Emmy & Oliver - Robin Benway Page 0,85

enemy territory.

“But you can’t do that all the time!” I said.

“When we saw Maureen . . .” my mom started to say, but her tears spilled over, one falling down past her jaw before she could catch it. “When we saw her after,” she started again once she got control of her voice, “that pain, how she was so . . .” The words failed her again.

“We love you more than you can imagine,” my dad said, and even he sounded a little croaky now. “And watching Maureen spend ten years wondering what had happened to her son terrified us.”

“I get it,” I said. “I do. You were scared. Scary things happened. But I’m tired of lying to you, okay? It sucks. It’s not fun. But I have to because you won’t let me do anything! Do you know how many times I could have joined the surf team at school? But I couldn’t, actually, because I needed a parent’s permission.”

“You never even asked!” my mom cried.

“Would you have said yes?” I shot back, and her silence was all I needed. “Look,” I said. “You can keep being scared. Both of you, that’s fine. But I’m done.”

“You’re done, all right,” my mom said. “You’re grounded. No car, no Oliver, absolutely no surfing, obviously, no phone, computer only for schoolwork.”

“I’m seriously the only kid who gets grounded for applying to college,” I muttered.

“You’re grounded for lying,” my mom said.

“We’ll talk about college later,” my dad added, and he sounded as tired as I felt. “Just go upstairs, get ready for bed.”

“It’s eight thirty!”

“Emily.”

“Fine. But who’s picking me up from school tomorrow?”

My parents looked blank.

“No car,” I reminded them, knowing that I was seriously pushing my luck. “If I can’t drive myself to school, I can’t bring myself home, either. Plus, Oliver needs a ride now, too, since I’ve been driving him every morning.”

“You take the car only to school.” My mom quickly amended her earlier rule. “And you come straight home afterward.”

“Fine,” I said. “So nothing I said made any impact on you, I take it.”

My mom pointed at the stairs. “Go.”

“We’ll discuss it,” my dad said.

My mom threw him a look that very clearly said she was done discussing things, but I didn’t see or hear his response as I stormed up the stairs. I was tempted to slam my bedroom door behind me, but if I did, I was pretty sure my mom would start a bonfire in the backyard and use my surfboard as kindling, so I just shut it and then threw my history textbook onto my bed instead. It helped a little, but nothing is as satisfying as slamming a door.

I lay there in the dark for a long time, alternating between seething and panicking. Spending the next however many weeks being landlocked felt like a death sentence, and then I imagined spending two more years that way, my parents still huddled over my every move, and my chest felt tight. I’d be eighteen in a few months, though. I could move out on my own, maybe get an apartment with Caro after all, but I knew that wasn’t a real solution. It’d be like putting a Band-Aid on an arterial wound. It wouldn’t solve the bigger problem.

Around nine thirty, right when I was starting to fall asleep in my clothes, a light suddenly flashed on and flashed off. I sat up, wiping the hair out of my face, and went over to the window. I could see Oliver’s silhouette outlined against the light in his bedroom, his hair hanging in his face as he leaned against the sill.

I did the same, crossing my arms over my waist and wishing they were his arms instead, that he was there instead of a house away. It felt odd to be missing him even though I was looking right at him, when I had spent the past ten years missing him and never knowing where he was. I guess the more you start to love someone, the more you ache when they’re gone, and maybe it’s that middle ground that hurts the most, when you can see them and still not feel like you’re near enough. So close and yet so far.

He turned his light on and off again, our signal. I didn’t dare call out to him lest my parents hear me yelling out the second-floor window (wouldn’t that just be a stellar way to end the day?) so I flicked my own lamp on, then off