Spring Secrets - Allie Boniface Page 0,35

the gym full of equipment, the locker rooms, the sleek wooden desk, and the smoothie bar behind it. “Keep me in mind.”

Dash had no intention of doing anything of the kind. “Sure.” He picked up a pen and motioned at the door. “See you around.”

SIENNA COULD CUT THE tension with a knife the minute she stepped inside her parents’ house. “Ma? Dad?”

There was a long pause. Then her mother emerged from the dining room. “We’re in here. Talking to your brother. Trying to get some answers.” She spoke in short, clipped sentences and looked as though she’d been crying.

Sienna kicked off her boots and hung up her coat. She followed her mother into the dining room. As usual, the table was piled high with food. Her father sat at one end of the table. Her brother sat in the middle. Both stared at their plates. No one said a word.

“What’s going on?” She took her customary seat across from her brother. He sported a black eye, a serious glower and three days’ worth of beard growth. “What happened at school?”

“Why don’t you ask your brother?” her father said. He dug into the bowl of potatoes with such vengeance, Sienna was afraid he might shatter the bottom of it.

She tried to catch Louie’s eye, but he stared stubbornly at his fork and knife. “Okay, I give up.” She helped herself to a slice of roast beef and a spoonful of green beans. “Why were you fighting? Who were you fighting?”

“Jack and Carlos,” Ma said, her voice trembling with anger.

“His best friends?”

“I have no idea why or what happened. He won’t say a thing. I’ve asked and asked. All I know is that I got a call in the middle of the afternoon saying the three of them were fighting in the bathroom.” Ma threw up both hands. A fork went flying. “I can’t get an answer beyond that. Five days’ automatic suspension for all of them. Five days.”

“Lou?”

“Leave it alone,” he muttered. “It’s not a big deal.” He looked up, his cheeks bright red. “Kids get suspended all the time. It’s just stupid school policy. We weren’t even fighting. We were just horsing around.”

Her father slammed down his fork. “People in this house do not get suspended all the time. Or horse around to the extent that I get a phone call about it.”

“Oh, I forgot. Right. It’s just me, then. Miss Goody-Goody never did one single thing wrong in her whole life.”

“Louie!” Ma gasped. “Don’t talk about your sister that way.”

“It’s fine, Ma.” Sienna tried to read her brother’s face but couldn’t. He wasn’t a bad kid. And he was right—the school’s no-tolerance policy meant sometimes kids did get detention or suspension for little things. Not like fighting was a little thing. But still. Something must have set him off today.

“It isn’t fine. Apologize right now.”

“Ma—” Sienna began, but her mother was on the warpath.

“Whatever,” Louie muttered.

“Whatever. Is. Not. An. Apology.” Ma drew herself up to her full five feet of height. “No cell phone, no computer, and no leaving the house for the next five days. Consider yourself under house arrest, mister. And when the suspension is over, I’m driving you to school every day. There and back.”

At that, Louie shoved back his chair and marched from the room. A moment later, his bedroom door slammed so hard, it rang through the house.

“I don’t know what’s happened to him the last few months.” Ma pushed away her plate.

“He turned sixteen,” Sienna said. She remembered being that age. Restless in her own skin, edgy, wanting to stay a kid, wanting to grow up, feeling like she had to act a certain way as adulthood approached. “I kind of believe him when he said he was horsing around. I mean, this is Jack and Carlos we’re talking about. They’ve been best friends since preschool. Maybe it was something small that got blown out of proportion.”

Her father didn’t say anything, just shook his head. She hated the pain on his face, the look of disappointment, as if he’d personally let down the high school principal. A moment later he got up and walked out. Sienna tried to eat, but she’d lost her appetite. Even her mother’s roast beef and mashed potatoes tasted like sawdust in her mouth.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she pulled it out and set it on the table. Normally her mother didn’t allow phones during dinner, but this didn’t feel like a normal Friday night dinner.

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