All The Glory (13 page)

“Easy, Mike,” my mom said, placing a hand on his arm, “easy.” She looked up at me, speaking in a carefully-measured tone. “I think what your father is trying to say is that we don’t understand why you’re over at Jason’s house in the first place.”

My father glared at my mom. “I wasn’t having trouble saying it, I just didn’t get the chance yet.”

My mom glared back at him, all her easy-going mom-ness suddenly absent. “Do you want to take this upstairs?”

That’s code in my parents’ world for fight-club. Their bedroom is where all the work of raising a family happened, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ll let you decide which part of their fight and make-up process is which.

My father sighed heavily and turned to me. “Start talking, missy.”

I was doomed. When my name got changed to Missy, all bets were off. Both of my parents were staring at me with serious expressions and they were holding hands. No one in the history of the world has ever gotten past that wall of oneness before and no one ever would, so I didn’t even bother to bullshit them.

“Jason is my friend. He’s been accused of a terrible crime, and he needs support. That’s why I was there. It’s also why I visited him in jail.”

My mom’s jaw dropped open, but no words came out.

“If I’ve read the articles correctly, he wasn’t just accused … he
admitted
to killing his coach.” My father was challenging me, waiting to see if I’d fall into the lie-trap. No way was I even going to try.

“Yes. He’s admitted it publicly and to me.”

Both my parents opened their mouths to jump all over me, but I held my hand up and kept talking to cut them off.

“But! He’s entered a plea of not-guilty, which means innocent until
proven
guilty,
and
I think there’s something else going on there. I don’t trust his confession.”
There
. I’d said it. I’d given a voice to the unrest in my heart. It was both thrilling and scary-as-snakes at the same time.

My mom glanced at my dad, whose face looked like a lobster, and then turned to me. “Something else?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter what she means,” my father burst out, “because she’s not going to spend time hanging around with a murderer! And that’s
final!”
He stood up and stormed out of the room, pausing only when he was at the doorway. His finger came up and jabbed the air in my general direction. “You are forbidden from visiting that boy ever, do you understand?”

I stood up, full of righteous indignation. “No, I do
not
understand!” I seriously wanted to punch something right then. Maybe my father. It struck me then how passions can overtake someone’s good sense and make them want to do something they’d never dream of doing on a normal day.

My mom jumped to her feet and held her arms out wide at her sides, one hand in my face, and one pointed towards my dad’s. “That’s enough! There will
no
more shouting at one another in this house!”

We were at an impasse. All of us were pissed, all of our faces on fire, and I’m sure all of us feeling completely justified in our positions.

“Now! Get your buns back here and sit down … both of you. Or I’m on strike and you’ll be doing your own cooking and laundry for the foreseeable future while I take a cruise to Alaska.”

My dad and I exchanged a look.

“You hate snow,” I said.

“Alaska?” My father walked slowly into the room. “I tried to get you to take an Alaskan cruise with me five years ago and you said you had no interest in icebergs and salmon fishing.”

“That’s not the point!” my mother yelled, apparently giving herself a pass from the no-shouting rule she’d just implemented. “Sit down!”

Dad and I rushed to do what we were told. My mother didn’t lose her shit very often, but when she did and threats about no more dinner started flying around, we listened. My dad and I once went through a two-week punishment together, and for the first three days it was fine; but after that we both realized that Mom is the glue that holds everything together and neither of us was willing to live falling apart like that again.

My mom lowered herself primly to the couch. “Now, we are going to talk about this in calm voices and without grand statements of what will or won’t be happening in the future, and we will not go to sleep until it’s resolved.”

“Alaskan cruise,” my dad mumbled, shaking his head.

My mom looked at me. “Katy … tell us about Jason. Is he okay?”

I folded my hands in my lap, trying to look as adult as possible. “He’s not good. I mean, he’s healthy, but he’s … worried. I think.”

“I’ll bet he is,” my father said, snorting under his breath.

“Mike. I’m not kidding.”

My father wilted a little under my mom’s glare.

