My name is Tessa. I am 26 years old, and right now I am sitting in seat 1A of a flight from Austin to Seattle, staring at the condensation on a glass of champagne that costs more than my entire wardrobe did in high school. The flight attendant just asked me if I needed a warm towel. I said yes, mostly because I wanted to feel something other than the cold dread settling in my stomach. To the world—or at least to the very specific slice of the tech world that reads venture capital blogs—I am a success story. I am the founder of Vital Pulse. I am the woman who just signed a deal worth $180 million.
Cash and stock. The ink is barely dry. The wire transfer is sitting in a holding account that looks like a phone number. But to the people I am flying to see, I am none of those things. To Brenda and Hank, my parents, and to Derek, my 31-year-old brother, I am just Tessa: the background noise, the mistake they decided to keep, but never quite figured out how to love. To them, I work at a computer repair shop fixing broken keyboards and resetting passwords for barely above minimum wage. I have let them believe this for years. Why? Because it was easier to be disappointed in me for being poor than to be used by them for being rich.
The plane hits a pocket of turbulence, jolting the champagne glass. The sudden drop makes my stomach flip, and just like that, I am not in a first-class cabin anymore. I am eight years old again.
I remember the backyard of our old house in Seattle perfectly. It was a gray afternoon, typical for the Pacific Northwest. It was Derek’s 13th birthday. My parents had gone all out. There was a bouncy castle, a catered barbecue, and nearly forty kids running around screaming. I was sitting on the back porch steps holding a paper plate with a cold hot dog on it. My birthday had been two weeks prior. I had received a clearance-rack doll with one eye that didn’t close properly and a card that my dad signed while watching TV.
Then came the main event. My dad, Hank, wheeled out a brand-new, gleaming motocross dirt bike. It was green and black, loud and expensive. Derek screamed. He ran over, hopped on it, and started revving the engine while the other kids cheered. My mom, Brenda, was beaming. She looked at him like he was the second coming of Christ.
“Look at him go, Hank,” she said. “He’s a natural. He’s going to be a star.”
Ten minutes later, Derek tried to do a wheelie, lost control, and tipped the bike over onto the grass. He scraped his knee. Just a scrape. No blood, just red skin. But you would have thought he had been shot. The music stopped. My mom rushed over, wailing. My dad was shouting for ice. The party came to a grinding halt so everyone could tend to the golden child.
In the chaos, I had wandered over to the swing set. I was trying to see how high I could go, trying to see over the fence—maybe trying to see a world where I mattered. I slipped. I fell hard onto the concrete patio stones. My elbow split open. Blood started dripping down my arm, staining my cheap white T-shirt. It hurt so bad I couldn’t breathe for a second. I walked over to the crowd surrounding Derek. I tugged on my mom’s shirt.
“Mom,” I whispered. “I’m bleeding.”
She didn’t even look down. She just swatted my hand away like I was a fly.
“Not now, Tessa,” she snapped. “Can’t you see your brother is hurt? Stop trying to make everything about you. Go inside and wash it off.”
I stood there for a moment, blood dripping onto my sneakers, watching her kiss Derek’s uninjured knee. That was the first time I learned the rule of our house. Derek’s pain is a tragedy. My pain is an inconvenience.
I walked into the house, climbed onto the bathroom sink, and washed the gravel out of my arm with stinging cold water. I wrapped it in toilet paper and scotch tape because we were out of Band-Aids. I didn’t cry. That was the day I stopped crying for them.
The pilot announces our descent into Seattle. The gray clouds outside the window look exactly the same as they did that day. I take a sip of the champagne. It tastes expensive, but it doesn’t wash away the taste of that memory. I am going back. But this time, I am not the little girl with the taped-up arm. I am the one holding the check.
If the dirt bike incident was the crack in the foundation, the appendicitis incident was the moment the whole house collapsed on top of me. I was 16. It was a Tuesday in November. I woke up with a dull ache near my belly button. By noon, during my history exam, it had moved to my lower right side and sharpened into something that felt like a hot knife twisting every time I moved. I failed the exam because I couldn’t focus on the Industrial Revolution when my insides felt like they were exploding. I managed to walk home from school, doubling over every few hundred feet.
When I got through the front door, the house was buzzing. Derek—21 at the time, living at home after flunking out of his first semester at a state college—was getting ready for his championship game. It wasn’t a real championship. It was an adult recreational soccer league, but to Brenda and Hank, it was the World Cup. They were in the kitchen packing snacks and filling coolers. I leaned against the doorframe, pale and sweating.
“Mom,” I gasped. “Something’s wrong. My stomach. I think I need a doctor.”
My mom didn’t look up from the sandwiches she was making.
“Take some Tylenol, Tessa. We have to leave in ten minutes. Derek needs us there for warm-ups.”
“No,” I said, my voice shaking. “It’s bad. It really hurts. Please.”
Derek walked in wearing his uniform, tossing a ball in the air.
“She’s just faking it because she failed that history test,” he laughed. “Classic Tessa. Drama queen.”
My dad looked at me, then looked at his watch.
“We don’t have time for a detour, kiddo. If you’re still sick when we get back, we’ll look at it.”
I collapsed onto the linoleum floor. The pain was blinding now. I curled into a fetal position.
“I can’t walk,” I whispered.
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