Chapter 2: The $450 Education
We drove forty minutes down the interstate to Blue Harbor. I knew the regular admission gate price was exorbitant enough to make me wince, but when we finally reached the polished granite counter of the ticketing window, the young woman in the polo shirt hit me with a curveball.
“Just so you know,” she chirped, gesturing to a glossy brochure, “we do have a few VIP packages remaining for today. It includes two premium express passes, reserved seating in the private cabana area, two premium meal vouchers, a complimentary digital locker rental, preferred parking, and exclusive access to the Oasis lounge with unlimited bottled water.”
“How much?” I asked, bracing myself.
“The total, after state taxes and processing fees, is four hundred and fifty dollars.”
Four hundred and fifty dollars.
I stared blankly at the digital readout on her screen. The cashier, a girl barely out of high school, stared back at me. As a veteran cashier myself, I instantly recognized the exact frequency of her gaze. It was the universal, retail-worker expression for, Listen lady, I don’t set the corporate pricing structure. Please do not force me to defend late-stage capitalism before my lunch break.
Under normal, rational circumstances, I would sooner set my hair on fire than spend nearly five hundred dollars at a chlorinated puddle. I am a woman who routinely stands in aisle four of my grocery store for ten minutes, actively comparing the unit price of two identical brands of penne pasta because one is sixteen cents cheaper per ounce.
But I looked down. Mason was standing right beside my hip, his hands gripping his backpack straps, trying so desperately not to look hopeful that it physically hurt to watch.
I didn’t even sigh. I pulled my debit card from my wallet and tapped it against the reader.
“Two VIP passes, please.”
Mason’s jaw practically hit the pavement.
The cashier smiled, a genuine look of relief washing over her face, and printed the thick, gold-foil wristbands. “Enjoy your day, ma’am.”
“Honey,” I replied, taking the receipt, “for four hundred and fifty dollars, I expect to leave this facility with at least three college credits.”
She laughed so hard she had to physically turn her back to the register.
The VIP wristbands turned out to be utterly ridiculous. Phenomenally useful, but entirely absurd. A teenage employee named Brandon, wearing a headset and a polo shirt, materialized and escorted us to the restricted seating area as if we were visiting foreign dignitaries.
There were padded lounge chairs. Padded. At a water park. A park where everyone is perpetually dripping wet. A server holding a digital tablet immediately approached us to take drink orders. They presented Mason with a complimentary souvenir cup molded into the shape of a palm tree. The cup possessed such a massive volumetric capacity that I could have reasonably used it to store our winter coats.
Mason settled into his plush lounger, looked around the shaded cabana, and leaned toward me. “Mom,” he whispered, his eyes wide. “Are we rich?”
“For the next eight hours? Apparently so,” I whispered back.
He furrowed his brow. “Do rich people still have to put on sunscreen?”
“Especially rich people,” I told him, uncapping the SPF 50. “Because skin cancer absolutely does not check your bank account balance.”
We spent the entire morning obliterating the park. And when I say we went on everything, I mean everything. Mason somehow manipulated me into riding an aquatic terror device called the Hurricane Mouth, which should have served as a massive red flag.
The premise was simple: you climb into a giant rubber tube, plummet down a pitch-black, enclosed tunnel, get shot out into a massive, funnel-shaped bowl where you spin violently, and then you are unceremoniously dumped into a plunge pool. At one specific juncture during the descent, I found myself traveling completely backward, screaming at a pitch only dogs could hear, clutching one rogue sandal, and experiencing vivid, flashing memories from my third-grade spelling bee.
When we finally crashed into the pool, Mason surfaced, laughing maniacally, wiping water from his eyes. I surfaced actively searching the perimeter for legal representation.
“Again?” he gasped.
“I literally gave birth to you,” I wheezed, clinging to the edge of the tube. “Haven’t I suffered enough?”
We went again.
At noon, Mason deployed his VIP meal voucher at the premium grill. He ordered a double cheeseburger, a basket of truffle fries, and a concoction advertised on the menu as a Mega Wave Shake. When the server delivered it, I stared in horror. It arrived in a plastic vessel the size of a floral vase. It was filled with blue-dyed vanilla shake, topped with a mountain of whipped cream, studded with gummy sharks, flanked by two full-sized chocolate chip cookies, dusted with sprinkles, and crowned with an entire, glazed donut balanced precariously on the straw.
I looked at the server. I looked at the drink. “That is not a beverage,” I stated. “That is a local zoning violation.”
He ate almost the entire thing.
At exactly 12:30 PM, destiny intervened. We finally crossed paths with my family.
Melissa, Mom, and the three cousins were standing in the sweltering, unshaded regular queue for the Thunderdrop. The digital wait-time sign at the entrance glowed a depressing 70 Minutes. Mason and I were casually strolling past them, heading directly toward the express entrance, where the wait time was listed as approximately eight minutes.
Connor spotted us first. “Mason!”
All three cousins began shouting his name over the din of the wave pool. Mason, holding his giant palm tree cup, ran over to the chain-link fence separating the lines.
“I thought Aunt Melissa said you couldn’t come!” Abby yelled, clinging to the fence.
“My mom brought me!” Mason announced happily.
Luke, the most observant of the trio, pointed a wet finger at our wrists. “Why do you guys have gold bands?”
Mason puffed out his chest, vibrating with pride. “Because we’re VIP.”
Melissa whipped her head around. She looked at me, then her eyes darted to the gold wristbands, and then back to my face. I stood perfectly still and watched something dark and calculating move behind her eyes. It was probably complex mathematics. My sister possesses a savant-like ability for arithmetic, but only when someone else is spending the money.
She abandoned her spot in line and marched over to the fence. “You bought VIP passes?”
“Yep,” I popped the ‘p’.
“How much were those?”
“Four hundred and fifty dollars.”
Mom, who had been sipping a watery lemonade, nearly dropped her plastic cup onto the concrete. “Four hundred and fifty dollars?” she shrieked.
“It includes food,” I offered, completely deadpan.
That supplementary information did not help. Mom looked at me with an expression of pure, unadulterated shock, as if I had just casually informed her I had purchased a surplus military submarine.
Melissa gripped the chain-link fence, her knuckles turning white. “That is absolutely ridiculous, Teresa.”
I offered a lazy shrug. “It’s fun.”
She leaned closer, dropping her voice to a furious hiss. “You constantly complain about money. All the time.”
“No, Melissa, I don’t,” I corrected her, maintaining eye contact. “I frequently mention that I have a strict budget. That is not complaining. That is literally how the concept of budgeting works.”
She looked genuinely, deeply offended by this influx of factual information.
Before she could formulate a rebuttal, Abby piped up. “Aunt Teresa, can I come into the VIP area with you guys?”
Melissa snapped, “No!” so quickly and with such violent force I almost expected to hear a sonic boom echo across the park.
Mason and I turned and walked through the express entrance. As we ascended the wooden stairs, he looked back over his shoulder at his cousins, who were still baking in the seventy-minute line.
“Mom,” he asked quietly, “can they come hang out with us later?”
That was my kid. After the humiliation of that morning, after being left on the asphalt, his instinct was still to include them.
“Their mother would have to go to guest services and buy the upgrade, bud,” I explained gently.
He nodded, processing the logistics. Then he said, “She probably won’t do that.”
He was entirely correct. But what Melissa didn’t realize as she stood in that line was that I was already mentally calculating the cost of my revenge, and it was going to be exacted at a gas pump.
