I waited until Wilder and Gracie had gone inside their house and climbed out of my car. I hurried inside, dumped my backpack on the floor, and then, like some sort of weird stalker or neighborhood gossip, hurried straight to the kitchen window and peered through the gap in the gauzy curtains at Wilder’s house.
I couldn’t see shit, but it didn’t stop me from looking.
I dug my phone out of my pocket and called Dallas.
“Hey,” he said, sounding happy and relaxed even though it was a Monday. “What’s up, Avery?”
“He was lateagain,” I growled.
“What? Who?”
I leaned over the counter and dislodged the coffee mug I’d left out this morning. I caught it before it fell and lifted it up to look it in the googly eyes. “Wilder. My worst parent.”
“Oh, your new neighbor,” Dallas said. “I remember.”
My parents and Dallas and Camden had come up last weekend with boxes of books, clothes and random junk I hadn’t seen in years. I was glad Dallas had made it since it had given me the chance to vent teacher-to-teacher about the world’s most annoying parent—Wilder. I’d left out the part where Wilder was a stripper, but I didn’t need it: Dallas thought it was hilarious enough when I said that it turned out Wilder lived right next door, and it was all I could do to stop him from rushing over there to introduce himself.
After my family left, the house didn’t seem as empty as it had before they arrived. Maybe it was because my dad had wandered around doing random things like tapping the baseboards and making approving humming sounds, and my mom had used my stove to make potatoes au gratin, and there were now photographs and knickknacks on my bookshelf.
“He was actually on time this morning,” I said. He’d even smiled at me and waved as he left, so I’d thought that perhaps we were finally at a turning point when it came to his tardiness. More fool me, right? “Then this afternoon he was so late I’m only just getting homenow.”
“So what’s the procedure at your school?” Dallas asked.
“What?”
“When parents are late, there’s a procedure,” he said. “You have to ask if you need to take the kid to the principal’s office so they can call her emergency contact, or the police, or CPS, or whatever.”
My stomach lurched. “Thepolice?”
“Depends on your school’s policy,” Dallas said, his tone taking on the same calm authority it took to keep a bunch of middle schoolers on track. “Which is why you need to get on top of itright away, because otherwise this guy is going to keep taking advantage.”
Dallas was right, and I knew it. Obviously Wilder didn’t take me seriously, so I needed to bring in the big guns. Our principal, Mrs. Freeman, who was pushing five feet tall even in her heels, wasn’t a big gun at all in terms of size, but when it came to firepower? She’d leave nothing but a smoldering crater, and she’d do it with a cheerful smile.
“I just…ugh.” I didn’t have words for how angry I was.
“Avery,” Dallas said, “did you skip lunch?”
“What? No, I—” I blinked and thought back. “I might have.”
“Go and get a snack and eat that while you start making your dinner.”
“I’m notfive,” I whined like a five-year-old.
“Avery.”
“Fine!” I wedged my phone between my ear and my shoulder and stepped away from the window long enough to wrestle open the cookie jar. I had a cookie jar now, courtesy of Mom, and she’d baked me a batch of oatmeal cookies before she’d left yesterday. I jammed one in my mouth. “I’m eating a cookie.”
“Good. Now eat another one.”
“Do you boss the kids in your class around like this?”
“Only if they’re cranky because they need a snack. Feel better?”
“No,” I lied, then sighed. “Fine. Yes.”
Dallas gave a soft laugh. “Mom’s cookies have that effect.”
“Yeah,” I said. And it was true. It was the taste of home and comfort and a reminder that I had people who were there for me when things got tough. People like my brother, who would know how to deal with my worst parent. “So what am I going to do about Wilder?”
