“No,” I admit. “I wasn’t with Tru Sunday night.”

She jerks the car two lanes to the left. Clearly Mom is getting used to the Austin traffic scene.

“Then why in God’s name did you say you were?” She shakes her head. “I swear, Sloane. Sometimes I don’t think you use your brain at all.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes I don’t think you know me at all,” I throw back. “You don’t trust me anymore, and I get it. I deserve it. I screwed up, and I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry that I ruined everything with one stupid mistake. I’m sorry I broke up our family, but—”

“Honey, no,” Mom interrupts. “You didn’t break up our family. You have to know that.”

I wave off her words. “But you have to forgive me. I’m still the same daughter I was before The Incident. Someday you’re going to have to trust me again. You might as well start now, because Tru didn’t do it.”

“You can’t know that.” She shakes her head. “You said yourself he is one of only a couple of students who know about your stunt. Do any of the others who know have a delinquent past?”

She can’t even see how prejudiced she’s being. All she can see is the serial screw-up that his mom is always telling her Tru is. She’s never even given him a chance. Never actually tried to get to know him or see what he’s really like. Just sentenced him based on gossip evidence from his mom. It must be nice to live in such a black and white world.

Sure, Tru has screwed up. On multiple occasions. But that doesn’t make him irredeemable.

“Have you never made a mistake?” I ask, turning the tables on her. “What am I thinking, of course you haven’t. Sorry, not all of us can be as perfect as you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. No one is perfect,” Mom returns. “I’ve made plenty of mistakes.”

I almost die of shock that the Queen of Perfection is actually admitting to the occasional error in judgment. “Does that mean we should spend the rest of our lives paying for them? How is that fair?”

“It’s not fair. That’s what I’ve been trying to make you understand since you got arrested!” she throws back. “Choices have consequences. I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life regretting them.”

Okay. Clearly the can’t-we-all-relate strategy isn’t getting us anywhere.

Not that I think there is anywhere to get, but she’s my mom, and I don’t want things between us to always be like this. I have to keep trying. For her, for the relationship we used to have, and—right now—especially for Tru.

“Look, I know the Dorseys have told you some bad things about him,” I explain, keeping my voice even. “And maybe they’re all true. But he’s never in trouble at school. The teachers and administrators adore him. He has a hard time with his parents. That’s it. Tru isn’t a bad guy, he’s just…a difficult son.”

Mom dives back across traffic as we get closer to our exit.

“You like the boy, I understand,” she says in a patronizing tone that makes me want to jump out of the car. “You can’t see—”

“He did it for me, okay?” I blurt.

I can’t take it anymore, the tiptoeing, the strategizing, the trying to find the right angle. There is no angle. There’s just the truth.

And the truth is Tru and I care about each other. We shouldn’t be punished for that.

As she steers off the freeway, she asks, “What do you mean?”

“He confessed to protect me,” I explain. “He knew I would be blamed even if I didn’t do it, knew it would get me kicked out or worse. So he confessed. He sacrificed himself for me.”

For once, Mom doesn’t have a response.

“He didn’t care if I had done it. He still confessed to protect me,” I repeat. “So I have to protect him right back.”

She’s quiet for a long time. I don’t know what else to say, how else I can make her understand. I’ve tried everything. I just give up.

Leaning my head against the window, I stare out as the fences and roofs of suburbia drift by.

When we first made this drive, all I knew of Austin was the bland, boring monotony of the suburbs. But now I know there is a lot more to the city. If I have to be stuck somewhere, at least it’s somewhere with culture. I can think of a million worse places to be.

Mom stays silent as she navigates our neighborhood, past all the houses that look just alike, down one street and then another until she’s pulling into our driveway. There are no cars in the Dorseys’ driveway, but they park in the garage. They could be having a knock-down, drag-out inside. Or there could be no one home.

“He really did that?” Mom finally asks, her voice soft. “He confessed to keep you out of trouble?”

I look away from the house next door. She is staring straight ahead, her eyes unfocused. Maybe things are finally sinking in.

“Even though he was mad at me,” I explain. “Even though I told him we couldn’t be friends because you would disapprove, and I’d lose any chance of getting back to New York. He had every reason to let me hang, but he sacrificed himself anyway.”

Mom chews on her bottom lip, lost in thought. Probably trying to figure out whether I have blown my chance of getting back to New York.

For the first time since she and Dad sprang this whole move-to-Texas plan on me, that’s not my biggest concern. Whether she lets me go home when the quarter ends in a few weeks, or I’m stuck here through the end of the year, I plan to make the most of it. And that means seeing where things lead with Tru.

Can’t she understand that he put me first? He cares about me and, even though he had no proof that I was innocent—could have thought I was guilty, for all I know—he was still willing to put himself on the line to protect me. He put me first.

Mom should appreciate that.

She turns off the ignition.

“Mom, look,” I say when she reaches for the door. “I know I screwed up. Multiple times. I know I lost your trust, and you don’t want to see me mess up that epically again.”

When she looks at me, her eyes are glistening.

“But I’m asking you to trust me on this.” I lay my hand over hers where it rests on her thigh. “Trust me to have learned from my mistakes.”

“I want to,” she says, looking into my eyes like she might find answers there.

This is about more than Tru, more than The Incident. This is about me being a responsible almost-adult. About her believing in me again.

“Trust that I’m too stubborn to be a follower. Just because I hang out with someone who is a screw-up doesn’t mean I’m going to be one, too.” I lean forward so I can look into her eyes. “And Tru is not a screw-up.”

I wait, anxious, as she processes the conversation. I consider it a really good sign that she’s no longer dogmatically defending her opinion about Tru. No longer dismissing my words as a matter of course. That she is actually thinking about what I’m saying can only be a good sign.

“Occasional poor decisions aside,” she says, nodding, “you have always been a good judge of character. If you say Tru is a good guy, then I believe you.”

I sigh with relief, a huge smile on my face. I hadn’t realized how much it bothered me that Mom wouldn’t trust me on this. That I might have really lost her trust for good.

Maybe, just maybe, re-earning her trust is my first step back to New York. At the very least, it’s the first step back to our old relationship.

She turns to face me. “Now what?”

“Now,” I say, my relieved smile turning a bit to the maniacal side, “we find out who tried to set me up.”

Chapter Eighteen

Tru finished editing his short film on the second day of expulsion, so when he woke up on Wednesday afternoon, his first thought was, What the hell am I going to do today?

His second was, Shit, my parents get home today.