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Surprise, I guess.
“Nah.” I plastered on a fake this-is-no-big-deal-for-a-dick-like-me and stood up. At least the adrenaline was making my muscles ache less. “It’s fine. I got this.”
“Why don’t I just come with you, and I can—”
“No.” I cut him off hard and firm, because some things you just had to do yourself and dealing with the unknown when it came to this kind of shit was definitely one of those things. Some things you couldn’t unsee once you saw them and he’d already seen more than enough.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I spent enough time in the officeto know the names of all the receptionists and the schedules of all the student office aides and how to slip in and get condoms from the nurse’s closet in a pinch without anyone kicking me out. I guess you could say I was a regular.
Still, I was for sure off my game, not expecting this. Soft. I’d been dumb enough to just sort of let myself imagine things were just going to run smooth until graduation when I got out of here, or at least until the end of the week when I could rebuild and regroup, and basically I’d set myself up for whatever was coming. Might as well have just sent out anI’m vulnerablebat signal. She always fucking knew the exact right moment to shred my life.
Everyone stopped working and stared at me when I walked in, nudging me toward Principal York’s door with their eyes and theirgo aheadwaves of their hands like they’d all been waiting for me, and I didn’t guess that was good. But I just kept on with my no-big-deal attitude, because this close to the finish line what was I supposed to do, act like I didn’t know her?
I stopped for a minute outside the door, staring at the frosted glass and not wanting any part of what was on the other side. It was going to be ugly in so many ways, I could already feel it seeping out from underneath the door. Normally you were supposed to knock, but I figured I’d earned a free pass, so I took a breath like I was jumping underwater and went in.
I didn’t expect to see Coach T, but he was standing there behind the desk with his arms crossed, looking like a bouncer, acting like back up, like York sitting at his desk with his fancy little nameplate needed a big bodyguard with a whistle around his neck.
My mom sat there in one of the chairs across from the desk, and hair spray and perfume clogged up the air as soon as I walked in, and that smell hit so hard I was dizzy a minute, deja vu like it had been years instead of days, and I hadn’t felt like that in alongtime. She wasn’t wearing fairy wings, so at least there was that, I guess. She wasn’t wearing her sober mom outfit either— the one weird, flowered dress she wore to scam people when she was doing her I’m-just-a-poor-respectable-single-parent-with-an-ungrateful-kid bullshit. Honestly, she looked like she was still dressed for girl’s weekend— maybe still dressedfromgirl’s weekend. The black dress with all the weird zippers and torn up tights and the boots with the pointy toes and super high heels that were like six weapons in one that made me wince.
Fuck did I wish I’d had the balls to let Caleb come with me, even if I didn’t want him anywhere near this. I felt outnumbered before anyone even said a word.
When she turned around in her chair to look at me when I walked in, there was some sick satisfaction in seeing yeah, she was looking like maybe she hadn’t changed, maybe she hadn’tsleptsince last week. She had crazy pupils and dry lips and old makeup and bags under her eyes, and this was a horror show.
“I knew he was here,” she said, like school was some kind of code she’d cracked somehow. Her voice was high and loud and pissed off, and I wondered how far it was carrying. Into the outer office for sure. The hallway? The library? “Where the hell have you been? You need to come home. Now.”
I glanced up at Coach T, who looked clueless, and York didn’t look much better. Not that I expected anything much, no one got trained for this kind of thing, but god I hated useless adults.
“It’s the middle of the day,” I pointed out.
“I know what time it is, smart ass.” She turned back to York and Coach T. “You hear how he talks to me? What am I supposed to do with that?”
York cleared his throat and gestured at the chair next to her where I definitely wasn’t going to be sitting. I ignored him and he ignored me ignoring him, and I just stayed standing, watching him rub at his forehead. Wasn’t fair I could have been enjoying him come apart if it was for literally any other reason, humming and making stressed out, distracted noises that would have been funny if this was a bullshit ring up. “Well, um, Logan, your mother came here looking for you. She said you haven’t been home in several days. Is that… Hmm. Is everything…”
“I’m staying with a friend,” I said, making it as flat and dead end as possible.
“Afriend.” She laughed, pulling her boots up in the chair, twisting around all twitchy and spiking. “I know what kind of friend. Mike told me what kind offriend. You need to get your ass home before I call the cops.”
“Call the cops on what?”
“You see how he talks to me?” she asked them again, turning back and forth in the chair. Every time I got a whiff of perfume and hairspray and fruit juice, like there was no actual fresh air left in the room. “What are you going to do about this? He can’t just leave home. Can you call the truant officer?”
York and Coach T looked at each other, both of them seeming to think the other one was more qualified to say something, and for fuck’s sake, two grown ass men knocked so clueless by one sideways parent shouldn’t be in charge of anything anywhere let alone a high school.
“Ma’am…” York finally said, and she wasn’t going to like that. “He’satschool. He hasn’t been absent. Unless you think he’s in some kind of danger…”
“I’m not,” I told them, even though nobody really cared what I had to say. “Can you just go home? Please?”
“I’m not going home,you’regoing home,” she said, like that didn’t sound like a ridiculous playground taunt. “You don’t walk out. That’s not up to you. You don’t get to walk out ofmyhouse. You don’t get tostay with a friend. You don’t leave unless Itellyou to leave.”
“You were threatening to throw me out anyway. I just saved you the trouble.”
“You know that isn’t true,” she told me, so slick and condescending maybe she actually believed it. Who could even tell anymore. She definitely wasn’t going to let me get away with saying it in front of people, though. “You see how he lies?” she asked, turning to York and Coach T, changing her voice, pulling out the manipulative charm, stacking the deck her way the way she always did no matter how drugged up she was. She didn’t even need the sober mom dress. “You see what I put up with? Always doing whatever he wants, doesn’t respect me at all. The most irresponsible kid I’ve ever seen. You don’t have any idea what hard work looks like,” she said, turning back to glare at me. “All you do is come home every day and sit on your ass, and now you’re going to make me come down here on my day off and deal with this shit in front of your teachers. Jesus Christ, Logan.”
I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like I wasn’t used to this bullshit, but I wasn’t used to her tracking me down and saying it in front of people. Not that it never happened, but she hadn’t bothered in a long fucking time, and I didn’t know why she was bothering now. Except I guess I did. I guess she made it totally fucking clear. She wanted to be the one to kick me out, I wasn’t supposed to leave. Generational abandonment issues. Or just fucking straight up crazy shit, who could tell.
Whatever it was, it kicked me right back into the gross useless state that didn’t feel anything like the powerless thing I could enjoy when I was with Caleb. That was safe and this was dark, scary shit, and I hated it. My ears were hot, and my stomach was twisted up in knots, and I was terrified that somehow I was going to end up going home with her. Because what were they going to do? Step between us? Escort her off campus? They didn’t do that to moms, no matter how fucked up they were. Ask me how I know.
