My father sits up straighter. “What guy?”

Oh God, here we go.

“Jackson. He lives nearby. It’s not a big deal.”

My mother and father stare at me, but I continue to eat. My mom knows about the Jackson thing, but I know she’ll hop onto whatever my father says about the matter. It all comes down to if he’s okay with it, and I’m getting the feeling he’s not.

I shove a piece of grilled chicken smothered in garlicky mashed potatoes into my mouth. My God, this stuff is good. I can feel a meltdown coming, and I want as much of this food as I can get.

“I won’t have it,” my father eventually says.

And now I’m starting to get angry. I want to yell at him, tell him that I’m sixteen, he can’t stop me from talking to boys. But I don’t. What did fighting back ever get me?

I take a big bite of my dinner roll and try to enjoy it.

“Well, we did say we wanted her to be normal,” my mother says.

That’s new. I’m not sure my mother has ever been on my side for anything. Or maybe it’s just because she doesn’t know what side I’m on since I refuse to stop shoving food into my mouth.

“Nora,” my father says in a low tone. “This will not turn out well.”

Now I can’t help myself. “It’s just a dance. It’s not like—”

“The boy is the cop’s son,” my father says. “He’s probably watching you.”

“He’s what?”

He’s the son of a cop? And he might just be watching me? For what?

Whatever. Who cares? I take a big deep breath and continue to eat. I’m not a fan of cops, like at all, but I don’t do anything wrong, not anymore. So I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. He’s making a big deal over nothing.

“Sweetie,” my mom says. After a moment, I realize she’s waiting for me to look at her. When I do, she says, “Do you want to go to homecoming with this boy?”

That’s a question even I hadn’t really thought of an answer for.

What do I want?

My father grips his knife and fork. “It’s not a question of what she wants. I forbid her from—”

“But Sarah said we should give her a little freedom.” She’s holding it together, but when I look at her lap, I can see her folded hands shaking.

Sarah. My father’s narrowed eyes say it all. To him, her very name is a threat.

“Sarah said?” He shakes his head. “I won’t let anyone—not her, not you—tell me how to fix this. At least in New York, it was just Anna’s reputation on the line. But now it’s us. Our family. You know what’ll happen if we let her do this, don’t you?”

My mom takes a deep breath and looks at me. “We have to start trusting her sooner or later, don’t we?”

My words coming from her mouth.

My father says nothing, just stares at both of us, dumbfounded, his rage festering.

I can’t believe what Mom said.

I could be wrong, but…I think she just stood up for me.

I rise to my feet. “Jackson asked me to go,” I say, wiping my hands on my pants. “You want me to be normal, right? Homecoming is normal, and I’m going.”

I drop my plate in the sink and walk out of the kitchen. Now they’re looking at each other, but my father hasn’t said anything else. I think that means I win.

Or at least that my father lost.

Just before I reach my room, I call out, “And I’ll need money for a dress.”

Chapter Twenty

I wait until my parents go to sleep, then I sneak Zara into my room again. I set my alarm for early. Early early, since I already have to get up around six for school. Why do they do that? We’re teenagers, we need our sleep.

Zara curls up next to me and licks my hand. It’s gross, but it’s a worthy sacrifice to have her here.

I feel better, safer, with her next to me. Not because I expect her to bite an intruder—that’s just ignorant to me—but because I’m not alone. Feeling her warmth next to me is comforting.

Zara and I are in this together now.

I wake up not to my alarm but to the harsh sound of my father’s voice echoing down the hallway.

What time is it? The clock says 1:14, and the lack of sunlight tells me it’s most definitely not the afternoon. What in the world is my father doing up—and yelling—in the middle of the night?

Zara lets out a little huff and rolls onto her side, and within a few seconds she’s snoring. Even she thinks it’s crazy to be up right now.

I close my eyes and wonder if I’ll make it back to sleep so easily, but now I’m awake enough to make out what my father says next.

“This is not our fault!” he yells.

My mom says something, but it’s too distant—the volume too indoor-appropriate—for me to make out her words.

Zara lifts her head when I get out of bed, but I lift my index finger to my lips, then point at the bed, and she seems to understand what I want, because when I back up to the door, she doesn’t move, just watches me tiptoe out the room. I shut the door behind me.

The carpet in the hallway tickles my feet, a soft reminder of how many times years ago I crept down this path in the middle of the night, sometimes to sneak out, sometimes to get a snack, but always to avoid my parents.

It feels eerily similar now. Except while I don’t want them to notice me, I do want to hear what they’re saying.

The glow of the living room light reaches the end of the hallway, and I stop at the corner and peek around the edge enough to see them.

My mom’s on the couch, her arms crossed over her chest. My dad’s pacing in front of her.

“You want to say it,” he says. “I know you want to say it. So go ahead.”

She holds her arms tighter around herself. “I talked to Sarah, and she said that maybe we were right to be concerned about Anna—”

“Sarah said? Sarah said?”

She pauses, and it’s like I can smell her fear, pungent and powerful.

“Nora, if I have to ask you one more time to just spit it out…”

She nods, and after another second continues. “She said we were right to be concerned, but that maybe, well, we should take it easy on her because…well, she ran away for a reason, Martin.”

“So Sarah thinks this is my fault, too?”

“No. Not your fault. It’s mine, too…”

“This is Anna’s fault, Nora. No one else’s.”

“But Sarah says…”

He puts his hand over his eyes and rubs them. “You think Sarah knows a thing about how this family works? Or how it needs to work?”

“I just think she has more experience with this kind of thing than we—”

“You think Sarah knows better than me?”

Mom hunches her shoulders forward and bows her head. “I didn’t say that. But she cares about—”

“We didn’t push Anna to run away. And if that’s the kind of insight her ‘experience’ has given her, she’s got a lot further to go if she wants to be any good at her job.”

“Martin, you’re being ridiculous,” my mother whispers.

My father paces in front of her like he didn’t even hear. Maybe he didn’t. “Everyone thinks I’m a bad father. That I did this.” His voice is lighter, softer than I think I’ve ever heard. He always tried to be so tough in front of me, never letting me see anything but the disciplinarian. “I’m just doing what needs to be done. It’s the way I was raised. If anything, we were too soft on her. You were too soft. If we let her get away with…”

“Then maybe she would have never run away.”

He pauses. The whole room seems to freeze, and even my heart stops. Not the right thing to say, Mom.

The shadows shift over his face as his jaw clenches. My mother’s eyes grow wide as she realizes her mistake.

She quickly says, “I’m just trying to imagine what it was like for Anna.” I might be imagining things, but I think I see her lower lip tremble. “I want to know why she left.”

He throws up his hands in mock defeat. “For God’s sake, Nora, I did everything I could to teach her, and for her to know those lessons, however hard, were because we loved her. It’s not my fault she took things the wrong way.”