“I won’t have it,” my father eventually says.
And now I’m starting to get angry. I want to yell at him, tell him that I’m sixteen, he can’t stop me from talking to boys. But I don’t. What did fighting back ever get me?
I take a big bite of my dinner roll and try to enjoy it.
“Well, we did say we wanted her to be normal,” my mother says.
That’s new. I’m not sure my mother has ever been on my side for anything. Or maybe it’s just because she doesn’t know what side I’m on since I refuse to stop shoving food into my mouth.
“Nora,” my father says in a low tone. “This will not turn out well.”
Now I can’t help myself. “It’s just a dance. It’s not like—”
“The boy is the cop’s son,” my father says. “He’s probably watching you.”
“He’s what?”
He’s the son of a cop? And he might just be watching me? For what?
Whatever. Who cares? I take a big deep breath and continue to eat. I’m not a fan of cops, like at all, but I don’t do anything wrong, not anymore. So I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. He’s making a big deal over nothing.
“Sweetie,” my mom says. After a moment, I realize she’s waiting for me to look at her. When I do, she says, “Do you want to go to homecoming with this boy?”
That’s a question even I hadn’t really thought of an answer for.
What do I want?
My father grips his knife and fork. “It’s not a question of what she wants. I forbid her from—”
“But Sarah said we should give her a little freedom.” She’s holding it together, but when I look at her lap, I can see her folded hands shaking.
Sarah. My father’s narrowed eyes say it all. To him, her very name is a threat.
“Sarah said?” He shakes his head. “I won’t let anyone—not her, not you—tell me how to fix this. At least in New York, it was just Anna’s reputation on the line. But now it’s us. Our family. You know what’ll happen if we let her do this, don’t you?”
My mom takes a deep breath and looks at me. “We have to start trusting her sooner or later, don’t we?”
My words coming from her mouth.
My father says nothing, just stares at both of us, dumbfounded, his rage festering.
I can’t believe what Mom said.
I could be wrong, but…I think she just stood up for me.
I rise to my feet. “Jackson asked me to go,” I say, wiping my hands on my pants. “You want me to be normal, right? Homecoming is normal, and I’m going.”
I drop my plate in the sink and walk out of the kitchen. Now they’re looking at each other, but my father hasn’t said anything else. I think that means I win.
Or at least that my father lost.
Just before I reach my room, I call out, “And I’ll need money for a dress.”
Chapter Twenty
I wait until my parents go to sleep, then I sneak Zara into my room again. I set my alarm for early. Early early, since I already have to get up around six for school. Why do they do that? We’re teenagers, we need our sleep.
Zara curls up next to me and licks my hand. It’s gross, but it’s a worthy sacrifice to have her here.
I feel better, safer, with her next to me. Not because I expect her to bite an intruder—that’s just ignorant to me—but because I’m not alone. Feeling her warmth next to me is comforting.
Zara and I are in this together now.
I wake up not to my alarm but to the harsh sound of my father’s voice echoing down the hallway.
What time is it? The clock says 1:14, and the lack of sunlight tells me it’s most definitely not the afternoon. What in the world is my father doing up—and yelling—in the middle of the night?
Zara lets out a little huff and rolls onto her side, and within a few seconds she’s snoring. Even she thinks it’s crazy to be up right now.
I close my eyes and wonder if I’ll make it back to sleep so easily, but now I’m awake enough to make out what my father says next.
“This is not our fault!” he yells.
My mom says something, but it’s too distant—the volume too indoor-appropriate—for me to make out her words.
Zara lifts her head when I get out of bed, but I lift my index finger to my lips, then point at the bed, and she seems to understand what I want, because when I back up to the door, she doesn’t move, just watches me tiptoe out the room. I shut the door behind me.
The carpet in the hallway tickles my feet, a soft reminder of how many times years ago I crept down this path in the middle of the night, sometimes to sneak out, sometimes to get a snack, but always to avoid my parents.
It feels eerily similar now. Except while I don’t want them to notice me, I do want to hear what they’re saying.
The glow of the living room light reaches the end of the hallway, and I stop at the corner and peek around the edge enough to see them.
My mom’s on the couch, her arms crossed over her chest. My dad’s pacing in front of her.
“You want to say it,” he says. “I know you want to say it. So go ahead.”
She holds her arms tighter around herself. “I talked to Sarah, and she said that maybe we were right to be concerned about Anna—”
“Sarah said? Sarah said?”
She pauses, and it’s like I can smell her fear, pungent and powerful.
“Nora, if I have to ask you one more time to just spit it out…”
She nods, and after another second continues. “She said we were right to be concerned, but that maybe, well, we should take it easy on her because…well, she ran away for a reason, Martin.”
“So Sarah thinks this is my fault, too?”
“No. Not your fault. It’s mine, too…”
“This is Anna’s fault, Nora. No one else’s.”
“But Sarah says…”
He puts his hand over his eyes and rubs them. “You think Sarah knows a thing about how this family works? Or how it needs to work?”
“I just think she has more experience with this kind of thing than we—”
“You think Sarah knows better than me?”
