Controlled by Patrick Jones

Author:Patrick Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group

13

The reaction at home is predictable. After a wave of relief, the roll call of punishments.

“Misty, you can’t do this to us, to yourself. Do you understand?” Dad asks. She nods. She’s not saying anything to him, just like she stone-walled me in the car. She keeps quiet as Mom hands out the penalties: groundings, taking her phone, etc. Misty waits it out, then stomps upstairs without a word.

A few minutes later, I’m in my room, texting Kevin. As usual he’s being sweet yet goofy, a little awkward but funny. He’s a pinpoint of calm and sanity in the middle of Hurricane Misty.

Speak of the devil: Misty knocks on my door. I open it, invite her in. She sits on the floor. I stand. “I guess I messed up,” she says.

“Disappearing like that? Yeah.”

“I mean coming back here. I should’ve just told him to keep driving.” I don’t ask about the “him.”

“You don’t have to make this so hard for yourself. Just follow the rules.”

Misty snorts, looks up at me, pushes her hair out of her eyes. “Easy for you to say, Rach.”

“Look, okay, maybe I don’t have as much fun as you, but I don’t cause grief for everyone else.”

“Do you think that’s what I do? Cause people grief? You don’t know anything about me.”

I wish I had nails left to bite. I wish I hadn’t opened the door to my room or this conversation.

“I’m not like you or your perfect friends.” My perfect friends? Yeah. Sure. “I’m damaged goods. I know it.”

“Don’t talk that way about yourself.”

Another snort. “That’s how you talk about me, isn’t it? Isn’t it what everybody thinks?”

“That’s not what everybody thinks,” I lie.

“What do you think?”

I stay silent.

“I got nowhere to go. I can wait all day. But I bet you have stuff to do, Rach.” As she moves away, she snatches my phone from my desk, and then stands in front of my door.

“Give me back my phone.”

“Give me an answer.” She leans against the door, a human barricade. “Just tell me the truth.”

“Misty, look, we’re different. Can we leave it at that?”

Misty walks past me, hands me my phone, and stands in front of my window facing the street. She opens the window and pushes out the screen. “What are you doing?” I say to her back.

She pulls out a cigarette from her purse. “I’m going out to hang with my Rondo friends.”

“But aren’t you grounded?” I ask as she starts crawling out the window.

“What are they going to do? You worry too much about all this stuff that doesn’t matter.”

Once she’s outside, I ask even though I know better. “So what does matter, Misty?”

She doesn’t say sex or booze or freedom but something much scarier. “Nothing.”

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