Handcuffs

by Bethany Griffin

  “Indefinitely.” She hands me the phone and turns away quickly, like she can’t stand the sight of me. I don’t look her in the eye, because I don’t want to see her disgust and disappointment. And I don’t want her to see that beneath my shame, there is an undercurrent of excitement, a thrill from doing something so un-Parker-like. It’s a much better feeling than humiliated remorse, so I try to hold on to that, but it’s impossible when I look at my mother.

  “What’s going on?” Raye sounds breathless. “I’ve been calling and calling. I wanted to tell you that Josh invited me to some kind of dinner party his parents are having. Do you think I should go? If I go, will it be like saying I want to be a couple with him? ’Cause I don’t know if I’m ready for that. Do you think he’s cute? I mean, I know you said you did, but—”

  “Raye, I can only talk for a minute, to tell you I can’t talk.”

  “What?” Raye sounds suspicious.

  “I’m grounded forever and my mom is coming to take the phone back in just a few minutes.” I hate this; I would rather tell Raye face to face so I can see her reactions. This is really hard.

  “What happened, Parker?” I hear curiosity and fear, and I know that she is worried for me. I want to make it sound thrilling, like it was before Mom walked in and it got so horrible, but I know Mom is right outside the door.

  “We got caught,” I mutter.

  “What?”

  “My parents came home early, and we got caught.”

  “Who? Oh my God, Parker, was it him?”

  “Yeah.” I hear my mom exhale in the hallway, and clutch the phone as if somehow I will be able to keep talking to Raye if I hold the receiver tight enough.

  “Doing what? Don’t tell me you were—”

  “No, Raye. Not that, it’s just . . .” Why is it so hard to explain to her? The door opens and Mom is on the threshold with her hands on her hips. “My mom is here to take the phone. Look, don’t expect to see me socially for a while. I’m in big trouble.”

  “Parker, you can’t leave me hanging. Do you still have e-mail?”

  “For the time being.” Mom and I are eyeing each other across the room.

  “You have to e-mail me.”

  “I will see you at school Tuesday. Have a nice evening.” I say this woodenly, hoping that my strange response will convey to her that I will e-mail as soon as it’s safe. How I wish for a sleek, inconspicuous laptop. The Dell sitting on my desk is so obvious. Next thing I know Mom will be carting it away and I’ll be truly stranded here in my frilly little-girl bedroom.

  “Sit down,” Mom says, so I do. My mom’s hair is so pretty and blond. I’ll bet she never had any problems in high school. She’s still a knockout except for this line between her eyes that she always gets when she talks to me.

  “Your father and I, we don’t want you to see that boy again.” I glance up to examine her face and then back down because her eyes are so cold. This is bad. Does she not know that I can’t live without seeing him again? They can’t keep us completely apart, but they could seriously get in the way of our relationship. If we even have a relationship.

  “Oh, Mom,” I say, my voice calm. It might be repentant enough to satisfy her. I hope.

  “It isn’t like we haven’t done this before. We’ve raised a teenage girl before. We just didn’t expect this from you.”

  I stare at her. “What do you expect from me?” My voice is flat. I hate being compared to Paige, but I can’t lose my temper now. I have to be contrite. I must show her how sorry I am.

  “Parker, don’t start with all this middle-child baloney.”

  I don’t know what bothers me more, that she would say some kind of crap like “baloney” in a serious conversation with me or that she would automatically think I was going to play the middle-child card. And she is totally discounting the middle-child card, which I generally hold in reserve for emergencies, though if there was ever an emergency in my life, this has to be it.

  “Mom, do you really know me at all?” I stare at her, and she looks down.

  “Parker, what honestly is there to know?” My mouth drops open. I’ve never felt my mouth drop open before, wasn’t sure it could even happen to a nonanimated person. For the second time since the Handcuff Incident, I truly feel like crying. I mean, if your mom doesn’t think you are some kind of awesomely badass individual, how lame are you in the eyes of the rest of the world?

