“You certainly have been busy,” Mom said. “I’ll give you that.”
“It’s easier than you think to wreck a family,” I said.
“You didn’t wreck anything.”
My eyes stung and my throat closed, tight and burning. I took a few minutes to stare at the floor until I was sure I could speak without squeaking or choking.
“I am so sorry for everything. I spent the whole day at school writing apologies to everyone, and”—I dropped my bulging backpack on the floor with a thunk—“I’ve got all the work I need to make up from this past week right here.”
“I’m impressed by your initiative,” Mom said, “but that’s not going to get you out of the punishment your father and I have been talking about.”
“You’re going to have to earn the money for your driver’s ed class next year,” Dad said. “We paid for Daniel’s and Sarah’s, but the situation you caused with the car this week …” He trailed off.
“I understand.”
“No allowance for a month, you’re grounded for two weeks and we have a list of jobs around the house and yard with your name on it.”
“Okay.”
“What were you thinking?” Mom asked, holding her temples.
“I had this idea—well, it doesn’t matter what I thought, it was a boneheaded plan and everything turned out horrible. I was trying to help Buzz, really; you’ll see, I made everything better. But I went about it all wrong. I know that asking Dad about the concert was shady, but I never thought it would make you two so mad at each other. And I couldn’t think of any other way to get Daniel and Sarah to see things from my point of view. They never listen to me and all we do is fight and it’s two against one and the whole thing with the car has been a mess.”
“Things between you three won’t always be this intense,” Mom said. “I have faith that you’ll stop fighting as you get older.”
“You’ll appreciate each other more,” Dad said. “The age difference will matter less and less.”
Sarah and Daniel and I exchanged dubious glances.
“It’s almost,” Dad continued thoughtfully, “like you’re triplets. Think of it: you’ll be in college together, get married at around the same time, and maybe your kids will be close in age.”
Mom snorted, but she was smiling at Dad as she spoke. “I’m pretty sure you only think like that because when you’re on the road you watch those reality television shows about people who have weirdly large families.”
Dad grinned back. “Maybe so.”
Daniel scratched his head. “Wow. Kev. You …” He trailed off.
“Yeah.”
He flopped onto the couch, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. I knew just how he felt—exhausted to the bone. I glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner and was shocked to discover it was only four-thirty. I’d really packed a lot of revelation into one short day.
Mom and Sarah must have realized how weird we looked standing around in the living room, because they sat down on the love seat together. Dad dropped onto the couch next to my brother and threw his arm around Daniel before tipping his head back too. I shifted from one foot to the other, watching them.
“Kevin.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Come sit next to me.”
I had never been more grateful to sit next to my father.
He put his other arm around me.
I caught Daniel’s eye on the other side of our father; he studied me for a long minute. His eyes were kind, though, and finally he smiled, looking remarkably like Markie.
Even Sarah winked at me from across the room. Of course, she flipped me the bird, too, but for Sarah, that was pretty warm and fuzzy. She leaned her head against Mom’s shoulder and glanced at the book lying next to Mom on the love seat. “Oh! You’re reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I love that book. Read it out loud. Like you did when we were little.”
Mom smiled and opened the book. “ ‘When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem …’ ”
Daniel and I sat with our father’s arms around us for a very long time, listening to Mom read to us.
14. A GOOD LIE IS AN OXYMORON
First rule of lies: Keep it simple.
Even though I know better, I forgot that bit for a while.
I also forgot what I learned in science class: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
For most of the weekend I sat at the kitchen table and did my homework. Every assignment was completed, every page was read, every paper was written and ready to be turned in.
I also did a cubic ton of extra-credit assignments that I came up with on my own to try to get back on all of my teachers’ good sides—plan B. The paper I wrote for Crosby was about dishonesty in politics in the twenty-first century. I thought he’d appreciate the irony. I sure did.
I got to school super-early Monday morning and I ran all over, handing the stacks of work to Señora Lucia, Mrs. Steck, Mr. Crosby and Mr. Meyers. They didn’t smile or nod or look approvingly at me in that heartwarming way teachers always do in made-for-TV movies when the troubled student has turned over a new leaf.
Clearly, they’d talked with each other about me, or else there’s a playbook in the faculty lounge on how to handle students who ditch classes and lie, because each of them said the exact same thing.
“Unless you get straight As for the rest of the year, you’re looking at summer school. And I’m giving you detention for three days.”
That seemed fair.
Katie narrowed her eyes when she saw me in the hall, and radiated loathing.
Reasonable.
But maybe, I thought, she won’t wind up swindled by a con man someday because of having known me. There’s got to be a silver lining somewhere.
I was worried that I’d probably lost the best friend a guy ever had. But I knew I had to find JonPaul and give him the chance to tell me to drop dead and then never talk to him again. He deserved that much. I caught him at his locker.
“Are you going to keep sending me notes like we’re fifth-grade girls?” He punched my arm and I knew we were good. Whew.
Then he reached into his backpack and handed me the Buket o’ Puke ’n Snot T-shirt that he’d bought me at the concert.
Best. Friend. Ever.
Jay D. and Jay M., Scott, Greggie, Todd, Kurt and Sean, however, were a whole ’nother story. The guys went all Amish at lunch and shunned me. I walked up to the table where we always sit together and they looked right through me. They got over it, though, when they saw that JonPaul wasn’t mad at me anymore. And the fact that I bought them all monster cookies from the cafeteria didn’t hurt my cause.
Connie was a little cheesed off that I’d lied to her about being into government, but then I handed her a file folder.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“An abstract of our argument for the debate tonight.”
“A what?”
“A brief summary and succinct explanation, the theoretical ideal, if you will, behind our position.” Katie would be so proud of me if she knew I’d paid attention to her.
“Really?”
“I read up on debating over the weekend. And I made an outline for us to follow and another of points to rebut our opponent’s likely arguments. I put myself in his shoes and then worked backward to strengthen our position.”
I walked away while her mouth was still hanging open. But she was nodding. Leaving on a great exit line is awesome.
The director of the school musical had set up a meeting to discuss the responsibilities of the house manager.