Anxiety welled up inside me, and I had this desperate thought that I had only one chance to convince them about something I didn’t even really understand myself. The words poured out of my mouth in a rush.

“When we were little, he was like … superman. He was cool. He never let anyone pick on Bobby or me. And then we got older, we weren’t really friends, but he was still nicer than everyone else, and he knows I garden a lot and him and his dad call me The Constant Gardner, and then something terrible happened and he made a big mistake. I don’t know what
exactly
happened, but I know it’s something. People don’t just kill people for no reason, right?” I looked back and forth from my dad to my mom. “Right?”

“The news is saying he killed the coach because he was going to bench him for the big game,” my father said.

“Do you honestly believe that?” I asked, disgusted both with the news vultures and my father for just unquestioningly believing that crap. I conveniently forgot the fact that I’d been thinking the very same thing a few days ago, a-hole that I was.

“I don’t know.” My father was offended at the insinuation that he’s an idiot coming loud and clear through my tone. “I don’t know this boy. And I don’t think you know him either.”

“You’ve never mentioned him,” my mom said, I think trying to be fair. “He wasn’t one of your friends before he was a murder suspect.”

I waved her off. “Listen, we live in different social stratospheres, okay? That’s normal. It’s totally
normal
.” I pounded my fist on my thigh. “It was the same for you when you were in school.” I switched to a pleading tone. “Mom, you said so yourself … when you went to your twenty-year class reunion, everyone was totally different. The real world showed you that popularity meant nothing.” I shifted my gaze to my dad. “Jason is living in that real world right now. I’m living in it. This thing that happened to the coach … it changes everything.” I realized as I said it that it was so true. Jason and I would never be the same after this, either individually or together.

“I don’t agree that it has to change
your
life,” my father said.

My chin went up automatically. “I’m sorry, but it’s not your decision what happens with my life.”

My mom’s eyeballs kind of popped out of her head a little, but my dad was the first one to respond.

“Excuse me?”

Ooops
.
Went a little too far there.

I struggled to fix what I had just messed up. “What I meant was that I am grown-up enough to make my own decisions about this kind of thing, and I’ve made my decision. I’m going to stand by Jason through thick and thin, and I don’t care what the news says or what the kids at school say. He needs a friend and I am that friend. It’s a done deal.” I was totally ready for a cape and some tights at that point.

“Need I remind you that you are only seventeen years old?”

I could see the anger simmering beneath my father’s calm exterior, but I didn’t let it sway me from my mission.

“I’ll be eighteen in six months, but it makes no difference. I have to do what I have to do, and I just hope you can support me in this. You’ve been telling me for years that I need to get out of the house and do something worthwhile, so now I’m doing it.”

“I didn’t mean hang out with
murderers!”
my father shouted, jumping to his feet again. “I meant like glee club or something!”

“Glee club? Are you serious?” I stood up too, ready to get the hell out of this ridiculous place.
Glee Club. As if.

“All right, that’s enough!” my mom shouted, also standing. She gave my father the evil eye and then turned it on me. “No more arguing. No more threats. Here’s what’s going to happen...”

My breath got stuck in my lungs and wouldn’t come out. I could hear a ringing in my ears as the pressure mounted. My father was breathing like a bull ready to plow us both over.

“Katy, you will be permitted to visit Jason, if, and I mean only
if
, you discuss each meeting with us first and gain our agreement.”

The breath left my lungs like air departing a soggy balloon. “Great. I guess I know what that means.” It meant tying sheets together and rappelling out of my window in the middle of the night.

“No, you don’t,” she said, wiping the smile off my dad’s face. “We agree to be fair, to listen to what you have to say, and to try and understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Because you are a mature almost-adult, as you’ve mentioned, and we recognize that you need practice having adult independence before the day you actually leave this shelter we’ve provided for you and strike out on your own.”

My father rolled his eyes.

My mom turned to face him, effectively blocking me out. I was an observer in a moment that would normally be left for their bedroom.

