“Anyone,” I said. “Literally anyone who can come let us out. Dad, no battering ram. We’ve been in here for, like, five minutes. We don’t need to knock a wall down like Talon Maverick on horse amphetamines.”
“Talon Maverick had to take horse amphetamines once,” my dad said. “He ripped a guy’s leg off.”
This is what I’m talking about. I never had a chance.
“Do something like you’ve done in another investigation,” my mom said. “We’d love to see that. Something we could talk about on tour, you know?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, Dashiell. Whatever you want. Oh, something impressive!”
“I could email Mrs. Shufflebottom,” Stewart offered.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I counted to five. Then I said, “How about this? Email the sheriff’s office.”
“Great idea, son,” my dad said.
My mom said, “And now we wait.”
“Did you talk to him about the book?” my dad asked.
“I tried. He’s being defiant.”
“I’m not being defiant,” I said. And then, since I had no idea if an email to the sheriff’s department would do the trick, I decided to take matters into my own hands—literally, in this case. I glared at them each in turn as I unlaced one of my shoes and worked it off. “The answer is no. N. O. I’m not telling you about the project. I’m not letting you see the manuscript. And I don’t care what you say—I don’t want your money.”
No one spoke as I made my way, one-shoed, toward the vent that my dad had found earlier. He’d removed the register, and Isat next to the opening. Using my shoe as an improvised mallet, I hit the duct. The metal boomed. I did it again.
After what couldn’t have been more than a minute, my mom said, “So, what are you going to do?”
I pretended not to hear her. It was pretty convincing, since I was doing some serious pounding with my shoe.
“I know you can hear me,” my mom said. “Pretending everything’s okay isn’t going to make your problems go away. You’re out of money. You don’t have a job. Your father and I can’t support you forever—”
“Patricia,” my dad said.
“No, Dad,” I said, “let her talk. You aren’t going to support me forever. Fine. We already talked about that. On the phone. When you were in New Hampshire. And then you drove three thousand miles anyway. I already told you I don’t want your money. I’ll figure it out.”
“How?” my mom asked.
I should have ignored her. I should have been the adult and put an end to the conversation.
Instead, I said, “I don’t know. That’s where ‘I’ll figure it out’ comes in.”
“Are you going to get a job? Where would you work?”
“There’s a bookstore. Maybe I’ll work there.” Although I probably wouldn’t, since it was owned by Pippi’s husband, Stephen, and the thought alone was enough to make me break out in hives. “Maybe I’ll work at Chipper.” That seemed like an even worse idea—I had a vision of Millie as my boss and being told, at Millie volume, to SMILE. “I could work on a fishing boat. I could fish.”
My dad laughed. When I turned a death ray on him, he did a poor job of trying to pretend it was a cough.
“You’re being stubborn,” my mom said. “And self-centered.”
I froze, shoe raised in one hand mid-bang. This high-pitched white scream of a noise started in my head. I didn’t recognize my own voice when I said, “I’mbeing self-centered?”
“Patricia,” my dad said, rocking forward in his chair.
“Frankly, yes,” my mom said. “Your father and I—and Phil—have done nothing but try to help you, and instead of accepting that help, you insist on this self-pitying, adolescent navel-gazing.”
I brought my shoe down hard. The entire duct flexed and boomed.
