Modern Monsters (Entangled Teen) (15 page)

“All right,” he says, removing his reading glasses and folding them neatly to one side. “What’s up?”

I look at Autumn and she looks at me, and I realize we’re both equally nervous because we’re aware that the way we came across this photograph could potentially get us into trouble. It was my idea though, so… “If w-we were to c-come across evidence regarding Callie’s rape, but did so in a not-very-moral way, would it still be usable?”

Mr. Mason squints, thoughtful. “I suppose that depends on the evidence and how you came about it. What did you do, Vic?”

“We had a hunch and went through someone’s cell phone,” Autumn says.

“Without this person’s knowledge?”

In unison: “Yes.”

He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, but I would almost say he looks more tiredly amused than annoyed. “We can work around that, I’m sure. Or rather, Callie’s lawyer could. I’m your defense, not the prosecution, so it doesn’t mean much to me.”

I start to reply when there comes a knock at the door and then it swings open. Brett pops his head inside. “Hey, Dad—” He pauses when he sees me. Or maybe it’s because he sees Autumn, and that sight in his house has to be a little weird. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize you were here, Vic.”

“H-hey,” I greet.

Brett lets himself inside and wanders over. There isn’t another chair for him to sit on, so he leans against the desk instead, curiously eyeing us all. His hair is a mess and he’s in his pajamas, meaning he was, indeed, out late last night and probably just woke up. I wonder if he’s hungover or if he actually did go to a study group. “What’s going on?”

“Vic and Autumn were just telling me about some new evidence they came across in the case.” Mr. Mason looks to his son, as though wondering if he had anything to do with us digging through someone’s personal things.

“He didn’t know,” I’m quick to say, wanting to defend Brett.

Brett asks, “What kind of evidence?”

“We went through Aaron Biggs’s phone and found this.” Autumn holds her cell out to him with the picture of Callie on the screen. Brett’s perplexed expression quickly melts away, replaced by a pale-faced look of nausea. He quickly tilts his chin up.

“When did you do that?”

“A f-few days ago.”

“Were you planning on telling me?”

I knew that was coming. “I’m telling you now.”

Brett shoots me a scowl. “Sure, after you went and did it. What if you’d been caught? Why don’t you ever tell me anything anymore?”

Mr. Mason clears his throat. “That’s something the two of you can discuss later, when I don’t have a court appearance Monday morning to prepare for. Vic, I’m not sure whether this information is going to be useful or not, but I’d take it to the detectives.”

I’m pretty sure the numbers are saved in my phone, but… “W-wouldn’t it come better from you?”

“Not necessarily.” He raises his brows. “But if they need me, they have my phone number. Like I said, I’m not Callie’s lawyer. I’m yours. The prosecution is going to be the one interested in it.”

Fair enough, I guess. Considering that Brett is giving me dirty looks, I should probably go face the music where Mr. Mason won’t see it. Honestly, I wish Autumn wouldn’t see it, either, but that might be unavoidable.

We step out of the office and into the hall. Brett takes us to the living room, smooths a hand through his hair, and sinks onto the couch. Autumn is keeping right at my side and I remain standing, shuffling my feet awkwardly.

“It isn’t that I d-didn’t want to tell you—”

“Really? Because that’s what a lot of this feels like. You didn’t tell me about Aaron dragging you into the bathroom, or about them cornering you at your work, and now this? Did I do something to piss you off?” He doesn’t look at me. If anything, he seems to be trying his best not to look at me.

My spine stiffens. I really wish Autumn would wait outside, but she isn’t budging. “I’ve been trying to protect you, all right? I didn’t tell you b-because you’ve got all of this going on”—I sweep a hand out, gesturing to the coffee table, which is still home to college brochures I’ve seen him looking over the last several times I’ve been here—“and I wanted you to stay focused. The l-last thing I want to do is ruin your chances or g-get in the way.”

It’s a confession that seems to make some of the irritability seep out of Brett’s posture. His expression softens at the edges, eyes finally lifting to look at me. “Whatever happened to me protecting you?”

I manage a sliver of a smile. “You d-don’t always have to. That’s not how a f-friendship works. Let me look out for you once in a while.”

He sighs. “I think you’re an asshole for keeping secrets.”

“I think you’re an asshole a lot of the time, so does that make us even?”

Brett manages a half grin. “Yeah, whatever… Well, now that I know what’s going on, at least let me help. Let’s go talk to the cops.”

