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I get home late.
Mom’s car is in the driveway, and my stomach rocks at the realization I’m never home second. Not even when I was working. Knowingly, without my even having to ask, Lex drops me off a couple houses down and I walk the rest of the way up into the view of the front windows—just in case.
Opening the front door, I enter, heading toward the kitchen to drop off my three strawberry muffins and my three coffee muffins.
Mom comes barreling out of her room before I have the chance to make it so far. A breath leaves her, and she lifts a hand to her chest. “There you are. I was getting worried.”
“Sorry.” I raise the plastic bag. “I got muffins.”
“Muffins?” Her brows knit. Blinking twice, she folds her arms. “Like, you walked to the store and back to get muffins,got muffins? Because it’s almost nine, and walking for two hours on the side of the road to get muffins doesn’t sound like something you’d do.”
For these muffins, I may have.
“I didn’t mean to worry you. You could have called.” Ignoring an answer to her question, I deflect the conversation back at her and continue into the kitchen.
“I did,” she states, coming up behind me and surveying the little individually-wrapped packages as I pull them out of the plastic bag and arrange them on the counter in an alternating pattern. I should have opted to bring nine home. Then I could have made a little checkered square.
“Sorry. It’s only a little past when I would have gotten off work, so I hope you weren’t worrying long. Did you eat dinneryet?”
Her eyes narrow on me. “Yes. I did. Didyou?”
The shift in her tone steals every last bit of the calm I savored from being with Lex away, and my expression falls along with my heart. Nodding, I offer, “I got something, yes.”
“‘Would have gotten’,” she states, drawing the conversation back a step. “That’s the past conditional tense, isn’t it?”
“Uh.” My face heats. “Yes, I think so.”
“You didn’t work today?”
Technically, I did, didn’t I? I went to class, and whatever this muffin thing is that I denoted as extra hours, per our contract, means Iworked, right? But I didn’t in the way she’s thinking.
To my silence, she pulls up a hand and counts on her fingers. “If you weren’t even at work, what have you been doing for five hours?”
Something tells megetting muffinsisn’t the right answer. Something also tells me the truth won’t go over well either. How can I tell her that I was with Lex, a boy she barely met, at his house—largely alone—for five hours?
“Caly,” she prompts.
My chest tightens. “Mom, I’m an adult. I can do things.”
Incredulity paints across her face, and I wince, knowing that answer wasn’t right either. Her voice rises, just slightly enough that she isn’t yelling but my whole body feels like she is. “When have I ever said you couldn’t? You’re acting strange, and you have been for what feels like months now. You think I don’t notice these things? I may not be here all the time, Caly, but I can see the moments when you think I’ve left a room and your little guise drops. I’m your mother. Those cheap acts of yours don’t work on me.”
Cheap acts.
Tears prick in my eyes, and I remind myself I don’t even care about acting to begin with
A tremor enters her tone, and the pain lacing through it is almost worse than anger. “Now, I know you’re an adult. I know that. I also know that you help out with the bills around here and pull your weight and never utter a single complaint. I’m not upset with you. I’m justworried. What is it that you don’t think you can tell me? Are you in some sort of trouble? Whatever it is, just let me get upset and then get over it. I’d rather that happen now than have you figuring whatever it is out alone.”
I don’t know how to tell her that I don’t want her to be a part of this. I don’t know how to tell her that the way she handles things directly contrasts with how I want to handle them. I don’t know how to explain to her that we are so different that sometimes telling her things only makes me feel even more alone. Not without hurting her. Or worse. Not without being unable to get through to her at all.
A tear skims down my cheek, and she comes too close as she takes my face in her hands and wipes it away.
I don’t want to lie to her.
I don’t even know how I would.
So I whisper the truth, “A lot is going on right now, and I don’t know how to say any of it. I don’t know if I can.” Not to you. “I’m fine, though. It’s not parties or drugs or alcohol orboys.” Justone. “It’s just school and school related stuff.” I steal the excuse Lex gave Mrs. Yvon and pray it works just as well for me as it did for him. “I was with a classmate. We’re partners for a project, but we got distracted and made muffins.”
