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“Are you looking for this?” Mom asked gently, rooting out my phone from beneath an issue of Better Homes & Gardens. Huh. Since when did my parents give a shit about landscaping?
“Thanks,” I said, taking my cell from her. “Link’s gonna be here in a few.”
“Where are you guys going?”
Mom and I glanced up as my sister Taylor walked into the kitchen. Two years younger than me, she was almost sixteen, and her attitude these days fluctuated between hostile and bitchy and, well, not much else.
“Out,” I replied in answer to Taylor’s question.
“Can I come?”
“No.”
“You suck.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Mom crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “You’re not going anywhere, Taylor. Or did you forget you’re grounded?”
My sister scowled. “Seriously? I wasn’t that late.”
Mom moved toward Taylor, and I took a step toward the back door, glad that Taylor had drawn Mom’s attention.
“Your curfew is eleven and you tried to sneak into the house an hour and a half late.”
“But it’s summer! None of my other friends have to be home until, like, one or whatever.”
“Yes, well, I don’t care about your other friends. I care about you. And in this house we have rules.”
Taylor’s scowl deepened as she glared at me. “Like he ever came home before midnight.”
She was right about that. I don’t think I’d ever been given a curfew. A lot of things had changed after my accident, and maybe it wasn’t fair, but Taylor was getting a lot of flack, and I didn’t blame her for being upset by it.
“We’re not talking about Trevor right now,” Mom continued. “We’re talking about you, and while we’re at it, I’d like to know who brought you home an hour and a half late.”
I watched the exchange with interest, mostly because it was refreshing not to be the one under Mom’s microscope. I got why she was so in my face, I really did, but man, she was suffocating sometimes.
“A friend,” Taylor said, her eyes sliding away.
“I’d like to hear the answer to that.”
Those words came from my dad, and his nose was no longer buried inside his magazine. He pushed up out of the old rust-colored La-Z-Boy, his eyes on Taylor.
“Just a guy from school.”
“A name would be good,” Dad said, and I could tell he wasn’t impressed with his daughter.
“Caleb Martin.”
Huh. He was bad news.
Taylor’s eyes widened slightly, and I knew she was begging me to keep quiet. For a moment I had one of those weird blips, almost like my brain slows down and then speeds up again. It’s a freaky sensation, and I hated it.
“Trevor, are you all right?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to answer, and shoved my cell into my front pocket at the same time a knock sounded, and then one of my oldest buddies and the drummer in my band, Link, walked through the door.
“Hey, Mrs. Lewis.” He smiled at my mother and nodded to my dad before his eyes slid over to Taylor.
