A Really Awesome Mess (24 page)

“Time to pull it together,” Justin whispered back. “Let me do the talking. I’ll take responsibility for all of it.”

I shook my head. There was no way I was blaming this on someone else. Especially a someone else I really, really liked.

Our families were in two separate little factions—Justin’s to our right with an officer and mine in front of our car. Justin and I took a collective deep breath, dropped our hands from one another’s, and split off to go face the music.

Brittany and my parents and Joss started in on me all at once.

“What in God’s name did you think you were doing?” my mom practically screamed.

“Scaring us like that,” my dad bellowed.

“After all the progress you’ve made, Emmy,” Brittany said, giving me a disappointed gaze.

“I thought you said you were done with hooking up for, like, ever after everything that happened with Mason!” Joss piped in.

Everyone turned to stare at her.

“I mean, hi sis! So glad you’re not hurt,” she said, mouthing
I’m sorry
at me.

“Care to tell us what happened?” Brittany asked. Her voice was stern but her arms were open, like an invitation. I knew I could run into them and everything would feel like it was fine again, even if it was only for a few minutes.

But also I realized that was totally not what I should do. Not even what I wanted to do, really. Instead, I threw myself at my
mom, wrapping my arms around her and hugging her tight. I breathed in her flowery-sugary scent, tucked my head into the little indentation between her chest and collarbone. I felt safe and warm and like I was a little kid again—back when I never worried whether my mommy loved me as much as Joss or not. Back when I knew for sure she did.

I held on as tight as I could, for as long as I could. And it must have been as big of a surprise to my mom—and to my dad—as it was to me. Soon, my father joined the hug. Joss squeezed her way in, too. We were the peanut butter and jelly to my parents’ bread slices.

“My beautiful star,” my mom murmured into my ear.

And for the first time in months, I didn’t think
bullshit
.

“I really missed you guys,” I said.

“We missed you, too,” my dad and Joss said at the same time.

After a while, our sandwich kind of naturally fell apart, and I was left grinning at my family.

“You still have some explaining to do, Emmy,” Brittany said, breaking the feel-good spell.

I glanced over at Justin for support. He winked at me, and I felt a hot flush creep up over my cheeks and a warmth envelope my gut. Liking someone was so great and so embarrassing all at once.

“Contrary to popular belief, I did not bust out of Assland to have sex,” I began.

“It’s called Heartland,” my mom gently chided.

Joss just snorted and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

“Seriously,” I said, shaking my head and wishing I could explain but knowing that would ruin everything for Jenny and Chip and Diana and Tracy. I stopped and started a few times before I finally settled for simple but vague-as-hell. “I can’t tell you exactly what we did today, other than it involves living things and doing my best to keep them living.”

“Emmy, you are not responsible for anyone else’s life but your own,” Brittany said. “If Justin is having problems, that’s for him to work out with his therapist.”

I stole a peek at Justin and he totally broke out into a huge smile that everyone, even Brittany, noticed.

“And I know he looks happy now, but having sex with him won’t get rid of his depression if that’s what motivated you,” Brittany told me.

“I did not have sex with him!” I said a little too loudly. Everyone was giving me those
yeah right
smirky smiles.

“I didn’t!” I insisted.

“So maybe you can do a better job of explaining what you
were
doing, then,” my dad said.

“All I can tell you is that I did something great today. Something I’m really proud of, and I’m willing to take whatever punishment you want to give me for it,” I said, and then added, “and it wasn’t sex.”

Brittany didn’t look like she was going to let me get away with such an evasive answer but surprisingly, my mom was kind of into it.

“I’m proud of you, Em,” she said, putting an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close to her. “I don’t know what you did, or that it even matters at this point. What I do know is that for the first time in a year, you’re taking responsibility for your actions and not just blaming someone else for your troubles. And for the first time in a long time, you seem totally sincere.”

This got even Brittany on board. “Sometimes you have to take a few steps back to take a giant leap forward,” she told my parents. “And I do hope it was worth it. Because you are back on level one—”

This of course meant a Staffie would be following me around all day, even to the bathroom, until further notice.

“—and you and Justin are on communication block for the remainder of your time here at Heartland Academy.”

The first part of the consequence I could deal with. The second? Was a killer. Because it meant not only did Justin and I not get to be a couple from here on out, we didn’t get to speak or even be within twenty feet of each other.

But I also knew it was fair, because those were the rules, and we’d broken them. I’d just have to suck it up and deal. And maybe, just maybe, they’d take us off of comm block after we’d moved up a few levels. It would take time, but I kind of thought
Justin was worth waiting for. “Okay. I guess I deserve that.”

One of the cops came over to where we were standing. “Are you pressing charges?” he asked. He had a ticket in hand, his pen poised above it. Today must have been the most exciting thing he’d ever dealt with in this back-ass town.

“No,” my dad said, outstretching his hand for a shake. “Thank you very much for all your help, and we are sorry for all the trouble.”

“Your daughter should be the one who is sorry,” the cop said, staring at me, then Joss, then my parents, then back at me with a confused look in his eyes.

It had happened a million times before. Usually, it felt like someone stabbing me. This time, though, I responded a little differently.

“Families are based on love, not looks,” I said to the cop, finally using my parents’ advice after all these years. Joss high-fived me, my parents beamed, and I felt like a lot of what had been holding me down went flying off into the atmosphere like a let-go balloon.

I WATCHED ACROSS THE PARKING LOT AS EMMY HAD HER REUNION
with her family. I thought I heard Max tell me I was forbidden from being within twenty feet of Emmy. Because keeping depressed people away from people they connect with was pretty therapeutic, I guess.

