Tease(75)

Natalie comes back to the table and smiles at me. “Why don’t you go in the conference room and work on the letter while I talk to your parents?”

“I need my laptop,” I say.

Mom rolls her eyes. “No, you don’t,” she says wearily.

Natalie’s already handing me a legal pad, and my dad slaps a pen on the table in front of me, hard.

“Okay,” I say, but I barely whisper it. I pick up the pen, wondering what it would be like if he’d just handed it to me.

I pick up the notepad, too. Everyone’s giving me blank pads of paper these days.

“There’s a room across the hall, you know the one,” Natalie says. “It should be empty.”

I sit there for a second, not moving yet. “Can’t I . . .” I stop.

“What is it?” Natalie doesn’t seem impatient, not like my mom and dad, who are sitting like their chairs are on fire, all jumpy and weird. Like they would leap right out of them and into a courtroom this instant, if it meant this would all just be over.

“Can’t someone else write something, and I could just read it?” I ask, finally. “Like, you? Couldn’t you just tell me what to say?”

“It’s still optional—” Natalie starts, but Dad interrupts her.

“Absolutely not!” he practically shouts. “You owe everyone an apology, young lady, and you’re going to make it yourself!”

I stare at him. Mom and Natalie are looking at him too, watching his chest rise and fall with fast, angry breaths.

“I’m sick of this whining!” he goes on, his face getting flushed. “You and your friends and your—your pranks—and now a girl is dead, and you’ve avoided a trial and jail time by this much—”

“She wasn’t going to jail—” my mom says quietly, but Dad doesn’t seem to hear her.

“Take responsibility, young lady!” he shouts at me. “It’s time to grow up! Can’t you see that you’ve been acting like a child?”

Natalie is holding up a hand, trying to get him to calm down—he’s leaning out of his chair now, over the table, like he wants to hit me or, I don’t know, throw the table across the room or something. And before I know it I’ve shoved back, out of my chair, stumbling a little bit but hanging on to the pen and paper.

“You’re acting like a child!” I yell at him. “You don’t know anything! You’re never here! Neither of you! You act like you know what happened, you act like you know who I am or what I did. But you don’t!”

I hate that tears are coming down my face now, and I furiously try to wipe them away, but the stupid pen and notepad are in my hands, so I have to wipe with the backs of my wrists and it doesn’t work at all. Mom and Dad are staring at me, and Natalie is too, though I can’t really see their expressions. Everything is blurry from the tears. The stupid, childish, irresponsible tears.

But then I see Dad sit back in his chair and throw his hands up. “I can’t work with this,” he says, still angry. “This is ridiculous. Can’t you make her behave?” he asks my mom. Or maybe he’s asking Natalie. But they don’t answer him.

I manage to take a big, shuddering breath. For some reason, I feel a little calmer. I’m not shrieking when I speak again. And I look right at my dad’s face. He doesn’t scare me anymore.

“Maybe I am a child, Dad,” I say. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe I’d know how to grow up if anyone had ever taught me.”

For once, he doesn’t have anything to say to that. And even if he does, I’m out the door before he can.

I’m thinking This is the last time I’ll visit Therapist Teresa when I flop down on her couch. But it doesn’t take long to find out I’m wrong about this last time.

“I’ve already recommended you keep coming to see me as part of your probation period,” she says, twirling her pen in her hand. “Or another therapist, if you’d rather, but I’d like to keep seeing you if you’re happy with the work we’ve been doing.” She’s wearing a silver ring on almost every finger, and her scarf today is a blinding swirl of oranges, reds, and yellows. I wonder if I’ll wear scarves like that when I’m, what, forty or fifty years old? Is it a requirement?

“Okay,” I say to her. “I don’t know what we’re going to talk about, but sure.”

“Oh, I think we both know that there’s more to talk about in high school than any other time in your life,” she says with a little laugh.

“I don’t do anything, though. Especially not now. I don’t even have any friends.” I feel a blush creep up to my cheeks at the thought of Carmichael, but I don’t want to tell Teresa about that right now.

She gives me one of her looks, one of those long, studying stares. “Sara, you do realize how much adult responsibility you’ve taken on?”

I think of what Dad said to me at Natalie’s office and laugh, short and bitterly.

“No, really,” Teresa says.

I nod, not laughing anymore, not wanting to explain why what she’s said seems ironic right now. “You mean, like, my brothers and everything?” I say. “That’s not really so much. I just drive them places.” I’m still wearing my sweatshirt, and now that my parents aren’t around I can tuck my knees up under it. Mom would yell at me for stretching out the material, and Dad for putting my shoes on Teresa’s couch. But I know she doesn’t care about the couch. And the hoodie sort of pulls my knees up so I’m kind of balancing on my butt, anyway, and not really touching anything.