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It was her.
I wanted her. It had only been a couple of weeks but just like that first night in the club, she was calling to me.
It was a good thing I’d prepared for this moment.
It was time to visit Mrs. Emily Davies.
“Parker!” I yelled from the kitchen. “Get your booty up! You’re going to be late!” I had no idea what the hell was going on with my kid, but the last three days had been like pulling teeth getting her to go to school.
“I don’t feel good, Mom,” she called back in a croaky voice that told me she hadn’t moved her behind like I’d asked the first three times.
I set her some toast with strawberry jam on a plate on the counter and walked toward her room to sure enough find her still snug as a bug in bed.
“Are you sick?” I asked, already knowing the answer. The past two days she’d pulled this same bull.
“No,” she answered. “I’m just tired.”
“Honey, you can’t miss school.” I ran my hands through her hair. “I need for you to sit up for a second, okay?”
She let out a deep sigh before pushing herself up in the bed and giving me a sleepy glare.
The past two days I’d managed to get her up and out the door, but I could tell something was bothering her. I was just waiting on her to tell me. She always told me eventually, only this time it felt like she was trying to wait me out or something.
I had a feeling that having a teen was coming at me harder than I thought. I’d in no way prepared for this. Parker had always been the model child.
And I was ashamed to say that more often than not, she’d been stronger, tougher than me.
She’d walked with me through some of the hardest times in my life and never faltered. Meanwhile, I’d stumbled and fallen more times than I could count. And now that it seemed she was falling apart, I didn’t know how to hold her up. I was at a loss.
She never kept secrets from me, although I wasn’t dumb enough to not realize that eventually, she would. We all keep things from our parents in our teenage years. Was I hoping Parker would be different? Sure. But was I realistic enough to know better? Absolutely.
“Listen, baby. I don’t know what’s going on. But we need to talk about it. I know you’re at a new school and things are hard, but you have to tell me what’s going on so I can help you figure it out.”
She rolled her eyes and lay back down on the bed. “God, Mom. Nothing’s going on. You’re so dramatic.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly instead of getting angry that she called me dramatic. “Well,” I said softly. “When life gives you a lot of drama, it tends to make you a dramatic person.”
And wasn’t that the truth?
Regret passed over her face in an instant. “I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have said that. You didn’t deserve it.”
I nodded and rubbed my hand along her arm. “It’s okay. I’m not mad. I just want to know what’s going on with you. You usually love school and the first few weeks here you were so happy.”
She shrugged. “I still like school.”
I held my hands out. “Then what’s the problem? Why have I been having to drag you out of bed for three days?”
“I don’t know,” she sighed.
“Is it a boy?” I asked softly.
“Oh my God, Mom. Why do you do that?” she said, turning in the bed and facing away from me.
“Why do I do what?” I tried to peek around her body to see her face, but she only buried it in the pillow.
“Make everything about boys. It’s so stupid. No! It’s not about a boy,” she groaned into the pillow and I let out another deep breath.
Between my dramatic life and her hormones, I didn’t know if we were going to make it out of this alive. Either of us.
