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“Bring me your phone.”
“No,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Nothing happened. You’re being paranoid.”
My mother came downstairs, tying a silk kimono robe around her waist. Her hair was still stiff from an updo and her face scrunched up from sleep. “What’s going on here?”
“He was here,” Dad said.
“Who? Oh God, not that boy?” My mother looked at me imploringly.
Yes, I thought. That boy. Who is everything to me.
“Yes, he was here,” I said, my voice harsh despite the pulse pounding in my throat. “Justin Baker. I had Justin Baker over. Does that change things? Everything fine now? Great, I’m going to bed.”
I started to stand, but my dad loomed over me. “Sit. Back. Down.”
I sat.
“Was it, honey?” Mom asked. “Justin? Because he seems so nice…”
Something in me broke then. A dam bursting; all the hiding and lying flooding out and exhaustion pouring in. I was tired of hiding Isaac, tired of feeling ashamed of him, tired of listening to my parents’ prejudice against him. The hope in my mother’s eyes it was Justin. The look on my father’s face as he pondered the possibility he had the wrong suspect…
“You hypocrites,” I spat. “You don’t care that I might’ve fucked a boy under your roof. You only care if I fucked the right boy.”
“Willow.” Dad’s voice was a sparking fuse, ready to blow.
“Isaac is not that boy. He’s the boy. The only boy. He’s good to me in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine—”
“I don’t want to imagine anything,” Dad shouted. “He’s nineteen. You’re seventeen. He’s an adult. You’re a child. I could have him arrested for statutory rape.”
My face drained of blood and my body felt boneless and heavy.
That unspoken, secret word I could never pin on Xavier. Now it was in my father’s mouth, pinned on Isaac. I thought I’d be sick.
“No,” I said faintly. “He didn’t. He never…”
“He came over while we were out of town, skipped out of your room at four in the morning, but nothing happened?”
“Oh God, Willow.” With a groan, Mom sank down on the chair beside the couch.
My eyes darted between the two of them. “What is wrong with you two? Why are you so angry?”
“Do you know why we had to cut our trip short?” Dad asked. “Because that boy’s father put our company in the news. It alerted our stockholders to degenerate franchise owners running Wexx stations. My job—the entire reason we were sent here—is to clean up messes like the one Charles Pearce made of his business. He took our name and logo, smeared shit all over it, and then lit it on fire. And now his son, a high school dropout, is fucking my daughter under my roof?”
“Daniel,” my mother said, her face pale. “Hold on a second…”
Dad whirled on her. “No, I will not hold on. You’re perfectly fine with this? What were you doing every day while she was at rehearsal? You let this happen.”
“No, Dad, you have to believe me,” I cried. “He’s good to me. He’s—”
“Stop talking!”
I quailed against the couch. I’d never seen him like this, enraged, veins throbbing in his neck.
“You’ve been seeing him. All of this time. Making a fool out of me. Lying to my face every time we spoke.”
A splash of blue and red lights lit up the front windows. My mother’s eyes widened, and then she put her head in her hands. “Jesus, the police. What will the neighbors think?”
I went cold all over. The police. Isaac would be arrested. There’d be no opening night of Hamlet. No casting agents to give him a chance at a better life.
