2: 2
I pointed at the payroll card listed on the onboarding form. "That's not my account number."
The hiring guy glanced at me and said, flat and indifferent, "I know. That's your dad's account."
Something in me went tight. "Change it to mine."
But he refused. "Can't do that. Your parents already told me. If the money goes into your account, you'll just blow it on nothing."
I was so angry I could barely breathe.
All at once this house felt like it was suffocating me.
The hiring guy pressed me. "So are you signing or not? I've got other things to do."
I shook my head. "No. Goodbye."
I quit on the spot.
After leaving the electronics factory, I didn't go straight home. Instead I posted something online:
【High school senior, SAT scores already good enough for a top-tier university. Offering one-on-one tutoring. Free trial lesson available.】
Before long, several parents reached out to me.
I picked the family that was closest.
The student was a girl in eighth grade. I gave a trial lesson at their place, and both the girl and her parents were happy with it.
In the end we settled on two hundred dollars an hour, tutoring for the whole summer, which came out to about fifty thousand dollars in fees.
That was enough to cover my college expenses.
As I was leaving, the parent paid me five thousand up front and begged me not to take on any other students.
I nodded and agreed.
With five thousand dollars in my account, I felt like I finally had some ground under me.
At least I wouldn't have to live at the mercy of my biased parents anymore.
Even if it really came down to cutting ties, I could stand on my own two feet with what I knew.
When I got home, the air in the house was ice-cold.
Everyone stared at me, unhappy.
My father let out a cold snort. "Nora Simmons, I never thought you'd turn out this lazy and useless. You've disgraced this whole family."
I frowned. "What did I do?"
He stood up and slammed his hand on the table. "What did you do? You've got the nerve to ask?"
"I went to all that trouble to find you a job at the electronics factory, and you quit? Why?"
I said, plainly, "Twenty-five hundred a month. The pay was too low."
He sneered. "All you know how to do is bury your head in books. What do you understand about anything?"
I went quiet.
Bookworm. It was a label they'd stuck on me that never peeled off.
When we were little, my sister sang and danced, and they were proud of her.
Me, they criticized. Bad with words, no use to anyone.
To make them happy, I studied hard, thinking that if my grades were good enough, I'd finally earn their approval.
But it never occurred to me that they'd just see me as a bookworm, worth nothing at all.
So it turned out that when parents don't love a child, nothing that child does is ever right.
Just then my sister's phone rang.
She pulled it out and played with it, delighted.
My eyes drifted to her phone before I could stop them, and something like envy showed in them.
The truth was, I didn't envy the phone. I envied how much our parents loved her.
My mother caught the look on my face and gave a bitter little laugh. "Nora, did you find out I bought Emma a phone?"
"Is that why you didn't want the job? Because you don't have a phone and it stung?"
She took out a small box. "You've got mother all wrong. You have a phone too."
I froze.
A trace of warmth rose in me, and with it a trace of guilt toward my parents.
Could it be that I'd misunderstood them? That they really did love me, and I'd been overthinking all along?
But when I opened that box, I went rigid where I stood.
