Emmy & Oliver - Robin Benway Page 0,89
. . .
“And you know no one is allowed over tonight while we’re gone.”
There it is.
“I know, Mom,” I said. “The details are pretty clear.”
“Well, seeing as how you’ve been lying to us about so many other things.”
She was flipping through the mail, not really paying attention to me, so I gave her one good eye roll before going up to my room. Again, the urge to slam the door was overwhelming. Maybe that’s what I’ll do while I’m home alone, I thought. Slam my bedroom door a few times. Another wild and crazy night at Chez Emmy.
Instead, I changed clothes and did my homework sans music or the internet. It turns out that being grounded makes you really productive, and I cranked through two chapters of my civics textbook and diagrammed the Krebs Cycle for bio by the time I realized it was dark outside and my mom was knocking on my bedroom door. “Okay, I’m going,” she said. “Food is downstairs for you. Bed by ten.”
“’Kay,” I said. I must have looked like the model child, sitting at my desk with no distractions, surrounded by textbooks and notepads and highlighters.
“I’ll be home by eleven, Dad should be here by ten thirty.”
“’Kay.”
“Emmy, don’t sulk.”
“I’m not sulking!” I said. “I just said okay, that’s it! What else do you want me to say?”
She ignored my question. “Are you doing your homework?”
“No, I’m plotting a government takeover.” I held up a highlighter. “Can’t do it without the pink one, though. That’s just foolish.”
My mom narrowed her eyes at me, but ignored that comment, too. “Bed by ten,” she said again. “You stay up too late.”
I bit back a comment about how ten p.m. is practially late afternoon, and instead just said okay again.
“Call me if you need anything.”
“Mom.” I closed my eyes, then opened them. “Okay.”
She looked at me one last time, like she didn’t know who I was, like I was some stranger who had moved into her daughter’s room and was organizing her school supplies. “Bye,” she finally said, then went downstairs. I waited until I heard the garage door close behind her, then the sound of her car disappearing down the street, before I closed my textbooks and went downstairs to eat dinner.
It was turkey meat loaf with a mustard glaze and red smashed potatoes, one of my top three favorite meals, and I wondered if it was a concession while I ate and watched an episode of the Kardashians. None of the Kardashians were ever grounded. One of them even made a sex tape! My mom would probably sacrifice me to the gods if I had a leaked sex tape. (Which, just to clear up any confusion, is not something that I will ever, ever have. Leaked or not.)
I left the TV on as I loaded my plate into the dishwasher, then turned it off and put on music while I showered and changed into sweats and an old T-shirt that said SAVE THE HEDGEHOG on it (for the record, I don’t know why the hedgehog needs saving; it’s just a comfortable shirt). I was reading a book that Caro had loaned me that she had gotten from her oldest sister, Jessica, and I was about to start reading it when I saw Oliver’s light flick off, then back on.
“Can I come over?” he said as soon as I poked my head out the open window. His voice was different, low and serious and shaky. “I need to come over.”
“No one’s here,” I called back. “I can’t—”
“I need to come over.”
There was an urgency to him that scared me. I wondered if he and Maureen had had a fight, if that was just the latest trend on our street.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “The back door’s open. Come on up.”
He must have run because he made it up to my bedroom in record time. “Wow, that was—” I started to say, but the words died on my lips once I saw him. His hair was disheveled, his eyes frantic, and he was shaking.
“What is it?” I asked, crossing the room to his side as he shut the bedroom door behind him.
“Pull the blinds,” he said to me.
“What?”
“Just do it, Emmy. Please.” He sounded like he was choking and I realized that he had the envelope from Columbia in his hands, which were trembling as much as the rest of him.
“Okay, okay,” I said, then closed them. When I turned around, Oliver was still standing there, still holding the