This novel published in 2016. You can buy it here, if you please.

Prologue

Tom and Jessie were brother and sister who lived with their parents in a small house at the edge of the San Francisco Bay. Tom had been accepted into San Jose State University’s physics department, which he was partly excited about, but partly not sure about, because he also liked to read history and play sports and debate, and so it was difficult to choose to do one thing, to study one thing, for what seemed like forever.

Sometimes Tom dreamt of many things, and often during the day, which got him in trouble with some adults, who had forgotten how to dream while being awake. That was one skill Tom decided he would never give up: Daydreaming.

On his first day of kindergarten, he had dreamt about Superman. He remembered carrying his Superman lunchbox up to his teacher and explaining to her how the Superman character could fly, even though he was a human. Tom said that Superman’s extra-long red cape let lots of air underneath it and lifted Superman into the sky all the way up to the clouds and, when Superman touched the clouds, he floated just like they did – smooth and easy and in a direction that was best for them. But Tom’s teacher didn’t want Tom to get the wrong idea about the world. She didn’t want Tom to think that people or Superman could fly like clouds. She leaned down and told Tom that Superman couldn’t really fly. Tom leaned forward and told her she couldn’t really imagine. 

And then Tom leaned back and kept on imagining, although, as time went on, his willingness to speak out against authority began to dissolve. No one liked a know-it-all, especially older people, and so he started to spend most of his time with high school friends and the girl he liked, Lisa, who had strong blue eyes and glossy lips. He would walk with Lisa every day to their 5th period class and, when senior prom approached, Lisa talked about how excited she was and, one time, mentioned that she didn’t have a date. Tom said he didn’t have one either. But that’s all Tom said. He didn’t ask Lisa to prom; he knew he should have, but he didn’t and he wasn’t sure why. Instead, he stayed home and hung out with his best friend, Dan. 

And that was almost it. That was almost the end of Tom’s story. The rest of this book was almost full of blank pages because after high school, Tom figured he would just choose a college, get a degree, maybe a graduate degree, make his way into some corporate cubical, and start to calculate derivatives on how to derive more money for company profit sake. That’s it. That’s all. A story told in three paragraphs. 

But three paragraphs just didn’t feel right. Tom was too young; too young for college; too young for the travelled path. He was a rebellious eighteen-year-old and it wasn’t because he didn’t have a great childhood or a loving family. His younger sister, Jessie, was a freshman at his high school, and he’d drive Jessie to piano practice twice a week. Most mornings Jessie would turn the stereo up and roll down her window and let the cool air flow in and sing. 

No one was more proud of Jessie or Tom than their dad, John, who wanted nothing more in life than to take pictures of his kids, cook breakfast for his family, and ski every now and then. John worked as a computer programmer, and he’d graduated from the University of Wisconsin, where he swam backstroke and studied math. 

Tom’s mom, Elise, was strong in character and furiously competitive, both of which sometimes caused problems in her career as a financial analyst. One time in a quarterly review meeting, a Vice President at the bank asked Elise if she could do his laundry after the meeting was over. Elise did not respond. She didn’t want to get fired but she also didn’t want to be pushed around. So she waited and, the next day, she called the bank’s HR Department and filed an official complaint. Although the Vice President remained a Vice President, he never asked her to do anything again. 

Elise and John had mapped it all out: house, family, mortgage, and save for retirement: the American Dream. The prospect of the American dream was enough for them – this made them happy and content, and their happiness grew stronger after they began to raise two healthy children, Tom and Jessie.

But, as often is the case, something suddenly happened. John suddenly lost his job. In 2008, his company cut 24,600 jobs, and John was sent home with a 6-month severance package. Immediately John started to look for a new job, but couldn’t find one right away, which caused unmasked doubt that could be seen by Tom. And with these new struggles, Tom’s college hesitations intensified and, instead of college, Tom began to think about money. He started to think about making money, about figuring out a way to beat the system that said his dad wasn’t good enough for a job. And it wasn’t because his dad didn’t want a job. It wasn’t because his dad hadn’t gone to work from seven o’clock to five o’clock every day for eighteen years, only calling in sick a few times. It wasn’t fair. 

So Tom thought about it and thought it, and the last sentence in his third paragraph ende—

Up turning into the first sentence of his story. And his story begins now.