Maybe Autumn senses my hesitation, because she finally interjects. “It still stands, though. There are reporters poking around, and I don’t think you want your face in the paper anywhere, do you?”

Brett casts his gaze to her. “But—”

“Sh-she’s right, man. I still don’t want you getting wrapped up in things. Let me take care of it.”

I feel not unlike a child having to get permission from his parents to make his own mistakes, and maybe that isn’t far from the mark. Brett has looked out for me most of our lives, has kept me from doing dumb things. Stepping back and letting me assume control must be as difficult for him as it is for me to start making my own choices without him there to constantly back me up.

But Brett smiles a sad sort of smile. And he doesn’t argue any further. Autumn and I head back out to her car, and before I get in, she grabs my hand and leans up to kiss me firmly on the cheek. A goofy grin passes over my face, which I’m certain has turned a nice shade of red.

“What was that for?”

She squeezes my hand and releases it, shrugs once, and circles around to the driver’s side door. “I know how hard that must have been for you, making him back off like that. I’m proud of you.”

I get into the passenger’s side and buckle in. “Y-you don’t think I’m just…trading one decision maker for another, do you?” I’m not sure if I am. I mean, am I just replacing Brett with Autumn and letting her guide my choices instead?

“The fact that you’re even asking me that tells me no,” she assures me, patting my knee. “It’s normal to want opinions on things, you know? Asking for help with big choices. But ultimately, as long as the final decision is yours, that’s all that really matters.”

I think her words put me at ease, and I wish I could formulate how grateful I am for her, for her support and the simple way she says all the things I need to hear. “Th-thanks.”

She grins and turns on the car, while I pull out my phone in response to its buzzing. It’s a text from Mom.

Going to be home for dinner?

Well, that’s bizarre. She hasn’t asked me that in…as long as I can remember. My thumb hovers over the screen.

Can be. Why?

Making spaghetti at 5 if you and your friend want to come.

My friend… She isn’t referring to Brett; she would have said his name. Which means Autumn. My mother wants Autumn to come over for dinner. Oh, shoot me in the head.

“What’s the plan, chief?” Autumn asks, hands on the wheel, waiting for instruction.

“Uh,” I say ever so eloquently, “M-Mom wants to know if you’d like to c-come over for dinner.” And then I laugh. “You don’t have to. I can tell her you’re b-busy or—”

“I’d love to.”

“Yeah, that’s… What? Really?” I twist partway in my seat to stare at her.

Her eyebrows lift as she starts driving down the street, away from Brett’s house. “Well, why not? I kind of made a bad first impression on her this morning, so maybe it’s a chance to try again.”

“I h-have no idea how she’s going to react, Autumn.”

“So? I’m a big girl. I can take it, whatever
it
is.” She smiles without looking at me. “If you aren’t up for it, it’s fine. But don’t worry about me. I can handle your mother.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The remainder of my day is spent trying not to stress out at the idea of prolonged exposure of Autumn to my mother. Don’t get me wrong—Mom is a very polite woman, but she’s so reserved she can come across as cold and, again, I have no idea how she’ll react to the girl she must know stayed in my room last night. I can’t even introduce her as my girlfriend or something. I know Mom’s making an effort to patch things up between us, but I have no clue how sincere she was in that, or how far she’s willing to go to do it.

But Autumn promises that my mother’s actions won’t reflect on me, and I have to trust her with that. We don’t go to the police because Sherrigan and Carter haven’t returned my call saying that I want to talk to them. In theory, we could drive to the station to see if they’re around, but I’m not sure I’m prepared for that just yet. One traumatizing event at a time.

When we get home, Mom’s car is in the driveway and I linger just outside the front door, gulping in deep breaths to stave off the building anxiety in my chest. Autumn cups her hands to my face and she’s so close I can smell whatever perfume she wears, and it smells amazing. She smiles. “Come on. You can do it.”

I can do it. Yes. I hope so.

I let us inside. The smell of Mom’s homemade spaghetti wafts from the kitchen, bringing back the flash of a memory of us eating together on the couch when I was younger, watching reruns of
Seinfeld
while I scooped spaghetti sauce onto a hunk of garlic bread. It makes me close my eyes, soothing away the rest of my worries. Things used to be okay between Mom and me. They can be okay again.

Autumn follows me into the kitchen where Mom is at the stove, her hair tied up and the apron she typically uses for baking fitted around her waist.

“Hey,” I say, and she turns around.

“Hi, Ms. Howard,” Autumn offers.

