Bradley is dead
It’s 7:13 in the morning, and Bradley is dead.
Not dead-dead.
He’s my car, not my boyfriend. A red Mini Cooper with a dent in the passenger door, 190,000 kilometres on the odometer, and a habit of bucking at every hill like it’s playing hard to get. He’s also the first thing I ever bought with money I earned myself.
The car was hot and fancy at the time, and I was spending my summer watching Silver Linings Playbook on repeat. So, yes, I named him Bradley.
Mini Cooper.
Bradley Cooper.
It made sense at seventeen.
“Come on,” I hiss, leaning over the wheel until my dark copper hair sweeps the speedometer. “We talked about this, Bradley. You know how much I hate being late!”
I flare my nostrils and suck in a deep breath. I even close my eyes because I’m this fucking close to losing it before I start the car. I even count to four. Larry, my $200-an-hour, federation-mandated anger-management psychologist, said five, but I’ve never had that kind of patience. Four is equal to meditation.
“Don’t you dare die on me today,” I warn as the starter whines. “Not today, Bradley. My first civilian job, and I am not getting fired on day one.”
I turn the key again, smoother this time, hoping a little gentleness might coax him back to life.
He doesn’t care. The engine makes a wet, rattling sound like an old sheep giving up on life, shudders once, and dies right on the incline of rue Saint-Petronille, and I have exactly seventeen minutes to get to Maplewood Elementary.
“Oh, fuck off,” I tell the steering wheel, slamming my palm against the vinyl dashboard hard enough to rattle the little tree-shaped air freshener.
“You absolute piece of—”
I stop myself. Inhale. Exhale. Count to four. Congratulations, Larry. I’m practically a fucking monk.
I rest my forehead against the steering wheel for three solid seconds. Just long enough to remember that eight months ago I had a personal physical therapist, a custom-moulded knee brace, and an Olympic sponsor who paid for my lifestyle. Now I have an uncooperative car, a blue plastic whistle around my neck that feels like a dog tag, and a rapidly shrinking window to get my ass to school before the principal discovers his replacement PE teacher is already a liability.
Arrgh!
A familiar xylophone ringtone breaks the silence from the dashboard where my phone is clipped to the vent. Mom’s profile picture fills the screen, her face pressed cheek-to-cheek with Gracie, her Pomeranian.
“What now,” I mutter, tapping to answer.
Mom’s face pops onto the screen, along with Gracie’s. Today, the dog is wearing a navy-striped sweater, a tiny red beret perched over her left ear, and a pearl necklace. They’re in Bordeaux for Dad’s wine conference, so Mom obviously decided the dog needs to look French.
Gracie definitely has a better travel wardrobe than I do, and she spends most of her life sleeping on a cushion shaped like a croissant.
“What do you guys possibly want at this hour?” I drape both hands over the steering wheel, one on top of the other, and give the camera my best side-eye.
“Good morning to you too, ma belle,” she says, her tone dripping with effortless upper-crust polish. “How’s your first day at work? Everything okay?”
“Mom, please. It’s not even eight yet. The day hasn’t officially started.”
“And your knee?” she asks. She always asks. Ever since I shattered it on an Alpine slope eight months ago during Olympic prep in Chamonix.
“It’s fine. My knee is fine, my new job is fine—”
“So why are you frowning? Is our Frankie cranky again?” She uses the most sincerely loving, motherly voice possible, which still lands like an insult straight to my eardrums.
I roll my eyes and stare dead into the camera, letting my face do the heavy lifting: What do you actually want?
“You know, sweetheart, you don’t need to work just yet. The specialists said you need to take it easy for the first year after the operation.”
Yep. A bunch of specialists now get to decide what I should do and how I should feel. My parents used to do that. And now, apparently, growing up means I need more people telling me what’s best for me instead of fewer.
Fuck my life, I know.
“Mom. I have a job. Remember? The one we discussed? The one I’m supposed to be driving to right now?”
“Francine, darling, we’re only worried about you. I know you’d love to help your best friend, but—”
She says help your best friend the way you’d compliment a child’s macaroni necklace.
“Mom, I’m only going to say this once before I start chewing through the steering wheel: I’m fine. I’d rather be doing this than being bubble-wrapped at home.”
“Francine,” Dad calls from somewhere off-camera.
Oh, good. The cavalry.
My dad’s face instantly swivels into frame, reading glasses perched high on his receding hairline. “Oh, hello, sweetheart. Didn’t know you were there. How’s the knee?”
For fuck’s sake. One more person asks about my knee, and I’m going to go full She-Hulk.