Mom hugged me, crying, then pulled away and gave me this fierce look. “We’ll talk,” she said.

Patrick put his arm around my shoulders and whispered in my ear. “You’re in some shit, kid. I’m gonna try to talk her down, but just be prepared. It’s gonna be ugly for a while.”

I looked at him and smiled. Nice to know somebody was in my corner. I guessed my cover story of sneaking off to get some bought me some male allies.

Or maybe Patrick was just extra cool, because the other male in the picture did not seem to be my ally at the moment. “Get in the goddamn car,” Dad said through clenched teeth.

“Can I drive?” I asked. I mean, I knew what the answer was gonna be, but how often was I gonna get an opportunity to get behind the wheel of an Audi TT? Dad’s answer was a glare that actually scared the crap out of me, so I climbed in the passenger seat and shut up. I was glad it wasn’t a very long ride back to Assland.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dad said as we roared out of the truck stop parking lot.

“I’m admiring the exhaust note of the TT. They had sound engineers work on—”

The glare cut me off again. “I drive ten hours out here into the middle of nowhere, and when I get here, you’re not here. Are you just trying to humiliate me? I’m paying for this, you know. Is this your way of telling me—”

“Jesus, Dad, it’s not about you!”

“Oh yeah, sure. That’s why you just happen to choose the moment I arrive to—”

And something snapped, and, fear of the glare or not, I started yelling. “Why the hell would it be about you, Dad? Who the hell are you, anyway? Oh yeah! You’re the guy who moved eight hundred miles away from me! You’re the guy who disappears and pawns me off on every other relative when I come to visit! I don’t
even know you! You’re not important enough to me to want to piss you off, okay? You’re just some guy with a sweet car!”

I guess if he really wasn’t important to me, I probably wouldn’t have had tears streaming down my face, but whatever. We rode the rest of the way to Assland in silence.

We had another family reunion in the Assland parking lot. Dad and I both slammed our doors and climbed from the TT with what I suppose were scarily identical pissed-off looks on our faces. Mom and Patrick joined us and stared from one to the other for a minute. Mom looked like she was about to say something, but Patrick placed a hand on her arm, and we all just stood there silently until Max told us we should head over to his office for a family powwow.

Across the parking lot, I saw Emmy and her family headed off for a similar powwow. We locked eyes, and she smiled at me, and I had something nice to hold on to through the meeting. She gave me the heavy metal horns hand signal, only with her thumb sticking out, too. I was a little puzzled, but I did it back. “Rock on,” I said under my breath.

Patrick whispered to me. “Wow. Already at the ‘love-you’ stage, huh?”

I looked at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

He looked at me and started laughing. “You really don’t know? She just flashed the sign for ‘I Love You’ at you, and you gave it right back.”

“I thought it was a heavy metal thing.”

Patrick patted me on the back. “Well,” he said, still holding his laughter in, “if it wasn’t serious before, it sure as hell is now.” He caught a look from Mom and fell back into step with her, leaving me in my isolation.

Except I didn’t feel alone. Not like I did before, anyway. I had a little warm feeling from seeing Emmy across the parking lot, and I put it down in my stomach where the pain and emptiness usually started, and I felt a little bit better.

Mom dropped the twins off in the classroom that was serving as a daycare center for the weekend, and as we did the walk of shame down the hallway toward Max’s office, Diana suddenly appeared, coming out of the ladies’ room. She shot me a questioning look, and I nodded my head yes. She smiled, gave me the thumbs-up, and disappeared.

And then we filed into Max’s office. And I found myself in a dilemma. If I told the truth, it would probably show that I was making progress. I was actually proud of myself for the first time in, like, ever. I’d done a good thing, I’d helped Willy get a future, and I’d connected with somebody in a real way. Apparently I loved her. I tried that on for a little while. I mean, I hadn’t known what I was doing when I flashed the sign, and if I had known and had time to think it over, I probably would have thought myself into knots about what it meant and blah blah blah. But I’d said it. Or signed it. Whatever. And I
thought it was probably true. And that felt good.

So if I could tell everybody what really happened, that it wasn’t about them, or even me, that it was about me getting my head out of my own ass for an afternoon and trying to do something good for somebody else, they might have gone easier on me. They might have even called that progress.

But there was no way to do that without revealing the whole sad story of Willy. And then everybody would get in trouble, nobody would get to go home, and the nice, if excessively hairy people at the Farm Asylum would probably go to jail. And all their animals would probably get killed and Willy would become bacon. I wasn’t like the greatest person in the world, but I wasn’t gonna have all that resting on my back. I could man up, lie and take my punishment, and be a hero, or I could weasel out of it by telling the truth and have just about everybody hate me and have the death of a bunch of animals on my conscience.

I was thinking about all this when Max said, “Why don’t you tell us what happened, Justin. The truth. Remember, it’s important to tell the truth.”

Actually, it was important to do no such thing right now, but whatever. “I mean, what’s to know? We snuck off, we made out for a while, we chickened out of having sex, we came back. I mean, do you want the play-by-play?”

Mom sobbed, and I felt bad.

“No, Justin. That’s fine. Why’d you decide not to have sex?”

I mentally crossed my fingers, hoping this would at least get me out of additional SR sessions. “Well, I mean, it was like the first time we even kissed, you know, and it just seemed like maybe it was a little soon for a step like that. Also, I mean, a cornfield isn’t the most romantic spot. There’s a lot of dirt and bugs. It’s kind of a buzzkill, actually.”

Made that last part up, but whatever. Max smiled. “Well, in spite of everything else that’s happened today, this, if it’s true, at least shows you’re making some progress. But make no mistake, today is a big step backward. And the first thing you need to do is to hear from everyone about how your behavior affected them today.”