“God forbid if Katy were ever accused of a terrible crime, we would want her friends to support her. If they all disappeared and left her here with us, it would be as bad as prison. We have always believed in a person’s right to be proven guilty before being treated as a criminal, right?”

My father nodded, but he still had that stubborn look in his eye. “But he’s admitted he did it.”

“You can’t…!” I started, but my mom cut me off with a hand and a glare. She’s really good at that.

She went back to counseling my dad, this time with a sweeter tone. Her eyes went soft and she stepped in closer, taking him by the hands. “As you well know, people often give confessions and later recant them. Innocent people admit guilt all the time. We cannot just assume he’s guilty on that basis, especially considering he’s pled
not
guilty
.”

My father’s shoulders sagged and his face fell. “I really hate that you went to law school sometimes. You get all … lawyery and it’s seriously interfering in my ability to ever win an argument about anything.”

She threw her arms around him and hugged him hard. His hands slipped around her lower back as he pulled her in close.

My mom spoke into his chest. “I don’t want her going over there any more than you do, but imagine what it’s like to be Chuck right now. He must be devastated. I’m upset with myself that I haven’t gone over there and given him our support yet.”

My mom pulled away from my dad and looked over her shoulder at me. “We’ll go over as a family tomorrow morning.”

I tried to calm the zip of electric happiness that shot through my body. It could be a trap. My parents are seriously awesome at setting them and I usually fell right into them too. “But I have school.”

“You can miss a couple periods in the morning.”

I wanted to leap for joy, but I was afraid to enjoy the victory too much. My dad was on a hair trigger, and it wouldn’t take much for him to veto my mom’s decision. They have some crazy rule that each one of them gets a no-questions-asked veto that cannot be argued against. I’ve only seen it used once in all the years I’ve been alive, but it was ironclad. No way did I want to invoke one of those.

“I’m going to do some homework and then go to bed.”

My father looked down at my mom. “Who is that kid and what has she done with our daughter?”

“Ha, ha,” I said, walking by them.

I was almost out of range when my dad grabbed my arm and pulled me back. Soon I was enveloped in a Katy sandwich, my parents the bread and me the meat.

“We love you, Katydid,” my father mumbled into my hair. “We’re not ogres. We just want to protect you from the terrible things out there in the world.”

“You can’t protect me forever,” I said, my voice catching in my throat. How I wished their love could be enough to turn back time and stop Jason from making such a terrible mistake with his life.

“Yes, I can. I’m your father.”

I know he meant it as a joke, but I had to show him I was an adult now. I looked up and stared him and my mom in the face. “Tell that to Mr. Bradley tomorrow. I’ll bet he thought he could protect Jason too.”

My mom’s eyes teared up and she and my dad squeezed me so hard, I thought I was going to pee a little. When they finally let me go, I separated myself and grabbed the camera on the side table, intent on deleting any photos on the memory card before giving it back to its owner.

I went upstairs to my room with a lighter step but a heavier heart. Things just kept getting more complicated, and I didn’t see my future being any better.

Chapter Twenty-Three

FORGET HOMEWORK. I WAS MORE interested in playing camera hacker than learning about matrices and determinants.
Pre-calc. Bleck
.

After texting Bobby, telling him I’d fill him in on all the drama at lunch tomorrow, I pulled the memory card from the camera and put it into the slot on the side of my computer. Images started loading into my photo program, and I hummed to myself as I waited.

Carwash … mmm-mmm mmm-mmm mmm-mmm mmm-mmm… talkin’ ‘bout the car wash, yeah…

Inspiration struck as the old-school tunes kept rolling through my brain, so I opened up my music library and quickly put together a playlist that I thought Jason might like. Deciding that Facebook might be the best way to contact him, I did a search of his name.

His page was the first one that came up under my search, even though I was sure there were hundreds of Jason Bradleys around the country, maybe even the world. That meant I was probably one of a thousand people who’d gone looking for him online recently. It made my heart hurt to imagine why all those people suddenly cared about him. Surely it wasn’t to ‘friend’ him. What a joke.