  “Honey, maybe you could show me a little bit of yourself. Right now, it’s always Parker and Raye, or Parker with that creepy boy. It’s never just you talking to me and Daddy, or spending time with Preston and Paige.” My mom is so blind. How can she call him creepy? Even the teachers at school treat him with deference. They see that he’s special, but Mom can’t see it, or she can’t appreciate the elusive thing that makes him so irresistible.

  Another click. I’m hyperaware of my computer. I almost always am, but Mom is oblivious to the fact that I just got an e-mail. I don’t let myself breathe. Don’t let her realize I have one last line to the outside world, I pray, though who would be listening to my prayers right now? I can’t imagine God would care if I get e-mail or not. I keep staring at Mom’s feet. Her red shoes clash with my girly pink carpet.

  “I’m going to ask Paige to come over and talk to you.”

  “Paige?” I hear my voice rise, it’s almost a shriek. Great, now I’ve lost control of my voice. I can’t even believe she is suggesting this. The last time I saw my sister, besides on Christmas when she was being the good loving daughter, she had a beer in one hand and a Long Island iced tea in the other, and, even worse, she was wearing a hot-pink tank top. In December. What a role model.

  “She’s already been through much of what you’re going through. She knows the danger.”

  “Mom, she doesn’t know anything.”

  “And you know it all.”

  That isn’t what I’m saying. The stupidity of her saying that goes right through me. When have I ever even suggested that I know everything?

  Another click. I pretend I don’t have a computer; I’m so focused on not looking over there. It’s a very good thing that I turned the volume down. Mom would freak if my computer announced I had mail right now. A second message. The first one is almost surely from Raye, but the second one? I force my eyes not to stray over to the computer. I force myself to look at her, look at my feet, back at her.

  “Do you want something to eat?”

  “I couldn’t eat anything.”

  “Good, I’m glad you feel some remorse. This is the first sign of it I’ve seen.”

  Remorse? I’m too excited to eat. It’s a sick kind of excitement, but still, I feel like I’m becoming something else, someone people might notice. A person willing to take risks. I’m sure the bad feelings will overwhelm me later, when I can’t stop ignoring all the implications of what’s happened, when I’m wondering if my parents will ever see me the same way and if he’ll ever call me again and all that. For right now I’m just going to savor being bad.

  Mom gets up and leaves. No mention of exactly how long I’m going to be grounded. Probably better not to ask.

  11

  I peer out the door again to make sure she isn’t coming back, that Dad isn’t coming to speak to me. I don’t want to see him right now. I can hear him say, “Jane, I can’t go through this again.” I know they’re thinking about Paige, they always are. Mom’s disembodied voice answers; she sounds soothing, nicer than she was with me. I creep across the plush pink carpet in my fuzzy pink slippers.

  I have two messages. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, and then I look. A message from Raye titled WTF? And one more.

  I scan his quickly and my heart sort of leaps. The words are there. I love, I love, I love . . . your sweet lacy bra. Not exactly what I wanted to see after those words. The entire message goes like this:

  Park

  Can’t stop thinking about you. You were so hot today. I love your sweet lacy bra. I wish you were here right now.
Next time, you and me at my place. No parental interference. Did I mention that I can’t stop thinking about you?

  Not much. It doesn’t say that he wants to get back together with me, just that he wants me. And that I already knew. I mean, we went out for long enough that I know he wants me in that way. What I need to know is if he wants me to be his girlfriend again.

  I push my hair back from my face and focus on the relevant information: He e-mailed me. He’s thinking about me. I can survive anything knowing that.

  But he has to realize how bad this is for me, doesn’t he? I think about how white his face was. It shook him up, getting caught. But I know deep inside that he’ll blow it off, act nonchalant. My relationship with my parents is in serious jeopardy, and all he cares about is my bra. I feel the annoyance build up for half a second until I remember Kandace Freemont, waiting to steal him away from me. He e-mailed me. That’s all that matters.

