treat you like an adult. You can see Sam and you won’t have a curfew as long as you” — she paused as she came up with her conditions on the spot — “keep up with your summer school and seem to be keeping up with your academic goals. Sam can’t stay here overnight, but he can stay here all day long for all I care, and we’ll try to get to know him better.”
She looked at Dad. His mouth worked, but he just shrugged. They both looked at me.
“Oh —” Mom said. “And you still talk to us after you turn eighteen. That’s part of it, too.”
I pressed my fingers against my lips, my elbows leaned on the table. I didn’t want to give up my nights with Sam, but it was a fair compromise, especially when I hadn’t seen any way to a compromise. But what if I shifted? I couldn’t move back in until I was sure that I was stable. That had to be soon. Maybe now? I didn’t know. Cole’s cure would come too late to be useful.
“How do I know you’re not going to try to change the rules on me again?” I asked, stalling. “Sam is not negotiable, for instance. I’m keeping him. Forever and ever. I should put that out there right now. He’s the one.”
Dad made another face but didn’t say anything. Mom, to my amazement, nodded a little. “Okay. I said we’d try. And not stop you from seeing him.”
“And no more punching,” Rachel put in. I shot her a look. I felt it was a bit of cheating, waiting until the conflict had mostly subsided to fulfill her referee duties.
“Right,” Mom said. “Grace, what do you think?”
I glanced around the room: From here I could see the kitchen and the breakfast area, and it made me feel weird. I had thought this would be the last time I came here. That it would be a big fight and I would slam that book shut and never see it again. The idea of coming back to this house and climbing back into my old life was simultaneously relieving and exhausting. I thought of Sam’s dread of shifting again after he’d thought he was done and understood it infinitely.
“I … I have to think about it,” I said. “I want to sleep on it.”
“Can’t you sleep on it here?” Mom asked.
Rachel shook her head. “No, because she has to take me back home, anyway. Referee says.”
I stood up, making it not an option. I didn’t understand why my stomach still burned with nerves after the worst had gone by. “I’ll think about it and come back to talk about it.”
Mom stood up then, too, so fast that the kitten started and hissed in Rachel’s arms, a tiny sound like a sneeze. Mom came around the table and hugged me again — a tight, weird-fitting hug that made me realize I couldn’t remember the last time, before this night, that she had attempted it. I wasn’t exactly sure where to hug her back, now that the time had come. She seemed all boobs and hair, so I just — squeezed in a general way.
“You will come back?” she said into my ear.
“Yes,” I said, and really meant it.
Dad stood up and gave me a draping shoulder-hug, as if possibly he knew he’d also find me all boobs and hair if he tried for a better one.
“Here’s your cat,” Rachel said, and handed my mother the kitten.
“Thank you for bringing her back,” Mom said. I couldn’t tell if she was talking about the cat or me.
Rachel shrugged and hooked arms with me. “It’s what I do.” And with that, she towed me out of the house and back into the car. My parents stood at the doorway and watched the car, oddly forlorn looking, as we backed out and headed down the road. I felt giddy and ill.
The car was quiet for one minute.
Then Rachel said, “I can’t believe they replaced you with a cat.”
I laughed, and it made my skin crawl. “I know, right? Thank you for coming. I mean, thank you. They were reasonable because you were there.”
“They were reasonable because they thought you were dead. Do you — feel okay, Grace?”
I had missed a gear and the car gasped until I shifted to the right gear. I wasn’t the greatest with a stick shift, and suddenly it felt like too much effort to focus on. My stomach clenched again then,