Rache

It was cold in my room. I very carefully unmade my bed and wrapped the comforter over my shoulders, facing away from the door.

“Rache, do you think I’m a suck-up?” I asked

“What are you waiting for, some magical banshee to walk up and hand you money?”

“Sherrie, would you calm down? I’ve got some really important projects I’m working on. Honestly. It’ll work out, I promise.”

“Jack, you’ve been promising for a year now. I closed our savings account this morning. We’re broke. Patrick starts college this year. If he hadn’t gotten all those scholarships, he couldn’t afford to go to school at all!”

“But he did get scholarships. Listen. I’ve got this program I’m working on that will revolutionize the Internet sales industry. Imagine: millions of people able to make completely secure purchases online. Everybody’ll want that utility—it’ll solve all our problems.”

“That’s great, Jack, that’s great, but why don’t you get a job at Microsoft or Netscape, so you can get paid for playing with little projects like this?”

“I’m not playing! Sherrie I’m doing real work here. You are not the only adult in this family!”

“I don’t care what you’re doing. Adults have jobs. Adults are responsible for their kids. What are we supposed to do when Liz graduates? You know she’s not going to get the same kinds of scholarships Patrick did…”

When I was very little, I learned the secret art of crying silently. Crying out loud gets people’s attention. Mom never would let us cry when she punished us. She always said that if we cried, then she would give us something real to cry about. So I learned to go away where nobody could hear me, and then cry silently. You sort of clench your muscles so they can’t move and take deep breaths. Then you sigh out real slowly and let the tears roll down your face. You can’t sob because your stomach is a tight little fist, and all the energy goes into pushing the air out so slowly. Sometimes it helps if you clench your teeth. I think this is why my laugh is silent too. I have different laughs, but my real laugh, when I just can’t help myself, it sounds just like my crying: Nothing at all.