Page 41 of The Endowment Effect

7

Wayward High School

Nineteen Years Ago

School was going wellfor Birdie. A first for the one-time bully and troublemaker. Her grades were up and she had friends.

All in all, a marked improvement from where she had been in the past.

Currently, she was working on her paper for the book,Out of My Mind. It wasn’t your typicalCatcher in the Rye-style, literary novel assigned to ninth-graders.

Although she loved that story as well.

Rather, the book assignment was a pleasant surprise to her and the entire class. It was a story about an eleven-year-old girl named Melody, who had cerebral palsy and couldn’t walk or talk. What Melody’s classmates and even her teachers didn’t know, was how smart she was, assuming she was mentally challenged. All because they couldn’t see past her handicap.

No one was aware of the brilliant mind inside her broken body, begging to be seen and heard.

Birdie had consumed the book in one evening, sleeping with a small flashlight under her bedcovers so not to wake Maisie, who would likely complain to her mother, claiming Birdie was keeping her from getting any sleep.

After she finally closed the book and turned off the flashlight, an hour later she was still wide awake. All because of a single quote in the book she couldn’t seem to shake, “It’s like I live in a cage with no door and no key. And I have no way to tell someone how to get me out.”

Birdie couldn’t ignore the similarities to her own private hell.

She finally fell asleep, dreaming of cages and keys. At school, she couldn’t wait to get to Bernadette’s house to pour all her ideas onto paper. Once there, skipping their usual time spent by the shore, she whipped her spiral notebook out of her book bag, settled into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, and started to write her thoughts while Lucas sat equally engrossed with geometry.

How he got into all that math stuff was so weird to her.

It was unusually quiet in the house as Bernadette was outside hanging laundry and Grant had taken the other kids to the shoreline to go crabbing.

Taking a break, she tapped her pencil on Lucas’s paper covered with vertexes, right triangles, and pentagons. “Why do you like math so much?”

Hunched over, he leaned back as if thankful for the break and did that thing she loved, where he ran his fingers through his thick black hair making it look all spiky and unkempt.

He stared out the window as if trying to come up with the words. “I don’t know. Numbers seem… reliable. There’s no subjectivity to the answers, you’re either right or wrong. I guess I like the idea of living a life with clear boundaries.”

“Yeah, but that’s not how life works.”

His chocolate syrup eyes landed on hers. “What do you mean?”

“Life isn’t black-and-white. It’s full of gray areas. Life is messy and… complex, and that’s on a good day.”

“That’s the point. It doesn’t have to be. Having a complex and messy life is a choice.”

She rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger as she hiccuped a laugh. Her life wasn’t a choice. “Says the golden boy of Wayward living the dream.”

“Living the dream? What are you talking about? My parents dumped me on the front steps of a funeral parlor when I was an infant during a hurricane. I’ve spent my entire life living in foster care. Six homes, to be exact. I’d hardly call that living the dream.”

Lucas rarely mentioned being abandoned. He seemed really angry with her as he threw his pencil down and scooted back in his chair.

Birdie shook her head several times, suddenly more angry with him for being so freaking clueless.

“You just don’t get it, do you? You live in a home where the people inside are excited to see you when you walk through that door,” she said, pointing toward the entrance to the kitchen. “Where you’re fed and… and hugged, not because they have to but because they want to.”

“I get that, and yes, Bernadette is like a mother to me. But let’s be real. She’s paid to take care of me.”

It was Birdie’s turn to throw her pencil on the paper in front of her and glared at him. “I can’t believe you just said that. Loving someone has nothing to do with sharing DNA and trust me, no one knows that better than me.” She reared back in her chair, staring at the words on her paper. “You’re living the dream and I’m living the nightmare, and mine isn’t a choice, Lucas.”

“Hey, don’t be mad. I’m sorry. I… I know it’s not good at home and for whatever it’s worth, I care about you, worry about you.”

---