Betrayed by My Childhood Love novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Our Own Sponsor

I read the banner three times.

Then I closed the laptop very gently, because the recovery senior had paid for it himself.

"So your dad's company," he said, "is paying for your sister to fly your engine."

"She's not my sister."

"Your dad's company is paying for the girl who's not your sister to fly your engine."

"Yes."

He sat down on an upturned bucket.

"That's so much worse than I thought rich people were."

Four freshmen stood by the oxidizer cage holding brooms, looking at me like I was supposed to know what to do.

We had six hundred dollars, a ten-second motor, and no sponsor.

Thornbury had my father.

Waylon came in at noon with two Dr Peppers and read the banner on his own phone.

He didn't say anything for a while.

"Okay," he said finally. "Who do we know?"

"Nobody. We know nerds."

"You know four hundred shrimpers."

I looked at him.

"They're not a company, Waylon."

"They're a port," he said. "The port has a board. The board has money. And every one of them ate your grandmother's shrimp last October."

I called Gran that night.

She listened to the whole thing without interrupting, which was how I knew she was furious.

"The port board meets the second Tuesday," she said. "Public comment's at the end. Nobody ever goes."

"Would they even let me talk?"

"Sugar, I've fixed the harbormaster's boat for thirty years. They'll let you talk."

On the second Tuesday of October, I stood up in a meeting room at the port that smelled like carpet glue and diesel.

There were seven board members at a long table, and about sixty shrimpers in the folding chairs behind me, in rubber boots, because Gran had made some calls.

The old man with the red boat sat in the front row with his arms folded.

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