What a joke. I heard Frank laughing in the living room. Look at those graphics, Ty. That’s incredible. Worth every penny, huh? Yeah, Tyler grunted. Get me a soda, Dad. Coming right up, champ. The nausea in my stomach vanished. I didn’t need the laptop to graduate. I could go to the university lab. I could beg the dean for an extension on the upload. I could sleep in the library for 48 hours and rebuild the code from memory on a loner machine. It wow db hell. It would be nearly impossible. But staying here, staying here was death. I opened my closet. I didn’t take the clothes on hangers. I didn’t take the shoes. I grabbed my backpack, the sturdy waterproof one I used for campus. I packed two pairs of jeans, three shirts, my toiletries, and my passport. I took the envelope with the acceptance letter. I zipped the bag shut. It was light. My entire life distilled down to 20. I walked to the door of my bedroom and looked back. The room was bare, lifeless. It looked like a guest room in a house where guests were tolerated, not welcomed. I walked out into the hallway. Frank was coming out of the kitchen with a can of soda. He stopped when he saw me with the backpack.
“Going to the library?” he asked, a smug smirk playing on his lips.
“Good. Use those resourceful skills of yours. Don’t be late for dinner. Mom’s making meatloaf. He didn’t notice the lack of books. He didn’t notice the hiking boots I was wearing. He didn’t see me at all.”
“I won’t be late,” I said calmly.
I walked past him, opened the front door, and stepped out into the blinding sunlight. I didn’t walk to the car. I walked down the driveway, turned left toward the bus station, and I never looked back. The Greyhound bus smelled of stale tobacco and industrial cleaner. It was a 20-hour ride from my hometown to Seattle, a journey that existed in a fugue state of panic and determination. I didn’t have a laptop. I didn’t have my degree. I had walked away 48 hours before the finish line of a 4-year marathon, and every mile the bus put between me and that empty desk in the study felt like a physical tearing of skin. I arrived in Seattle with $74 in my bank account. The Nova Systems program provided a living pod, which turned out to be a bunk bed in a shared dorm with five other developers and a monthly stipend that barely covered ramen and bus fair. But they gave me something Frank had taken away. A workstation. A top-of-the-line dual monitor setup with processing power that made my old refurbished brick look like a calculator. You’re the dropout. That was the first thing the program director, a sharpeyed woman named Alina, asked me during intake. She was looking at my file. Faith, 3.9 GPA, dean’s list, and you just walked out 2 days before finals. Why? I looked at the sleek black monitors in the lab. I remembered Frank’s shrug. I remembered the red lights of Tyler’s gaming tower.
“Show me what you can do.”
For the next four years, I didn’t just work. I ceased to exist as a human being and became an extension of the code. I didn’t go to parties. I didn’t date. I didn’t visit home. When Christmas rolled around and the other residents flew back to their families, I stayed in the empty dorm writing scripts to automate cyber security protocols. I channeled every ounce of rage, every memory of being called expensive. Every hour I spent doing my parents’ taxes while they doted on Tyler into my company. I named it Eegis. It was a predictive security AI designed to detect breaches before they happened. It was the evolution of the thesis Frank had deleted. By year two, I had investors. By year three, we had a headquarters in downtown Seattle. By year four, the present day, Eegis was acquired by a major tech conglomerate, but I remained as CEO. I was sitting in my corner office overlooking the Puget Sound when the ghost of my past finally pinged my inbox. I had a strict filter on my email. Anything from my parents addresses went into a folder marked archive, bypassing my main inbox so I wouldn’t have to see it during the workday. But today, my assistant Sarah buzzed me. Faith, you have a flagged email that bypassed the filters. It’s marked urgent family emergency. Do you want me to delete it? My hand hovered over the mouse. Family emergency was Frank’s code for I need something. If someone was dead, the police would call.
“Hello, Frank,” I said calmly. “I take it you got my mail.”
“I got a magazine,” he spat. “I asked for help for your brother and you send me a picture of yourself. What is this? You think you’re better than us now because you got your picture in a paper?”
“It’s a national publication, actually.”
