Interim(60)

“Because you’d find out tomorrow anyway.”

“True.”

Pause.

“Your dad told me about practice the other day. Practice with him, that is.”

“Mom . . .”

“Just listen. I know the start of this year hasn’t been easy. I know you’re going through some things you don’t wanna talk about with me or your dad. I get it. I understand. And I won’t pry. But what I don’t want to have happen is for all those things to affect the one thing you really, really love. Soccer has always been your outlet. Don’t let all the other crap muddy that up for you. Maybe work through your issues with your game. Don’t let your issues work against your game.”

Regan smiled. “You’re so insightful.”

“I’m not insightful. I care about you. I don’t like to see you struggling.”

Regan frowned. “Has it been that obvious?”

“Yeah.” Mrs. Walters paused. “You know you can tell me anything.” She held her breath, hoping for the conversation she knew had about a two percent chance of happening.

Regan fidgeted with her hairpins. What she wouldn’t give to tell her mom! Just one thing. Just one. But it was the one thing she couldn’t reveal to anyone. She promised. Jeremy trusted her. And anyway, didn’t she trust him? When she said she didn’t believe he’d actually go through with that crazy plan, didn’t she believe him? She did, she did! She did the first day, anyway. And maybe the next. But then a week passed with no reassurances from him. Did she need reassurance? Once you believe someone, shouldn’t it stick? Then there was the tattoo and subsequent flip-flop. Yet another conversation and her need to be convinced all over again.

“Regan?”

Do not say it, Regan.

“Brandon is throwing me a birthday party even though I told him I didn’t want one,” she said.

Whew.

“Eighteen’s a big one. He’s just trying to make it special for you,” her mom replied.

“I . . . I don’t think I wanna date him anymore,” Regan confessed.

“Well, perhaps you oughta tell him that before he spends five hundred dollars on a cake for you and all your five hundred friends?”

“Very funny.” Regan thought a moment. “I don’t wanna hurt his feelings, but I really can’t be with him anymore.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“Many reasons.”

Silence.

“Any of those you’d like to elaborate on?”

“No.”

Mrs. Walters sighed. “Well, I’m calling this a half victory.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t say ‘huh’ to an adult. It’s rude.”

“Sorry. Ma’am?”

“What I meant was, you didn’t tell me everything, but you shared something. And I’ll take anything I can get.” She leaned over and kissed Regan’s forehead.

“Do I have a healthy relationship with you and dad?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s abnormal, right?”

“Yes.”

“Should I be rebelling?”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Breaking curfew. Drinking. Snorting heroin.”

“From breaking curfew to heroin, huh?” her mother asked, eyebrows raised.

“If I lived the fast life,” Regan explained.

Mrs. Walters smirked, considering her daughter’s suggestions.

“Would you like to go to one of those camps for troubled teens? The ones where they put them out in the woods and make them hunt and cook their own food? And make shelter out of twigs and moss?”

Regan shook her head, grinning.

“Then no. I wouldn’t suggest you start doing those things.”

“Got it.”

Mrs. Walters walked to the door then paused, turning around. “I love you, Regan Scott.”

“Love you too, Mom.” She didn’t look up. She was already back to work on her assignment.

It was the obligatory “I love you” response, and it lit up her mother’s heart every time.

***

The whole thing was a little creepy. She knew it. She also knew she wasn’t going home without some answers. While Brandon was a notorious bullshit artist, she couldn’t be wholly sure Hannah wasn’t doling out a little bit of her own bullying. Maybe he was partially right. After all, sometimes victims did that: they found weaker victims to prey upon to make themselves feel in control of something. Maybe skinny, freckle-faced Jarrod was her target—an indirect “f*ck you” to Brandon and all the other kids who’d teased her over the years.