I Am Nina — Chapter 8 — The Truth
Next move: Elite Academy, senior year, a diploma that opens doors.
Nina was rich, then poor on purpose, then rich again. And neither of the boys knows.
— On our next move, you're going to a good school — he said. — Elite Academy. You'll do your senior year there, somewhere respectable, and come out with a diploma that opens doors.
I was about to complain. Elite Academy is the opposite of everything I'd learned to be over the last seven years.
But he raised his hand.
— And I want to make one thing very clear. You don't need to push yourself to study. You don't need to try to be the best at anything.
It was the strangest thing my dad ever said to me.
— What do you mean.
— You're going to have money — he said. — That's not a promise, it's a fact. I'm not taking any of it to the grave. It's all yours. You can live however you want. If you want to sell costume jewelry at a stand on the beach, that's fine — at night you'll come home to a comfortable house and order whatever food you feel like, because you'll never be short on cash.
— Then what's the good school for.
— The good school is so you have options — he said. — But what I really want has nothing to do with grades or a career. I want you to find something that makes you happy. Something you want to do, not because you need to, but because it makes you whole. One day you'll find it. And when you do, you'll have all the money in the world to go after it.
— And your biological parents — he said that almost at the end. — I found out who they are. If you want to meet them, I'll take you.
— No — I said right away.
— Are you sure.
— Completely. If they want to meet me, they can come. I'm the child. It's not the child who chases after the adult. It's the other way around. — I shrugged. — And whoever cares about something goes after it. If they never came, it's because they never cared. I'm not doing their job for them.