I raised both brows. “Uh, who else should she be blaming?”
Forgetting caution, he reeled off the list with full resentment. “People, Ben Zwick, the media, and the crazies who listen to their stuff—I don’t know. I didn’t ask them to come snooping around.”
“Christopher,” I fairly shouted, “listen to yourself. You hacked into school computers, then you hacked into Inn computers, then you hacked into the Twitter account of a journalist with a national following. You are the reason this is happening. So, excuse me, but it is your fault.” I was breathing fast, perhaps not thinking about the fact that this wasn’t the best place to be talking, but I didn’t see other people, just the three of us. So I asked outright, “Why did you do it? Were you trying to get someone’s attention?”
“No.”
“Trying to goad your mother into telling you about your dad?”
He shook his head, but his mouth was shut so tight that I figured at least part of the answer was yes. “What did you hope to accomplish?”
He stuck out his chin.
“Do you understand that what you did was wrong?”
He looked away.
“Are you sorry, Chris? Tell me that, at least, please, tell me that.”
The gaze that met mine was liquid. “Yes, I’m sorry,” he said, more boy than man now. “If I could go back and delete everything, I would, but it was like”—frantic eyes skittered away, then returned—“like this addictive thing, and being able to do it was awesome, because I’m a nobody—I mean, a nobody. I’m not a star at much, and I was feeling screwed over, so I wanted to show them—show someone I could—only it blew up in my face. So now I’m totally fucked, but I didn’t know, I swear I never thought—never thought anything like this would happen.” His voice stopped, but his throat continued to work, his Adam’s apple bobbing at the hoodie’s throat.
Anger notwithstanding, my heart did chip then. Stepping forward, I rose on tiptoe and hugged him. He smelled of ratty sweatshirt and boy, and his breathing was rough, but I didn’t feel crying. He would refuse to do that with Edward watching.
I didn’t speak, and it had nothing to do with the March chill, our audience, or the fists pressing into my back. Truth be told, I was too keyed up to say anything profound.
Truth be told, I was too inexperienced to say anything profound. I didn’t have a child. Parenting anything older than a five-year-old was foreign to me.
When I pulled back, he was looking destroyed. The last two weeks had done that to him, and I hadn’t helped. My sin here, now, was one of style, though, not substance.
“Blaming everyone else won’t help,” I said softly.
“But my mom—”
I turned, about to tell Edward to get Grace, when he nodded his understanding and went back inside.
“She hates me.”
“A mother never hates her child.”
“Then why is she being like this? Doesn’t she know how I feel?”
“Have you told her?” I asked, but he couldn’t hear past himself.
“I am suffering. I go to school, and it’s like I have a disease. No one talks to me there, either.”
“No one?”
“Well, except for people who think what I did was cool, but it wasn’t, Maggie, I know that now, my mind just wasn’t there when I did it. And okay, so the Feds are watching what I do, but that doesn’t mean someone’ll get in trouble for walking to fucking class with me.”
“Language,” I warned in the voice of Grace. When he pouted, I asked, “You have friends. What about them?”
“Friends.” He rolled his eyes and, way too cynical for fifteen, said, “Oh yeah, friends. Well, we text sometimes, and they sound like they still like me, only they don’t want to be seen with me, and that’s okay, at least Mom’s right about that. She says it says something about them, and that if they can’t see past who I really am, the statement’s more about them than about me.”
“So she does talk to you.” That restored my faith, at least a bit.
“Not today. Why won’t she answer my texts?” He glanced at the door through which Edward had gone. “He’s not coming out with her so fast. Maybe he can’t find her. Maybe she’s refusing to come out. Maybe she’s not even in there. Maybe she’s gone into hiding.”
“She’s working, Chris. I know this for fact. She’s with a client.”
“But she takes breaks. That’s when she texts me back, only she’s not doing