“Raced up a tree. Back to my numbers—I know how to take care of my diabetes. I know when to test, I know how and when to give my shots, I know when I’ve got problems. I’ve got one more year left until I graduate. You need to start worrying less about me and more about you.”
“Logan,” Dad starts, but I cut him off again.
“And what you said at the hospital, you’re right. I don’t have any idea what I want to do with my future, but you were wrong. That doesn’t mean I don’t know who I am. You may not like who I am, but I do. I do crazy shit. Why? Because I like to. Did I not test and take care of myself to hide the diabetes? Yeah, but that’s done, but I’m not going to change the rest of me. If I die doing something stupid like racing up a tree, then you can know I died being who I am. Not liking who I’ve become and telling me I don’t know who I am are two different things. You can’t control my diabetes, and you can’t change me.”
When I glance up from the spaghetti, it’s hard to meet Dad’s eyes. He looks like I struck him. He presses his lips together and when his mouth opens like he might say something, he pushes back his chair with enough force that it squeaks against the tiles and he leaves.
The front door slams shut and the glasses on the counter shake. I’ve lost my appetite, but I keep forcing down the food. If I don’t eat, my blood sugar will continue to tank.
“You want to leave, too, don’t you?” I say to Mom, and when I glance up her worn-out expression tells me everything I need to know.
“Yes,” Mom admits. “But I feel like I should stay.”
I finish what’s in my mouth and I study her. Mom looks older tonight. More her age. A few of her curly blond strands have broken away from her ponytail and cover her face. She smooths them back.
“Why are you here? Why wasn’t Dad at work?”
“We didn’t like how things were left at the hospital and knew you were coming home tonight. We just wanted to spend time with you. Logan, you’ve been so...distant lately. With your friends graduating and the change in schools and this girl we didn’t know about being shot and...we feel out of touch.”
My mind spins as I catch up too fast, too late. Spaghetti. Dad doesn’t cook spaghetti. Too many carbs. “That wasn’t a meatball, was it?”
“It’s a meatball...without meat.”
It was a meal made by my mother for me and I was too caught up in my problems with Abby to notice the obvious. With a blink of my eye, I finally see what I was blind to before. The dinner table set. Cut-up strawberries on the counter. Dressing for a salad.
Damn. I came barreling in, my problems on my mind. Pointing out their flaws and I never once considered their emotions, their concerns, and how they feel about me.
I exhale and push the container of spaghetti away. “I’m sorry.”
Mom places her hand over mine. “What’s going on with you?”
“I’m in love with Abby.”
Mom smiles and when she notices I’m not smiling with her, she edges her chair closer to me. “Did she break up with you?”
“She sells pot and in order to get out of dealing she’s leaving town. So, yeah, in a way, she is. And before you ask, I don’t do drugs. I’ve never been around her when she’s sold and yes, the dealing is why she was shot and why she’s getting out.”
Mom goes perfectly still and after a few beats of silence, I continue. “But she’s more than a dealer. She’s crazy and funny and beautiful and smart.” I glance over at Mom. “She’s brilliant. Can keep up with me like no one else. She makes me think differently about things, about who I am and who I want to be and she’s leaving.”
Emotion chokes me up and I just shake my head as if that can tell Mom the rest of what I can’t speak.
“No one prepares you for any of this—being a parent,” Mom says. “There’s a ton of classes to take on having a newborn, but after that, they shove you out to be on your own.
“Nobody could have prepared me for the fear I had when you were sick or the endless pit of panic