seed i need you to know i have stored in my head any info i came across about your novel and whatever you want to share abt it (even just a lil detail you wrote lately) pleeeease share it i am so curious —lyde
LYDE 🥹 well firstly here are my beloveds (zahra & connor in the foreground, musa with his angel wings in the back)
the details are still very much coming to me at odd times but i can tell u that it follows zahra & connor (and musa) thru their late teens and 20s. i dont wanna spoil the plot but it's basically wrong person, wrong time then right person, tragedy strikes then right person, right time.
u can have a little bit of connor's backstory as a treat he's a rich white boy who means a lot to me <3
Athena was the first person Connor confided in when he applied to Boston University. He knew he couldn’t go directly to his parents. His mother might have understood, but there would have been no reasoning with his father. It was a fight he didn’t want to have then and there was no reason to have it; it would only be real if the university accepted Connor.
Of course, there was no real possibility of them rejecting him. His academic record was stellar, his extracurriculars were exemplary, and his family pedigree spoke for itself. Even the essay he’d written had gotten a stamp of approval from several adults at school.
“Dad won’t be happy,” Athena had told him, though she needn’t have. Connor already knew that.
“He never is,” he’d said.
There was little he could do that would make Wallace Carter happy.
But he had been living by their rules his entire life. He had gone to the schools they picked for him and practiced the sports they wanted him to and learned the instruments they thought he should play. Every aspect of his life up until now had been carefully curated by them, with little to no effort or real involvement. They thrusted all the responsibility onto Cadence.
Connor would be eighteen soon. He would move out of this house and live on his own, regardless of where he went. He wanted that decision to be his.
So he sat his parents down in the living room and presented them with his acceptance letters—from Duke, Stanford, and five Ivy’s. All the places he had applied to, bar his safety option.
His father read each letter thoroughly, while his mother skimmed them all. She smiled warmly as she glanced at the letterheads and then got up to hug Connor. It was an awkward maneuver because Athena sat on the arm of the chair Connor was in, but he didn’t mind.
“I’m so proud of you,” Marion said.
He wanted to believe her, so he did.
Then she went back and sat on the couch. They made a nice picture of success, the four of them: husband and wife side by side, their dutiful children across the room barely an arm’s length away from one another. It was a picture of success, if success were defined as a nuclear family in wealthy New England suburbs going through the youngest’s latest accomplishments.
“Well done, son,” said Wallace. He regarded Connor with the same satisfaction one might hold for a dog that’s finally mastered a new trick. “You’ve nearly outdone your sister.”
Nearly. Because Connor would always fall short of besting Athena.
Athena had applied to and been accepted to all eight Ivy Leagues. She hadn’t entertained the notion that she might not get in. She hadn’t had a safety net. Then she went on to study neuroscience at Brown.
Connor wasn’t upset about it. It wasn’t his goal to outdo his sister. He knew she was the smarter sibling and he didn’t see why he should bend over backwards trying to prove himself when he was already secure in his intelligence.
That didn’t stop the backhanded compliments from cutting just deep enough.
“Have you given any thought to where you might go?” Wallace asked. “Dartmouth isn’t too far and they always loved your grandfather. There’s a legacy there.”
Yes, the legacy. Connor grew up hearing about the legions of Carter men and women who attended Dartmouth College. He’d seen countless grayscale and sepia photographs of family members past in gowns and graduation caps.
He didn’t want his own face to be added to the pile.
“Actually,” he started.
Stopped.
The weight of his father’s stare was too expectant and the words clogged his throat.
Then his sister’s foot pressed against his shin. He realized he’d been bouncing his leg alarmingly fast.
“They won’t be able to stop you,” Athena had said to him a week ago. “They’ll give you a hard time and bitch about it for a while, but ultimately it’s up to you. They won’t make you not go to college.”
Athena wasn’t the kind of person who said bitch about it very often. Connor had found it strangely, immensely comforting to hear.
He squared his shoulders. “I was actually thinking about the Boston area.”
“Well, sure, that’s just as good. Harvard has a stellar reputation, though, of course—”
“Not Harvard, Dad. Boston as in Boston University.”
Wallace Carter wasn’t taken aback by much, so it was a great feat that he was rendered utterly speechless. He looked back and forth between his children, like he expected them to start laughing and say Oh, we got you good! Then he looked at his wife, who simply blinked back at him.
Finally his dark eyes settled firmly on his son.
“Carters lead by example,” he said. “We invest in our education, and do so by entrusting the most prestigious institutions with it. Why on earth would you possibly want to attend a mediocre school when you can enjoy all the privileges and benefits that come with a place like Dartmouth?”
This was a precarious line he stood on. Teeter too much one way or the other and he would fall over.
“I’ve been to places like Dartmouth,” he said carefully. “All my life, the schools I’ve been to have been miniature Dartmouths and Harvards. I want to explore something new. I want to know how other people are living their lives.”
Some muscle ticked in Wallace’s jaw. “You are not other people. You are a Carter and you will behave as such. We have invested too much in you.”
“Invested? You mean you’ve given us the basic necessities all parents are to provide their children with?”
“Son, you know we have done damn well more than that.”
Athena’s voice cut in quietly, firmly. “Dad, don’t do that. Don’t make this about you.”
“And who else should it be about? We pay for your education but we can’t express an opinion? We can’t guide you when we see you making erroneous decisions?”
“He got in. He’s still good enough for your prestigious institutions. Why can’t he choose the one that makes him happy.”
“It’s not about getting in. It’s about making a commitment to what is right,” Wallace explained as though he were speaking to a child and not his grown daughter.
To Connor he said, “The son we raised would not disappoint us like this.”
Connor slipped. Toppled over the tightrope.
“Because I’m not the son you raised. You didn’t raise me. Candace did.”
There it was. The thing they never talked about. The thing none of them ever wanted to talk about. The thing that was so normal for them it had always been a nonissue, except for the times kids at schools asked why they never saw Connor’s parents.