“Aarrggh,” I groan out loud, purely for dramatic effect.
“Six weeks, you said?” Dad goes on, unbothered. “A little favour for Aditi? And then you rest, as the specialists said?”
“It’s a job, Dad. They gave me a whistle.” I hold it up to the camera.
“Taking Bradley, I see,” Dad notes, squinting at the screen, ignoring the whistle entirely. “I can tell by that two-inch layer of husky fur on your headrest.”
I glance back at the passenger seat. Yes, it’s completely coated in Knox’s white undercoat. Normally he’s my shotgun passenger, but unfortunately, I can’t bring an eighty-pound Siberian husky to an elementary school—or disguise him as a service animal. The only thing Knox serves is chaos.
“Yes, I’m taking Bradley,” I say. “Tesla reclaimed the Model 3 when they pulled out of my sponsorship.”
“Well, Audi is still sitting in the driveway. And the Lexus,” Dad points out, listing the fleet at the house as if he’s offering me a pair of socks.
“Or the GLS,” Mom whispers to him, like I can’t hear her.
Dad gives her a look. “For her first day at work? That’s hardly a humble first impression,” he whispers back.
I stare at the screen.
Are they seriously having a private conversation about which of their luxury cars I should take while I’m still on the call?
“HELLO? I’m right here. And I can hear you. The phone isn’t a soundproof booth.” I wave at the camera.
“None of them are humble,” I say. “And I don’t need your facilities.”
“Francine Delune Artois,” Dad says, stepping fully into his patriarch voice. Great, the full name calling. Here we go.
“Our family’s resources aren’t a recreation centre you can cancel your membership to. They’re your birthright.”
“Aight, we’re not doing the birthright speech at seven in the morning,” I say. “All is fine. Talk to you maybe. Bye, Dad. Bye, Mom. Bye, Gracie. Love your beret clip.”
I hang up before Dad can launch into another speech about birthright.
Yeah, my birthright.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m self-made. The Artois money put me on skis at four, got me onto a team at twelve, flew me around the world chasing winter, and paid to put me back together after Chamonix.
I’m what the press lovingly calls me: a nepo baby. Which, technically, is wrong. My parents can’t even snowplow. They just made sure I had everything I needed to get good, no matter the price.
I have never once apologized for it.
But here’s what nobody ever wants to hear: that’s what parents do. Good parents. They provide. They give you every tool they can, and they hope you do something with it.
Well, I did something with it.
But when I won, the story was always the same. Of course she won. Daddy paid.
Well, duh. Daddy paid. For the best coaches, the latest gear, the first-class plane tickets. That’s what generational wealth is for.
But the money didn’t wake up at 4 AM to train in minus twenty, chasing winter to a new country every few months: Chile in July, Austria in October, Japan in January. And the money wasn’t the one watching my friends back home stop texting, because I was never there.
That part was mine.
And when you lose, they say money can’t buy talent.
And when you break your coach’s nose in Chamonix because he walked into your locker room while you were changing for the third time, they don’t write coach violates athlete’s boundaries. They write Artois heiress snaps under competition pressure.
Funny how nobody ever asks what happened the first two times.
And for the record, I didn’t snap. I set a boundary. With my fist.
Hence Larry. Hence the counting to four.
Officially, I’m on medical leave and a disciplinary suspension, which means I’m suspended from a competition sport I physically can’t do for at least a year and a half. Very efficient of them. Unofficially, I’m doing my best friend a six-week favour with a whistle.
I sit back and calculate my remaining moves. Option A: push Bradley into a legal spot, deal with him later, and sprint to school. Time-wise, totally doable. My PR on a flat track is still impressive, even with a titanium screw in my leg, though I wasn’t carrying a duffel bag the size of a crime-scene body bag back then.
Option B: call Dad. In less than ten minutes, a flatbed tow truck and a private driver would arrive to take care of Bradley, carry my duffel bag, and hand me an artisanal iced latte while whisking me to the school gates.
I can taste the almond milk just by imagining. Ugh.
That’s the insidious thing about luxury. You don’t need it per se, but once you’ve lived with it, doing without it feels like a fever dream.
My mind is made up. I have never in my life failed to get exactly what I wanted, partly because of the family name, but mostly because of my stubbornness, fearlessness, and utter inability to comprehend the word Stop. A severe clinical deficit in risk assessment, as Larry called it.
I prefer to think of it as commitment.
I pop the door, swing my bad leg onto the pavement, put my shoulder against Bradley’s driver-side frame, and start to push. My left knee gives an immediate, metallic creak, as if politely reminding me that this is a completely bad idea.