“Hi, kids.” Mom places the ladle aside on a paper towel, wipes her hands on her apron, and steps around the kitchen island toward us to take the hand Autumn is offering.

Autumn says, “I’m sorry we didn’t really get a chance to meet properly this morning.”

“It’s fine.” She glances at me, and I rub the back of my neck sheepishly.

“Um… Autumn’s my friend, Mom. We go to school together.” I’ll leave out the part about her being Callie’s best friend. Not a topic I want to stir up right now.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Mom offers. “Dinner’s about ready if you want to take a seat.” She’s already set the table and everything, so there isn’t anything I can offer to help with.

I motion for Autumn to sit down while I shuffle to the stove, figuring I can at least help with the plating or something. If nothing else, it gives me half a second to lean in and whisper to my mother, “W-what are we doing, exactly?”

“We’re having dinner, Victor.” She dumps the noodles into a serving bowl and tops it with sauce. I’ve always loved the spaghetti sauce she makes: onions and meatballs and paprika.

But even the scent of it isn’t enough to detract me from my purpose of figuring out what’s happening. “That’s it?”

She looks at me, and I don’t see any ulterior motives written across her face. Maybe she really is trying. Maybe she actually wants to connect, wants to meet my maybe-girlfriend, because that’s what moms do. “That’s it.”

The serving bowl is placed into my hands. I take it to the table and set it in the center while Mom follows behind with Parmesan cheese and a gallon of milk to fill our glasses. She’s always been big on dinner being accompanied by milk.

Autumn pushes her chair in a little farther and smiles. “It smells delicious, Ms. Howard.”

“Victoria is fine,” Mom says, sitting across from us. That’s a first, I’ll say; I’m sure she’s told Brett to call her by her first name before, many years ago, but it isn’t something she does often with other people.

“Victoria.” Autumn glances at me as though to make sure this isn’t some kind of test.

We each take turns scooping spaghetti onto our plates and begin to eat, settled in silence that is vaguely uncomfortable only because I don’t know what to expect. I’m not sure if I should be trying to make conversation, or if our entire meal will be eaten without any of us uttering a word.

Mom finally asks, “How long have you two been dating?”

I choke on my spaghetti and have to clear my throat. Dating? Yeah, I was worried she got that impression given that she caught Autumn coming out of my bedroom, but I had hoped to avoid that sort of question by emphasizing the word “friend.” Instantly I’m worried this is a trick question, but it could very well be Mom just
trying
and I don’t know how to tell the difference.

But Autumn doesn’t skip a beat. “A week or two. We sort of just fell into it.” She wipes her mouth with a napkin.

I stare at her.

“Oh, that’s nice. Where did you two meet?”

“S-school.” I have no idea what Autumn is doing, but I’m not going to call her out on it in front of Mom. Well, this is sort of answering my questions about our kiss last night.

“School is a big place.” Mom blinks at me. Am I being too vague? Difficult? I don’t know. But I can’t exactly tell her the truth, can I?

“He knows my best friend,” Autumn says. “I met him through her. I mean, I’ve seen him around school and stuff, but he’s so quiet that we hadn’t talked much…”

Mom seems to relax, a tiny smile gracing her thin mouth. “That’s nice to hear. Vic is a good boy.”

I almost flinch at how forced the words are, like Mom wants to believe them but is having a hard time doing so. My eyes drop down to my plate, where I begin separating the pieces of my spaghetti—meatballs here, chunks of onion there, noodles to the side—out of nervousness.

“He is,” Autumn chimes in with a smile, reaching out to smooth my hair affectionately in such a way that it prompts me to look up at her in surprise. “He’s a gentleman, and he cares so much about other people, you know? He doesn’t have that typical macho, overbearing self-assuredness most guys at school have.”

It occurs to me that she could just be saying these things as a means of proving to Mom that I’m not a bad son, yet there’s something in the way she says every word of it that makes me believe her. My stomach is fluttering and I can’t help the silly, lopsided smile that pulls my mouth up at the corners.

The rest of dinner is eaten with very light conversation that is sometimes easy, sometimes forced. Autumn politely asks about Mom’s work, Mom asks what Autumn plans to do after graduation. (“I want to work over the summer to save up some money, then I have a grant to tide me over while I go to community college for food science and some art classes.”)

After we’re done, I assure Mom that Autumn and I can take care of the dishes, since she went through the effort of cooking, and she excuses herself to go to her room because she needs to be in bed at a decent hour in order to get up early for Sunday overtime work in the morning. In reality, it probably has more to do with the fact that she doesn’t do well socializing, and this dinner wore her out. Hell, it’s worn
me
out.

