Spiraling (16 page)

“OK.” I agreed.

Arguing with James wasn’t going to make the situation better. His right hand was clenched in a fist and from the way he glared at Devon, I was worried my stepfather was about to hit my boyfriend. Standing up, I stepped between the two of them and looked at Devon. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight,” Devon said. Then he walked around James and down the sidewalk.

James watched to make sure Devon left before turning his glare on me. “Get inside.”

“Yes, sir.” I hurried into the house with James on my heels.

“Go to your room,” he yelled as he slammed the door. “You’re grounded.”

“What did I do?” I asked.

“Don’t pull that shit with me. You know full well what you did. I’m not going to have my fifteen-year-old daughter making out with some punk on the front porch.”

“We weren’t making out.”

“The hell you weren’t!”

Mom walked out of her office and asked, “What is going on out here?”

James whirled around. “Do you know where your daughter just was?”

“No.” Mom shook her head. “Where was she?”

“Out on the porch with some hooligan,” James answered.

“I assume you’re talking about Devon,” Mom said. “He had dinner with us.”

James’ eyes widened. “You’re okay with her seeing that boy?”

Mom nodded. “He seems like a nice kid. He’s well-mannered and—”

“Well, I’m not okay with it. He and your daughter were all over each other when I pulled into the driveway.”

“Victoria.” Mom scowled at me.

“We weren’t all over each other,” I said. “We kissed but that’s it.”  I turned back to James. “Is it against the law to kiss my boyfriend now?”

“Like that, it is,” James answered. “Especially at your age.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m fifteen. Not five.”

“I know damn well how old you are: too young to date.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. I don’t want you seeing that boy anymore.”

“I’m not breaking up with Devon.”

“Don’t tell me what you’re
not
doing,” he yelled.

I turned to my mother for support. “Mom, tell him he’s not being reasonable.”

“Tori, I think James might be right on this one,” Mom said. “You’re a little too young to be making out with boys.”

“We weren’t making out.” I stomped my foot.

Mom sighed. “For the sake of argument, let’s say you
were
just kissing. That still doesn’t make it all right. You’re too young to be kissing boys at your age, especially the way James says you were kissing. Devon seems like a nice boy, but—”

“He
is
a nice boy. We weren’t doing anything wrong. I don’t know what James thinks he saw, but we were just kissing. That’s all. Then he walks up and starts being really crappy to Devon for no reason.”

“For no reason?” James scoffed. “It’s not like I’m going to be nice to the boy after I catch him all over my daughter on my front porch in front of all the neighbors.”

I glared at him out of the corner of my eye. “You’re totally overreacting.”

“I am
not
overreacting.” James huffed. “I pull up and see some eighteen, nineteen-year-old kid all over my
fifteen-year-old daughter
and you think
this
is overreacting. I should have kicked that kid’s ass.”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s not eighteen or nineteen.”

“Well then, exactly how old
is
he?” James demanded. “He sure as hell isn’t
your
age.”

“He just turned seventeen.”

“Seventeen?” James raised his eyebrows. “That’s not much better. You’re
fifteen
, Tori. It might not seem like it, but there’s a
big
difference between fifteen and seventeen. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to date a seventeen-year-old boy. I especially don’t think it’s a good idea for you to date
that
seventeen-year-old boy.”

“I already told you,” I said. “I’m not breaking up with him.”

“The hell you’re not. As long as you live under my roof you’re going to do what I say and I say you’re not to go anywhere near that boy.”

“Well, that’s going to be kind of hard considering we go to the same school. Do you not want me to go to school now?”

James narrowed his eyes. “Don’t get smart with me, young lady.”

“I wasn’t getting smart,” I said.

“You know full well what I mean. I don’t want to see that boy around here again.”

“Fine, he won’t come here.”

“You’re not going anywhere with him, either.”

My mouth dropped open. “That’s not fair. You don’t even know him and you’re passing out all these judgments about what kind of person he is.”

“I know his type,” James said.

“Obviously, you don’t,” I replied. “If you did, you wouldn’t have a problem with me going out with him. Ask Mom.” I pointed to my mother. “He’s a really great guy.”

“He does seem like a nice boy, James,” Mom said. Then she turned to me. “That’s not to say that I approve of
your
behavior.”

I folded my arms across my chest and frowned. “We weren’t doing anything.”

“All right.” Mom sighed.

“No, it’s not all right,” James said. “She doesn’t need to be running around acting like a floosy.”

“James!” Mom objected.

“I’m not budging on this one, Liz.” James folded his arms across his chest and nodded for emphasis. “She’s grounded.”

I scrunched my face and groaned in protest.

“We’ll talk about it,” Mom said.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” James replied.

“We’ll talk about it.” Mom repeated. “Tori, why don’t you go up to your room? It’s getting late. James and I will talk and let you know what we come up with in the morning.”

“Fine.” I trudged up the stairs, stopping near the top where I was no longer visible from the living room. Then I turned around, sat on a step, and listened.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Liz,” James said. “You didn’t see what I saw. She and that boy were all over each other. Do you know how that makes us look? Our daughter acting like a trollop on our doorstep?”