Mom hunches her shoulders forward and bows her head. “I didn’t say that. But she cares about—”
“We didn’t push Anna to run away. And if that’s the kind of insight her ‘experience’ has given her, she’s got a lot further to go if she wants to be any good at her job.”
“Martin, you’re being ridiculous,” my mother whispers.
My father paces in front of her like he didn’t even hear. Maybe he didn’t. “Everyone thinks I’m a bad father. That I did this.” His voice is lighter, softer than I think I’ve ever heard. He always tried to be so tough in front of me, never letting me see anything but the disciplinarian. “I’m just doing what needs to be done. It’s the way I was raised. If anything, we were too soft on her. You were too soft. If we let her get away with…”
“Then maybe she would have never run away.”
He pauses. The whole room seems to freeze, and even my heart stops. Not the right thing to say, Mom.
The shadows shift over his face as his jaw clenches. My mother’s eyes grow wide as she realizes her mistake.
She quickly says, “I’m just trying to imagine what it was like for Anna.” I might be imagining things, but I think I see her lower lip tremble. “I want to know why she left.”
He throws up his hands in mock defeat. “For God’s sake, Nora, I did everything I could to teach her, and for her to know those lessons, however hard, were because we loved her. It’s not my fault she took things the wrong way.”
“I know you tried. You did your best.”
“My absolute best,” he says. “But you keep acting like that’s not good enough. That’s what you think, right?”
“No. Of course not. But if that’s how she felt…”
He paces away from her, then with his back to her, he says, “Then what? Just say it.”
“T
hen maybe we had something to do with her feeling that way.”
He turns around, a look in his eye that I know well. He means business. Any softness he had is gone now, back to the father I always knew. My mother shrinks into the couch, and that must be enough to satisfy him, because he turns away.
He takes his coat off the rack by the front door. “I’m going for a drive.” He opens the door. “I’m giving you some time to think about this. If you haven’t dropped this nonsense by the time I get back it, just don’t say anything at all.”
An annoying buzzing sound fills my room, but I just throw a pillow over my head. No, I do not want to wake up. It took me another hour to get back to sleep, and even then I woke up at least three or four times.
A cold wet nose nudges my arm, and she’s so strong she actually starts pushing me toward the edge of the bed.
“Fine!” I say in a hiss.
I sit up and press the stupid button to turn off the alarm. This is ridiculous. Zara tilts her head at me.
I am not in the mood this morning.
I grab a hoodie and throw on my tennis shoes. She runs out the door the second I open it. For a moment I think she’s making a break for it, but when I walk into the kitchen, I see her waiting at the back door. She’s pretty damn smart.
I open the door, and she runs out. This time though, she doesn’t run right to her doghouse, she starts running around the yard. I realize after a moment of watching blankly—it’s too early in the morning for me to think clearly—that she’s playing. Now it’s my turn to tilt my head.
She runs one way, stops suddenly, then runs the other way. It looks, strangely, like she’s smiling as she does it.
“Girlfriend, you have to pick a decent hour to play next time.”
Still, I walk to a stick a few feet away and throw it for her. She runs, stops to sniff the stick before picking it up, then brings it to me. I think she wants me to throw it again, but when I reach for it, she jerks her head away. Then she starts jumping around again.
I make a sudden move, like I’m going to try to take it, and she runs joyfully around. My lips curl into a smile. She’s so goofy. Goofy like Jackson.
I run toward her, and she runs the opposite way, but already my toes are going numb. Shoes would have been a good idea.
Giving up, I walk to the doghouse and hold up the chain. She brings the stick to me, and I click the latch onto her collar. She barely notices. When I walk away, she just stands there looking at me.
I look back once I reach the door, and she’s chewing on her stick.
I feel really good that I can make her life a little bit better. Like my life has a small amount of meaning.
I go inside and take a quick shower. By the time I dress and walk into the kitchen, my mother is awake and sitting at the table with a cup of coffee.
“Morning,” she says.
Once, I’d have hated her for being so nice. Why pretend? But after last night, maybe I can try taking her seriously.
“Morning,” I say, I say, then glance toward their bedroom. “Is he…?”
“Still asleep. He was up pretty late.”
“Oh.”
Of course I know that she was up late, too. Her cup of coffee. The fresh pot on the counter. This isn’t just her morning ritual. She looks…exhausted. At least I made it back to bed. She looks like she didn’t sleep at all.
She sips from her cup. “What are your plans after school?”
“Going to Jackson’s to work on the art project, I guess.”
“What about tomorrow?”
I shrug.
I guess she takes that as an opening, because she gives me a surprisingly bright smile and says, “Okay, we can go shopping.”
“Shopping…?”
“You’ll need a dress. You said so last night.”
Oh God. Shopping with my mother. That’s not what I meant when I said I’d need a dress.
I sigh. I guess there are a lot of things I need anyway. I’m still wearing the expensive but much too conservative clothes my parents had waiting for me when I came back home.
I want to ask her whether it’s worth the fuss knowing how Dad’s probably going to react. Oh, who am I kidding? Probably? I know he’s going to be pissed. He’s already about to blow.
