Page 58 of One Breath After Another

That seemed like ... a waste.

But hey, it wasn’t her money.

And she wasn’t a baby person.

Except for Roz’s baby.

That was different.

“You’re still good with the baby shower, right?” Roz asked from the other side of a rack filled with expensive baby jeans featuring tags with names she recognized. Since when did Gucci make baby clothes? “I mean, it’s going to be a lot of people, Penny, and I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. So just let us know if you need—”

“It’ll be fine.”

Lies.

The idea of being in a house with at least a hundred or more people—a lot of which she wouldn’t know from a hole in the ground—terrified her to no end. But she was also trying this new thing where, at least when it came to people she gave a shit about, she actually tried to think of someone other than herself.

Roz’s shower was about Roz.

Not Penny.

Or her dislike of people.

“Even so,” Roz said, giving her a pointed look, “if you do need five minutes to breathe at the baby shower, just take it. No one is going to be offended.”

Penny smiled. “Yeah, okay.”

Roz prattled on about the shower while they continued flipping through the rack. Not about anything too serious—certainly not what happened just a couple of days before at the school. In fact, her guardians barely said anything about the fight.

She wondered why.

Eventually, Penny just blurted out, “Are we not going to talk about what happened at school, or ...?”

Roz didn’t look away from a pair of toddler-sized jeans as she asked, “Do we need to?”

“Shouldn’t we?”

“Well, we’re handling it. The meeting with the school and caseworker—because apparently they decided to include her this time around—has been set. There’s not much else we can do until that happens.”

Penny didn’t even try to hide her scowl when she said, “That bitch just wants to move me in with someone else.”

Did she sound whiny? Petty? Like every other teenage girl in the world that was selfish and self-absorbed?

Yep.

She also didn’t care. Nothing she said was untrue.

Roz gave her a smile from across the rack, making Penny say, “Well, I’m right. And I’m seventeen, eighteen in a few months, so why can’t I just pick where I want to live?”

“If it came down to that,” Roz replied, “the judge would consider your input.”

A judge.

Christ.

Penny didn’t want to deal with the law any more than she had to. Once—for her father’s charges and a trial that didn’t happen—was enough. She still felt like the system hadn’t done very much for her at the end of the day. She wasn’t about to jump at the chance to trust it to do the right thing a second time around.

“And,” Roz added, hooking the hanger attached to the jeans back on the rack, “other than getting through the meeting, I don’t think we’re going to have too many more problems from the school or the caseworker. They emailed a list of requirements for you leading up to it—like attending your therapy—but you do all of that, anyway. Don’t worry. We’ll deal with it.”