“You’re right,” Mom replied. “I
didn’t
see what she was doing, but yelling at her is not going to do any good. Trust me. I’ve tried talking to her about this boy. She’s pretty hung up on him and as long as she thinks we’re attacking him, she’s not going to listen to anything we say.”

“I don’t think she’s old enough to be dating, Liz.”

“Tori’s not a little girl. She’s fifteen. She’s going to have boyfriends and she might even kiss some of them. We’re just going to have to get used to it.”

“Not if we lock her in her room until she’s eighteen.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m not being dramatic. I don’t want her around that kid. Something about him doesn’t sit right with me.”

“I have concerns about him, too,” Mom said. “But if we try to stop Tori from seeing him, it’s just going to backfire. Instead of telling us where she’s going, she’ll lie and sneak around behind our backs.”

“She can’t sneak anywhere if she’s locked in her room,” James replied.

“We can’t lock her in her room. As much as I’d like to sometimes, we’re just going to have to ride this out. Eventually she’ll find someone else she likes better and we won’t have to worry about this boy anymore.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

“She will. She’s going to have a lot more boyfriends we don’t like before she’s done.”

James sighed. “So, we have
that
to look forward to.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s part of having a teenage daughter,” Mom said.

“This was so much simpler when she thought boys were gross,” James replied.

Mom laughed. The conversation died out as they left the living room. I sat on the step for another minute in case they started talking again before I quietly went the rest of the way up the stairs, pretty sure that I wasn’t grounded.

“I want to know everything about you,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Devon asked, gently rubbing my shoulder.

We lay together on his bed. The last rays of afternoon sun shined in the small window, casting a warm glow on the white plaster walls. I watched my finger as I traced the outline of the yellow skeleton on his Metallica shirt. My mind was filled with questions. They bounced around like the balls in a lottery machine.

“I mean, I want to know about your life. About what you did when you were a kid? What you want to do after high school? Stuff like that.”

He shrugged. “I don’t really know what I want to do after high school. I haven’t given it a lot of thought.”

“Do you want to go to college?”

“Maybe. I thought about being a teacher once.”

“A teacher?” I leaned up on my arm so I could look at his face. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you want to be a teacher?”

“When I was a sophomore, I had this teacher that helped me through a lot of shit. Everybody else kind of wrote me off, but he wouldn’t. I don’t know why.” He paused. “There was this one day; I’d gotten in trouble for about the hundredth time and I was sitting in the principal’s office. Mr. Hamilton sat down next to me and handed me this book, Plato’s
Republic
. Instead of giving me one of the long lectures he usually did, he just told me to read it and think about the just man.”

“The just man?” I crinkled my brow. “What does that mean?”

“In book two of the
Republic
, there’s a discussion about this ring that makes its wearer invisible. The one guy says that even a good person couldn’t resist the temptation to do bad things if they knew they could never be caught. Socrates says that a truly just, or honorable, man wouldn’t put the ring on in the first place and, therefore, wouldn’t have to worry about temptation.”

“Would you put it on? The ring?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably.”

“I would. Being able to do anything I wanted would be pretty cool.”

“Yeah,” he said half-heartedly.

I got the impression that I had missed something. He looked toward the window and inhaled slowly. When he turned back to me, he forced a slight smile. Then he kissed me on the forehead.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Are you sure? You look a little bummed out.”

“I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Nothing important.” He shook his head and offered a more jovial smile. “So, I think it’s your turn.”

“My turn?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “You’ve got to tell me something about you now. Isn’t that the way this works?”

“I’m not as fascinating as you are,” I said.

“You are to me.”

I thought for a second. “I was kind of a tomboy when I was a kid.”

“
You
were a tomboy?” He chuckled. “Why don’t I believe that?”

“It’s true. Chris and I used to go on these really great camping trips with our dad. We’d go out in the woods and stay in this crappy little tent for days. Dad showed us how to fish and we even went hunting once.”

“I never would have pictured
you
camping in the woods.”

“That was my favorite thing to do with my dad. He worked a lot so it was really the only time we got to spend with him. We’d come home filthy and Mom would throw such a fit. She’d spend hours digging sticks and stuff out of my hair, yelling at dad the whole time for not making me put it up. He’d always tell her to just cut it off and we wouldn’t have to worry about it getting tangled in everything.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked, playing with a strand of my hair.

“I did once,” I answered. “Took a pair of scissors and chopped it all off. I thought Mom was going to have a heart attack. The state finals were that weekend and there wasn’t a lot the beautician could do with it. I had to wear this huge wig. It was so awful.”

“State finals? For what?”

“I was in pageants up until I was eight. I won a lot of trophies and stuff.”

“So, you were a tomboy pageant princess?” He laughed.

“Yes. I was. You got a problem with that?”

“Not at all.” He shook his head and smiled. “I’m just picturing you in one of those pageant dresses with all the sequins…running around out in the woods…getting sticks caught in your wig.” He could barely get out the last part through his growing laughter.

“Oh, like you’ve never done
anything
embarrassing in your life.”

“Nope. Never.”

“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes and pushed on his chest.

He caught my hand and held it in his. Then he stared at me for a moment and his laughter faded. “I love you,” he said softly before he kissed me.