“And she wanted to go on to pharmacy school, but she was going to have to borrow to help cover her tuition and living expenses,” she says as though this clears up everything. It doesn’t.
“So… why didn’t she go?” Even as I utter the question, I cringe inside. The answer is already wrapping its tentacles around me.
Mom sighs. “We offered to pay for the program if she waited to go and stayed home with you.”
My mind blanks for a second. Why in the hell would they ask her to stay home with me?
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, it just made sense, honey.” Her voice rises with a note of pleading. “I mean, we didn’t want you to be alone. You were barely eighteen, and we also didn’t want Tori to overwhelm herself with so much debt. We couldn’t help her out much then, but after a few years we knew we’d be able to put aside—”
“But Mom, I was starting college. Why would that even be necessary?”
I hear her sigh over the line. “Honey, your father and I just felt like you weren’t ready to be on your own.”
I feel like someone’s dropped a cannonball on my stomach “You mean you asked my sister to put her dreams on hold so she could stay home andbabysit me?”
“Evie, don’t think of it like that.” Her voice takes on a sing-song quality. My nostrils flare.
“How else am I supposed to think about it, Mom?” I reimagine the last three years and my head spins. “I was eighteen. What did you think I would do?”
“Evangeline,” Mom says, and dammit if my name isn’t marinated in condescension. “Youknowhow you can be. Like that time you gave that vagrant a ride, and he stole your wallet?”
It was a week after I’d gotten my driver’s license. It was pouring rain, and the man was dripping wet, holding a sign that readWill work for food.“I wassixteen.And he was hungry—”
“He was an addict. And you could have been been abducted,” she says, her voice going throaty with drama. “You have no idea the human trafficking problem there is here in Abuja.”
I rolled my eyes. The man I’d picked up was so emaciated, I probably weighed more than he did. “Mom, this is Lafayette. Please.” I’d lost my wallet, and I’d never offered rides to strangers after that. Lesson learned.
“What about when you were seventeen and you gave all of your senior trip money to Invisible Children?” she asks, saying the words slowly as though I have trouble understanding.
“What’s wrong with being passionate about stopping warlords who enslave children?”
“Passion is one thing, honey. Making a twelve hundred dollar donation — all of your babysitting and birthday money from every year of high school — without talking to your parents or anyone?” She makes a little noise of offended disbelief. “You were going to use that money to go to Universal Studios with your friends. They were so disappointed.”
I resist the urge to growl. I’ve never regretted that decision. I still don’t. My three friends, girls I never even see anymore, still went. They still had a great time without me. I mean, yeah, I absolutelyloveHarry Potter, and I still would like to see The Wizarding World at Universal, but I think both J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter — and most definitely Hermione — would have supported my choice to save children from being stolen from their homes and forced into a terror campaign. That has much more lasting value than getting a butterbeer at Honeydukes with my high school besties.
“Evangeline, it’s those sort of things that make us worry for you. And we, your father, your sister, and I, just thought it would be best to give you a few more years to grow up.”
“Oh my God.” I’m horrified. And not only that but betrayed. Humiliated. “No wonder Tori hates me, Mom. How could you do this to her?”
“She agreed with us, Evie. It was to her benefit as much as yours—”
“It didn’t benefit either of us.” My raised voice bounces off the walls. Tori can almost certainly hear me now, but I don’t care. “And the fact that you didn’t even tell me — didn’t include me in this decision—”
“Well, in hindsight, that might have been a mistake, but you were a really young eighteen.”
I push myself off the bed. Sitting still is no longer possible. It may never be. “And now, Mom. I’m twenty-one. How about now?”
Her silence says everything.
“Oh my God,” I mutter, feeling ill.
“We just worry about your judgment, Evie. That’s all.”
I laugh, but the sound is humorless. “Oh, that’s all? Just my judgment? Just the decisions I make about how to live my life?” I have never been this angry. Not with Mom. Not with anyone. “Decisions like my career? Who my friends are? Who I date? Things like that?”
“If you think about it from our perspective, honey—”
