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“I’m not going to ask if you know what time it is.”
He wasn’t whispering but he was talking quietly enough not to wake up the others. He noticed I was staring at the light slipping under Clem’s door.
“Don’t even think about it. She’s off limits.”
“I know,” I murmured. He sighed.
“You’re grounded. Two weeks. No. Scratch that. I’ll let your mother decide in the morning.”
“Oh, come on,” I protested. “She’ll lock me up until graduation.”
“You should have thought about that before you decided not to answer my calls. Go to sleep.”
???
My mother decided I would be grounded for two months. A month for each rule I broke. I was allowed to go to school and play football. That was it.
It was my third Friday night at home. I was enjoying immensely the fact that I was grounded, and I could spend my time around Clementine without having to admit it was by choice.
We won the finals. I felt good about it, but it wasn’t what I was expecting. Spending a few hours with Tyler on Clementine’s birthday made me think about what I wanted to do now that high school was almost over. I always thought of him as some sort of a hero, but he was just a regular guy with lots for emotional problems and possibly a drinking problem. I didn’t want to end up like him. Was I going in that direction? The answer to that questions escaped me.
I couldn’t find an answer to another important question. Why wasn’t Clementine speaking to me?
She got her favorite cake. I didn’t smash Dylan’s head, even though he showed up in my house when I specifically told her not to invite him. It felt like she was thousands of miles away, even though she was sitting in front of me every night at the dinner table. It was both a nice familiar routine between us, and, at the same time, I was about to explode with anticipation every time she turned her head in my direction.
“Where are you going tomorrow?” my mother asked Clem while I was cleaning up after dinner. They were making a cake.
So, my people hating nemesis was doing something worth talking about this weekend, and I was planning on counting the cracks on every ceiling in the house. Oh, and apparently, I was doing a community service, helping mom in the backyard.
“Just hanging out,” Clem answered.
My mother pointed me a tower of dishes on the counter and got back to their conversation.
“I know I’m not your mother, but you’re living under our roof, and I’m responsible for you, so I have to at least know where he’s taking you.”
Fucking Dylan.
But I could handle it, right? They would bring Hannah with them. There was no way Clementine was going on a real date with that douche. Not after what happened between us on her birthday.
“We are going to a museum.”
I suppressed a smile. She was the only senior in South California I knew who would agree to spend her Saturday in a fucking museum.
I loved that about her.
“Is Hannah coming with you?”
Yes.
“No.”
My eye twitched. It wasn’t exactly ideal situation. But I’ve been through that before. Her going out on first dates. Me preventing her going out on a second one. The only difference was it was Williams. No biggie. It would be a challenge staying home doing nothing, knowing she was strolling around with him, but it wasn’t impossible, right?
“Which museum?” mom asked.
Clem hesitated, then answered, “The International Banana Museum.”
What was that again? I fished for my phone and typed the words that sounded like something made up for a weird porn script.