But I can’t take it if she says I’m right. If she says we shouldn’t go shopping.
I want to get the dress. I want to go to the dance with Jackson. If that’s a problem for my father, I’ll deal with it later.
“Okay,” I say. I grab my bag and head for the door.
“Have a good day,” she calls sweetly.
Well, that was interesting. I always wondered where I got my rebel streak when my mom’s such a pushover, but the way she’s acting now?
I’m not sure what she’s up to. I sense some kind of diabolical plan.
I sit next to Jackson on the bus, and even though nothing seems any different between us, it’s impossible to ignore the whispers around us that say we’re a couple. Original.
I don’t really care what they have to say. I wonder if Jackson does, but he doesn’t seem to notice at all.
We walk into school together and sit at his spot at the bottom of the secret staircase. I mean, it’s not really a secret, but not many people go there, so that’s what I like to call it.
Jackson talks about his friends calling him last night, how he told them he was going to homecoming with me.
“How’d they take it?” I ask.
“They’re worried.”
“Because of me?”
He raises his eyebrow, like he’s confused by my question. “No. Because of what happened with my last girlfriend. They’d be like this no matter who I was going with.”
I nod, because I get it. “I kind of did the same thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told my parents I was going with you.”
“Really? How’d they take it?”
“Like your friends.” I shrug and leave it at that. It’s way too complicated to get into. “Guess that makes it official.”
His eyes light up in a way that makes my stomach flip. I like seeing him happy. Happy about me.
He really does make me feel like a normal girl. Happy. Innocent.
Special.
Then the bell rings. I drop by my locker first, then head to class. I feel almost like a real high school student. I know my schedule, I have friends (plural!), and I’m going to homecoming. I even did my homework.
Nasty looks and whispers aren’t something you ever really get used to, but you can certainly pretend. I have perfected my “fuck you” look, and people steer away from me for the most part.
The school day goes fast for me. Or at least, it doesn’t feel like a full year, which is an accomplishment. My new misfit group of friends sit together at lunch and discuss more random things like what country would we most like to travel to and who’s funnier, Tina Fey or Stephen Colbert.
Jen tells me she had something come up with her family, so she’s ditching my tutor session for the day. That’s okay. I figure I can do my homework alone for one night.
Or I could not do homework at all…
I nudge Jackson with my elbow. “We still on for later?”
His eyes light up. “You know it. Why?”
“I might be available a little earlier than expected.” I nod to Jen. “She’s ditching me today.”
“Hey!” she says. “I’m not ditching anyone.” I give her a quick wink, and she blushes.
“But now I’m free right after school.”
“Awesome!” he says, smiling bigger than I’ve ever seen.
Today I feel very far from the girl living with Luis in New York.
After lunch I have health, which is basically just a class about sex. We learn all about STDs and pregnancy and all the things they try to teach us to keep us from having sex. I figure I’m pretty well past that, so it’s not a class I take very seriously.
When the last bell fina
lly rings, I rush from the room and out to the courtyard to call my mom and let her know I’m going to Jackson’s after school.
She sounds worried, but I don’t give her a chance to argue. As soon as I click the phone shut, I rush back inside to find Jackson. I keep my head low as I pass a group of boys crowded in the corner. One of them is Marissa’s nasty boyfriend Brandon.
“Dude, that’s hot,” one boy says low, like it’s a secret. I take a peek at what they’re doing. They’re crowded around Brandon, who’s holding his cell phone. I can hear the muffled sounds of a video playing, too indistinct to make out.
Then I hear the moans.
Are they seriously watching porn in the middle of school?
Perverts.
Please welcome the future johns of America, everyone.
I shake my head and turn to keep walking, but then Brandon calls out, “Eric says you’ve got one of these floating around, don’t you?”
I stop. Two boys walk right up next to me on either side, Brandon and a redheaded jock who must be Eric.
The jock leans in. “I’d love to see it one day.” He puts his arms around me and I don’t move. I know better than to struggle; it only makes it worse. Besides, I’m no stranger to sticky breath in my face.
“Like I’d be that stupid,” I say, keeping my eyes forward, my expression calm.
Brandon laughs. “You know how much power there is in sex, then.”
The redhead drops his arm from my shoulder and adds, “Marissa’s learning that lesson, too.” Then walks away laughing. Brandon joins him without another word.
I still don’t move, my mind totally blown by what they just said. I don’t think he realizes that he just told me Marissa’s secret. He thinks I’ll be scratching my head, wondering what that could have meant. Except that I already know more than he realizes.
That’s what Brandon has over Marissa. Why she “can’t” dump him. She’s had to put up with him because if she doesn’t, he’s going to show everyone a video of them having sex. How much power would that give him? He could show her parents, colleges, jobs. He could put it on the internet and she’d never get it back.
She’d be marked, like me.
I walk toward the bus slowly, still thinking about Marissa and Brandon. He’s more of a dick than I realized. But as much as I know Marissa doesn’t deserve what she’s getting, I know there’s nothing I can do to help her.
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