The Friendship List(27)

“Me?” she asked, her voice overly loud. “What about you? Pushing, pushing, pushing. Don’t you have anything better to do?” Her voice rose with each word until she was shouting.

This was not the girl he knew, he thought in confusion. What was happening to them?

“Come on, Dad.” She took a step toward him. “Punish me. You know you want to. What are you going to do? Hit me?”

He instinctively took a step back. “Lissa, what is going on?” He’d never hit her. He didn’t believe in spanking or hitting. Punishments were a matter of finding a point of leverage that fit the crime.

She glared at him. “There has to be something. There’s always something.”

He moved toward her. She tried to sidestep him, but she was too uncoordinated. Before she could react, he’d pulled her phone out of her shorts back pocket. He held it tightly, then pointed to the hallway.

“Go to your room and sleep it off. We’ll talk when you’re sober.”

“Whatever.”

She stalked away. The door slammed. Seconds later came the sound of a loud alarm. Her door flew open and she surged toward him.

“What did you do?” she asked, screaming to be heard over the earsplitting alarm.

He pushed a button on his phone, silencing the shrill sound.

“You booby-trapped my window?”

“You snuck out, Lissa. You’ve never done that before. If you’re trying to show me you can’t be trusted, then that’s how I’ll treat you. Every time you open your window, the alarm’s going off.”

“How did you do that? I was gone like three hours.”

“Ever hear of a hardware store?”

She glared at him. “I hate you.”

“You’re not my favorite right now, either. If you’re going to act like a kid, I’m going to treat you like a kid. You snuck out. That’s unacceptable behavior. Now go to your room. We’ll talk in the morning.”

She held out her hand “I want my phone.”

“I want a daughter who acts her age. We’re both going to have to live with the pain of disappointment.”

She literally stomped her foot, screamed out loud, then disappeared into her bedroom. The door slam was hard enough to rattle a couple of pictures on the wall.

Keith sucked in a breath and wondered where his baby girl had gone and how he was going to get her back.

  Ellen sat in her Subaru in the parking lot of the North Bend outlet mall and tried to gather her courage. There was not a bone in her body that wanted to be shopping today. She had plenty of clothes in perfectly good condition. Yes, they were baggy, but they were comfortable and practical and, perhaps most important of all, paid for. She’d been raised to be frugal and while she might rail against her parents and their weird rules, she couldn’t escape them. Not wasting money was a biggie. Plus there was the whole “saving for college” thing.

But a deal was a deal. She would get a few things for the bus trip and the summer. Shorts and T-shirts for home, some crop pants and maybe a blouse or two for the college visits. She had a budget, she had a free morning. All she was lacking was the will.

“I’m already here,” she muttered, getting out of the SUV.

As she stepped up onto the sidewalk, her thighs reminded her that day two of her yoga video had been just as painful as day one. Not that she wanted to do yoga—it was stupid—but in an attempt to prove to her son she had a life, she’d dutifully dug it out and had gone through the whole, tedious thirty minutes of stretching and reaching and breathing.

It all felt like a stupid waste of time. She wasn’t a bendy person. She liked to think that her flexibility was more mental. Still, it had been worth it when Coop had asked her what she was doing and she’d been able to tell him she was practicing yoga so she felt comfortable going to a class. He’d been surprised, she’d been only mildly uncomfortable lying. All in all, a moment.

Ignoring the general why-did-you-do-this-to-us ache in her body, she walked into the store and looked around.

There were plenty of sale racks, which she appreciated. She whipped through crop pants and shorts, only to remember she wasn’t going to buy her usual size fourteen clothes. She tried to figure out her actual size. A twelve? A ten?

One of the few advantages of having a baby at seventeen was there were virtually no lingering effects. She didn’t have stretch marks or a poufy stomach. She wasn’t skinny but she was the same weight she’d been since she was twenty, and she honest to God had no idea what size she should wear.

Deciding jeans were the best way to find out, she picked three sizes of the same style and took them into a dressing room. The twelves looked nice, but a little loose and the eights didn’t make it over her butt. She put on the size ten jeans and looked at herself in the mirror.

They fit. Sort of. They were much tighter than anything she ever wore but they weren’t uncomfortable. She turned sideways to look at herself. She had to admit, she looked fairly decent. Not, you know, like a model or anything, but she wasn’t hideous. She’d never liked her thighs, but her butt was okay and she had something of a waist.

“Size ten it is,” she murmured.

Thirty minutes later she had an impressive pile of yeses. The at-home clothes were easy. She went for cheap and washable. For the road trip, she found several cute crop pants that would be comfortable, appropriate and weren’t denim. She also chose a sleeveless wrap-front cotton blouse in several colors. They would be easy wearing on the long bus trip and would go with the two above-the-knee skirts she’d bought. For reasons not clear to her, she fell in love with a red floral-print dress with black lace at the hem. It was ridiculously cute and she found she really wanted it. Hopefully there would be a dinner or two where she could wear it. And at twenty-two dollars, it wasn’t going to blow her budget.