Once Mom has left us alone to clear the table, Autumn comes to stand beside me at the sink where I’ve dumped the night’s dishes, and she smiles.

“That wasn’t too bad, was it? Unless you think she’s going to come murder me in my sleep now.”

I turn on the water, exhaling loudly through my nose. “N-no. It wasn’t t-too bad. Just…weird.”

“Weird how?”

“She thinks we’re dating now, for instance.”

Autumn shrugs. “So?”

I can’t bring myself to look at her. “So…? We aren’t. Are we? Because it’s cool if we are and it’s cool if we aren’t…”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t wanted it. Is that what made it weird?”

She wants it, too? I stumble over that thought while trying to process it. Mom. Right, we were technically talking about Mom. “That, and Mom’s trying to act n-normal. Like, doing that was a normal parent thing.”

Autumn picks up a towel to dry the dishes as I wash them. “Isn’t that good? I mean, I figured that’s what you wanted.”

“It is, but…out of nowhere, it f-feels…” How do I explain? “It feels like she’s trying to dive into ‘normal’ when we haven’t even worked out our issues, I guess. I still feel like things are tense. B-but I don’t know how to fix that.”

Her head bobs into a nod. “She’s probably like you in the sense that she doesn’t know where to start. Fake it ’til you make it, right?”

I hand her a fistful of clean, wet silverware. “You speaking from experience?”

“A little bit. Not exactly the same.” She takes them carefully, places them on the counter, and gives each fork and knife her attention to dry them one by one. “When Mom married my stepdad, he and I butted heads a lot. Their marriage was kind of sudden so I hadn’t really gotten a chance to get to know him. So technically, I’d met this guy all of four times in person before he was moving into my house and I was expected to treat him like a dad.”

“That doesn’t sound like it would go over well with your personality type,” I say with a smile.

She chuckles. “Nope. Things were rough for the first two or three years, but we both tried our best. We’ve grown closer than I ever was with my real dad.”

Now that I think about it, Autumn has only ever mentioned her dad very briefly. “Where is he? Your real dad, I mean. Is he really a heroin dealer?”

“Eh, who knows.” Her shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. “For a while, he’d pick me up every other weekend. Then he moved out of state, and he’d call instead. Then it was letters, then cards on special occasions, until it stopped altogether.”

I stop what I’m doing to really look at her, frowning. “Autumn…”

“The last card I got from him was on my sixteenth birthday.” She lifts her chin, and surprisingly there is no sadness or regret there, and I can’t begin to fathom why. “I don’t entirely blame him, though, you know? Because I realized that slowly but surely, I had started slowing down contact with him, too. The better things got with my stepdad, the less I felt like I had to keep reaching for a guy who didn’t really want anything to do with me.”

“Your dad must love you. How could he not?”

“Maybe he does, I don’t know. But distance can really change a relationship.” She smiles. Her damp hand reaches up where she thumbs a few soapsuds off my cheek. No idea how they got there. “I don’t hate him, I don’t miss him. I guess I feel pretty indifferent these days. I’m not lacking anything in my life.”

My lashes lower. “So d-do you think something’s wrong with me that I want to see my dad?”

She plucks the last plate from my hands to dry it. “I’m not sure I can answer that without sounding like an asshole. Yes and no? But, I mean, I guess it’s pretty human to want to see where you come from. But how do you handle all the horrible things he’s done?”

Tricky question. “He’s still my dad. I can hate him and love him at the same time, I think? Emotions are dumb that way.”

The last of the dishes are placed on the draining board. I let the soapy water out of the sink, watching the suds and tiny pieces of food remnants swirl down the drain. Autumn presses herself neatly against my side, arms slipping around my waist, her chin propped on my shoulder.

“Do you feel like your life is lacking somewhere, Vic?”

If I’m entirely honest—and with Autumn, I try my best to be… “Yeah.” I turn my head to look at her, and when I meet her eyes, the sense of calm that settles over me is a much-needed relief. “Except sometimes, when I look at you…things feel just right.”

She smiles in a way that makes my chest do funny, fluttery things. “Come on. If your mom’s going to bed, we can do the dorky date thing where we watch dumb movies late into the night.”

“That s-sounds a lot like a date.”

“Maybe it is,” she remarks, sliding away from me and casting a long look over her shoulder, making me wonder if I’m ever going to work up the courage to be the one to kiss her.