those glasses are gone, and your beautiful eyes are there for everybody to see. Your braces will come off, and your teeth will be straight. You can get a really good haircut. All of that, for what it’s worth. You can get better-looking, and you can even get more popular, although I think you’ll find that both of those things matter less as time goes on.”

Another pause, and she pulled the microphone out of its stand, walked out from behind the podium, walked back and forth as she talked, never losing eye contact.