  I pad downstairs, stealthy in my fuzzy slippers, to see if there is anything left to eat. Except I forgot that Paige and her husband are always coming over here looking for free family dinners. They live so close they could walk, if West weren’t so lazy and Paige weren’t so afraid that a little wind might mess up her hair.

  Mom and Paige are sitting at the table. West has his chair pushed back so that he can see the TV in the other room. He’s not really into hanging out with my parents, that whole family dinner thing. His family eats in fancy restaurants and at the country club, not around a rectangular dining room table like my family does. If one of my parents asks him a question he’ll smile with his perfect white teeth and say the right thing. Otherwise, he’ll stay glued to the TV.

  After the incident I put on my pajamas. I mean, it seemed too anticlimactic to sit there wearing the same clothes. I should probably burn that shirt. Mom and Dad will never be able to look at it again without being reminded of what happened. I’m wondering if my pajamas are too revealing. They have cute little low-slung pink pants and a skintight T-shirt, and I mean, who wears a bra with their pajamas? I’m wondering if I should grab a robe or something. If they see me like this they might once again start thinking about me and sex, a combination that I do not want in their minds.

  They’re talking about me, of course.

  “Was she handcuffed to something?” Paige likes juicy details.

  “No, he had her hands behind the chair,” Mom answers. I’m not even surprised. They gossip together, the two of them, about everything. It doesn’t even make me mad, but it does put me on the same level as Paige’s friends, the ones that are interesting enough to speculate about.

  West gets up, going for another Mountain Dew, probably. You’ve never seen a guy suck down the Dew like my sister’s husband. He catches sight of me standing back from the doorway, not hiding or anything, Mom and Paige just haven’t noticed me.

  He doesn’t say anything, but he looks me over. Really. There was a time (when I was maybe fourteen) when I thought that West was a superb specimen of manhood. He’s tall and has kind of sandy brown hair. He was the most popular senior when I was a sophomore. Paige, believe it or not, wasn’t a cheerleader or anything, but she nabbed the most popular boy anyway. In all the years I’ve known him, he’s never acknowledged me with more than an innocent hair ruffle. But right this minute, here in my kitchen with my mother and my sister, he is totally checking me out. Even though I know in my mind this is gross, it feels really cool to be the girl who walks into a room and instantly gets checked out. I could get used to this. I almost like it.

  “I don’t know what she sees in that boy,” my mom says.

  “He has sex appeal,” Paige says. “Too much sex appeal for Parker.”

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  “Oh, Paige, you don’t mean that.” Mom is still determined to think of him as creepy. “I just can’t believe that Parker would do this.”

  “Mom, she’s probably just grateful to have a boyfriend.” And what is that supposed to mean?

  “Parker.” Mom’s voice gets louder as she catches sight of me. I don’t think she’s even embarrassed to have been caught saying those things about me. “Why don’t you get something to eat and go back upstairs? Your father does not need to see you tonight. He has a job interview tomorrow.” She’s looking at me like everything is my fault, even Daddy’s not having a job, and even though I know that’s not true, that there are a few things I’m not responsible for, my stomach still drops to my shoes.

  Dad has a job interview? That’s huge. I glance into the living room, but Dad is hunkered in front of the TV with the remote, and he doesn’t make eye contact with me. I spoon a glob of macaroni onto a plate and grab a Pepsi and then my cell phone. It’s right there in the drawer. Mom will never miss it, and if she does, how could she be any angrier at me than she already is? That’s the thing about hitting rock bottom.

  There is a loud screeching noise, like a hungry robot, coming from the kitchen sink.

  “What did you put in the garbage disposal?” I hear Mom ask over the noise.

  “The Batmobile,” Preston answers calmly. I remember him playing with that this morning before they went to the birthday party. It was a long black metal car. Sounds like it’s being destroyed, and in the process breaking the most useless appliance in our house. I hope I don’t get blamed for this; I was probably supposed to be watching him.

