Free Spark by Posy Roberts Page A

He’s a researcher. My mom is a nurse.”
    Mr. Magnus harrumphed. Actually harrumphed. Then silence blanketed the dinner table again aside from forks and knives hitting plates and requests for seconds being made.
     
     
    “W HAT did your dad mean by the sound he made when I told him what my parents do for a living?” Hugo asked after dinner as he and Kevin walked toward Hugo’s house to watch the movie they’d rented.
    “Shit. Just ignore him.”
    “No, I mean…. Why did he harrumph when I said what my mom and dad do? What’s wrong with their jobs?”
    An apologetic look washed across Kevin’s face as he prepared to explain his father. “There’s nothing wrong with what they do. That’s not why he made the sound. I’m guessing he did it because he thinks it’s a waste of the genetic smarts you must’ve inherited for you to want to be an actor. Acting to him seems like a pipe dream where working in science is at least somewhat respected by him, even if it’s not as good as business or finance in his eyes. But don’t let him get to you. All he really gives a shit about is making money, moving up the ladder, and retiring with a hefty portfolio in his right hand and a gold watch on his left wrist.”
    “Mmm,” Hugo said, trying to figure out if there was a way the conversation could’ve gone better.
    “It’s not your problem; it’s his. He’s…. His parents were pretty poor. When my grandparents were first married, they struggled through the Depression and Dust Bowl trying to farm, and they never really recovered. It was bad in North Dakota, and it didn’t help that they had nine kids. Even though Dad was born in the fifties and the Depression was long over, he still grew up with nothing and his parents were extremely frugal, scraping by and pinching pennies. He was also the youngest kid. If you could be spoiled as a poor kid, which he wasn’t, being the youngest was probably the best place to be. All his siblings looked out for him. My aunts and uncles talk about how ambitious he was and how he wanted to compete all the time to prove himself, and he had the support of eight siblings to help lift him toward his goals. He thinks he’s a self-made man. He really isn’t, but he has nearly everyone around him fooled. My mom says that hunger just carried over from his childhood to his career and then over to me. I don’t think it’s normal or right. He’s forty-three, but he looks closer to fifty-three because of the stress he puts himself under. And you saw my mom. She looks like she’s barely thirty.
    “All I know is that if being as driven as he is turns you into an inconsiderate asshole to the people you say you love the most, keeps you away from them and at the office for eighty hours a week, and makes you look twenty years older than your wife, count me out. Not to mention, he was a total prick to you.”
    “It wasn’t that bad.” Hugo tried to soothe Kevin, never intending his question about a sound to elicit such an impassioned explanation.
    “Maybe not to you, but he does this. I’m sure my mom is yelling at him right now, but he’s not listening. He’s probably grabbing his briefcase and heading back to the office. He pisses me off.”
    “Obviously,” Hugo teased with a shove to Kevin’s side, which made him take a few steps into the grass on the boulevard before regaining his footing on the sidewalk. “It’s really fine, though. I didn’t know if he was insulting my parents or what. I can handle him not thinking acting is a ‘worthy’ career. Who fucking cares what he thinks about what I want to do with my life? Even if I never make a dime acting, I’m still going to try to do what I love. There are a lot of working actors out in the world. I’m not dreaming of making it big in Hollywood.”
    “See, but the whole not caring if you don’t make money, he doesn’t get that. Money and success are what drive him, which is sad. He basically sticks every dollar he makes into