The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,22

school night? No. Uh uh, Sweetheart. You need a proper job, with reasonable hours, and the potential to build a career for yourself out of it. If you want to stand a cat’s chance in hell of becoming Ben’s legal guardian, then none, I repeat, none of this is negotiable. You have seven months to accomplish all of that. You think you can handle it?”

My tongue is stuck to the roof of my fucking mouth. I feel like smashing every stick of furniture in Rhonda’s office into kindling, but instead, I calmly stand, grabbing my jacket from the back of the chair. “I guess I don’t have much choice, do I?”

5

SILVER

“You need to be home by four to watch Max, Sil. I have to work late, and your dad’s in Spokane for some conference. Neither of us will be back before midnight.” My mom’s in a rush, frantically sifting through her bag in search of something. I stab a knife into the butter dish, absently smearing some onto my toast. “Can you give him dinner, Honey? And I don’t mean pizza. A proper meal that has at least one green thing in it. There’s forty bucks on the mail stand if you wanna go grab some groceries.”

This is becoming more and more frequent, this palming-off of Max. Could be that all seventeen-year-olds end up playing stand-in parent once they get old enough, but my parents would never have dreamed of asking me to cart him around or feed him at the beginning of last year. It feels as though something’s changed, and not just all my shit at school. There’s been some kind of dynamic shift inside my home that feels distinctly unpleasant. Barely noticeable, but wrong.

“I’m teaching tonight. Gregory and Lou. Every Wednesday, remember?”

She stops what she’s doing, her hands falling slack, the open-heart surgery she was performing on her purse suddenly forgotten. “Shit. Uhh…” She closes her eyes; the cogs inside her head work overtime for a moment as she tries to come up with a solution to this problem. “I’m sorry. How much do they pay you again? Fifty bucks? I can just give you the cash instead to make up for it.”

“The money’s not the problem. Dr. Coombes drops them here so he can visit their mom. She’s still at St. Jude’s. I can’t just cancel at the last second.”

“Gail’s in a coma, Silver. She’s not going to notice if David doesn’t show up tonight.”

“Mom! Jesus Christ!”

She reacts to my tone, her head jerking around, finally looking at me with wide eyes. She looks like she’s about to yell at me, but then she stops herself. She pinches the bridge of her nose between her fingers, taking a deep breath. “God, I am…that was really insensitive. I don’t even know what’s wrong with me this morning. I’m sorry. Of course David needs to go and see Gail. And yes, you need to take the twins. Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure something out while I’m at work.”

I say nothing. When I tear a chunk out of my toast, it feels like I’m biting into a healthy slice of guilt, though. I drop my cold breakfast onto my plate, pushing it away. “I’ll pick Max up before the boys the arrive. He can play Halo while I do the class. I’ll take him with me to the store afterward.”

My mom nearly sags with relief. She slides across the kitchen in her sock feet, wrapping her arms around me, enveloping me in a Gucci scented hug. “Silver, you are officially the freaking best. I’m sorry to lay that on you, but I do appreciate it. Your dad and I are gonna do better at making sure one of us is always here in the evening from now on, okay? This was just an unavoidable situation.” She plants a kiss on top of my head, squeezing my shoulder, and then she’s back at her bag, singing under her breath as she rummages, the entire thing completely forgotten about.

Gregory and Lou’s mom was T-boned at the intersection by Costco a month ago, and she’s been in a coma ever since. Before the accident, Gail used to be the one who brought the boys over for their guitar lesson, and she and Mom—best friends since high school—would sit in the kitchen at the breakfast counter and drink glasses of Sauvignon Blanc until the class was over.

Mom cried for three days straight after Gail’s accident. A black cloud descended on the house,