  “I think he bought that car in the Henessys’ moving sale,” I hear Paige say as I walk out of the room. I hear her footsteps on the stair behind me, but I figure she’s going to the bathroom or getting something out of her old room until I turn and there she is in my doorway.

  “So you got yourself in trouble today,” she says, smirking.

  “Yeah.” She looks kind of like she wants to laugh, but she doesn’t.

  “You got busted.” Paige is totally enjoying this. She can’t stop smiling.

  “Yeah.”

  “Mom and Dad are so pissed. They’re very disappointed in you.”

  “Yeah.” I hate hearing that; she has to know that hearing something like that, obviously a direct quote and probably from Daddy, tears a person up inside. But I act like it doesn’t matter. As much as she loves my disgrace, my coldness always gets to her. She’s starting to look a little bit pissed herself.

  “I’m trying to help you, Parker. You don’t have to do the Ice Princess thing. You can talk to me.”

  “How?” Just seeing her perfect blond hair makes me feel annoyed, and that smug look on her face makes me want to be as rude to her as I can manage.

  “By talking. I don’t think you ought to bottle this up. Don’t you want to tell me about it?”

  “What?” I cannot believe she is asking me this. She wants me to tell her about it?

  “Do you remember the time you told on me for kissing Brett Sanders out in the backyard?” She’s looking straight at me like I’m on trial or something.

  “I didn’t tell on you for that,” I answer, trying to keep my cool. I’ve heard the long boring litany of all the guys Paige was with. Yeah, Brett Sanders was possibly hotter than West. She should make a freaking photo collage or something, because she can’t stop thinking or talking about them. She’ll never stop rubbing in how popular she was.

  “You did tell on me, because you were jealous. That’s why I want to know how it was for you.”

  “So you can go tell Mom and Dad?”

  “Just so you’ll know how I felt getting caught. I can’t believe you’re still being such a little princess, even now.” Her voice oozes disgust.

  “What?” Why am I even talking to her? She’s just here to enjoy my misery.

  “Mom and Dad catch you in the act but you’re still better than me, is that it?” Everything she says confuses me more. Better than her? Me?

  “What are you talking about, Paige?” I realize that she’s twisting things. Somehow everything always becomes about her. Even this thing that is so totally about me. Even though she’s mad, she still takes a second look at h
erself in my full-length mirror. My big sister.

  “Did you know that Marion Henessy turned all of her Barbie dolls into Paige and Parker voodoo dolls and then she beheaded them?” she asks out of nowhere. “Well, actually, she only beheaded mine. She torched yours.”

  Now she has my attention.

  “Oh my God, how do you even know that?”

  “She took a picture and sent it to my Gmail address. Can you believe it? I was going to e-mail her back and say that only I could be Barbie and that she should use some ugly old Bratz doll for you, but West said I shouldn’t respond.” She laughs like this is funny. I think she really is trying to be funny. We used to play with all of them together, Bratz dolls, Barbies, this stupid army action figure that I think belonged to Kyle. We always fought over the Barbies; nobody wanted the other dolls.

  “Thanks, Paige.” It’s hard to manage a sarcastic tone when you’re totally freaked out. “She burned the Parker Barbie?” I can’t stop myself from asking.

  “Melted its face right off. That girl is as crazy as her brother. At least he was never violent.”

  “How did you know which one was me? If they were both Barbies, I mean?” This conversation is surreal. She’s telling me all this and still looking at herself in the mirror.

  “She had it all labeled, like Paige Prescott, death by beheading. Parker Prescott, death by bonfire.”

  I shudder. Paige is acting like this is no big deal, but I think it’s terrible to have someone hate you this much.

  “Well, I don’t know why she torched my Barbie. I never did anything to her.”

  “It’s your fabulous luck being my baby sister. Anyway, how is it my fault her brother wanted to watch me with binoculars and stuff?”

  I’ve never quite figured that one out, but somehow I suspect that she is at least a little bit to blame, and Marion Henessy thinks she is totally to blame and will do anything she can think of to try to get back at both of us.