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“Gifts …?” I scoff at that. “You call this place a gift?”
My mother’s face hardens, any trace of sentiment wiped away at once. “You got to do it your way in California. You got to do it your way up in Chicago. You got to do it your way in New York. It doesn’t seem to me that ‘your way’ is working, Donovan.”
“This place is backwards.” I throw my eyes down to the table where it’s less bright. “I didn’t even start the fight. I just—”
“Oh, you never start the fight, do you?”
Her airy sarcasm twists the nerves in my neck to the point of wanting to shout, but I hold back. “Mom … I had to act. That jock was about to shove a pound of food down Toby’s throat.”
“What did I tell you, hmm? What did I warn you not to do?”
Is she serious right now? “Mom …”
“Don’t involve yourself in trouble. That’s what I said. The one rule. You are going to learn a thing or two about respect here in Spruce. Just like I did. There are many opportunities here for you. Don’t ruin this for yourself.”
“But that stupid jock kid—”
“Jack and I had a long conversation. Y’know, he was a teacher when I attended Spruce High, long before he became its principal. You should be thankful he remembers me. Our relationship might be why you didn’t get suspended yesterday and only earned a slap on the wrist. It’s important, who you know. Isn’t that a lesson I taught you?” She clears her throat. “And that ‘stupid jock kid’ you’re referring to is lined up to be the next Tanner Strong, from what Jack was telling us. Do you know who Tanner Strong is?”
Already laying it in thick with the principal. My mom’s been working overtime on the socialite path. “Tanner who?”
“You need to learn who’s who here. People are power.” She closes her laptop and leans over the table, her elbows resting on it. “If you make everyone your enemy, you’ll have no one on your team. This is a lesson I’ve been trying to impress on you for years. If you bothered making a better effort to learn and apply it earlier, maybe you wouldn’t be repeating your senior year.”
I close my eyes, the brightness at last too much to bear.
My mother’s cool, icy fingertips touch my arm. They give it a squeeze I think is meant to be consoling; it stings instead. “Look at this as an opportunity. A brand new town for you. New faces. New friends. A new chance. The world’s yours, Donovan, if you just learn to cooperate with it.”
“Maybe it’s the world that needs to learn,” I mumble to myself, half a whisper, half an unintelligible croak.
I’m not sure if my mom hears the words, but her fingers grow still, and then, in a softer voice, she says, “I have to take the bike.”
My eyes flap open. “What?”
“Your father and I discussed it at length. I’m sorry, there must be a consequence. I have to take the bike. It was a joint decision—”
“Consequence??”
“—that your father and I came to in response to your actions yesterday at school. I’ll take you to school in the mornings, and—”
“I’m eighteen years old. What am I, a baby?”
“Who bought it? Unless you plan to pay for it, we have all the say over what you have or don’t have under this roof.” Her fingers slip off of my arm. She reopens her laptop. “It’s just one month.”
That has me out of my chair. “A whole month??”
“Don’t make this hard,” she advises me. “You’re bright. You’re smart. You know right from wrong. I only asked one thing of you this year, and that was to cause no trouble. That’s all I asked.”
I can break teeth with as tightly as my jaw is clenched. “Don’t bother taking me. I’ll walk the forty minutes there myself.” After only half a second of her silence, I turn and head back toward the stairs before her voice stops me: “Keys.” Without missing a beat, I pull the keys to the motorcycle out of my pocket, return to the table, slap them down, then go back for the stairs.
Up in my room, I shut the door and drop onto my bed and stare at the ceiling. The anger lives in my ears and my thrashing heart. I guess nothing quite beats the feeling of being a grown-ass eighteen-year-old child who just had his motorcycle taken away. I wonder if my parents’ next step is to put me in time-out when they have another chat with Principal Jack Whitman about whatever unruly act of heroism I pull at Spruce High next.
I can already tell my days here in this town are numbered.
I sit up at my desk and, avidly ignoring my English vocabulary homework staring me in the face, pull out my notebook and get to work on finishing up my drawing. I shade the remaining feathers on his left wing, gnawing my lip as I work. His smirk is looking more like a grimace, so I correct the line and give his lip a sharper curve. I mirror his smirk with a satisfied one of my own.
