to you before you make any assumptions.”
“Started every terrible conversation ever,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“I wouldn’t say it’s terrible.”
“Let me be the judge.”
“Fine.” She put the car in park, turning so her back was to the door. “Your dad and I have arranged for you to attend Loraine’s summer camp.”
Images of a hokey campground filled my brain. Loraine’s delinquent camp for troubled youth was three hundred miles away. In Texas. In the heat. Negative. Not happening.
“I’m not going to Loraine’s,” I said, laughing. “But funny joke. Great job.”
“It’s summer camp or boarding school,” she said. “Take your pick.”
Spit caught in my throat, choking the life from me. Boarding school?! Hold up. Was she serious?
I checked the back seat for cameras, then stared at my mom again when I realized it wasn’t a hidden camera game show. “Hang on. You really just said boarding school, didn’t you?”
“We would prefer camp.”
“Uh-uh,” I said, holding my hands up. “I’m sorry, but the last time I checked this was a free country and I’m legally an adult. I pick option C. Neither.”
“You have a college fund that might convince you otherwise,” she said.
My face warmed. That college fund was mine to do whatever I wanted. If I went to school, great. If I took a gap year and explored all the artwork in Europe, great. All I had to do was graduate.
“We’ve been saving for you for college since you were a baby,” she said. “But I speak for your father and me both when I say we’re concerned about whether or not you’ll be able to buckle down and focus on school the way you should focus on it. Your absences weren’t the only thing that held you back, Alex. Your grades were abysmal. You’re repeating your senior year more for that than anything.”
Anger snaked its way up my spine, and I balled my fists against my legs. “Okay. The last time I checked, government and economics wasn’t worth being high on my priorities list,” I said. “I was focused on getting out of PT. You know, trying to be the girl who almost died. And now you want to sit here and give me some crappy ultimatum? That’s messed up! That’s my money.”
“It’s ours until we think you’re fit enough to handle it,” she said, shaking her head.
Red flooded my vision. “This is your way of getting revenge, huh?” I said, narrowing my eyes. “I tarnished your glowing reputation. Now you’re forcing me into stupid therapy sessions, while stealing my money and shipping me off to camp! What kind of parents are you?!”
“I couldn’t care less about my reputation,” she said, looking at me with an unreadable expression that boiled my blood. “What I care about is you. I care about you throwing your life away. I care about you failing to see all the positives going for you, because you’re too wrapped up in what happened last year.
“I genuinely hate the idea of you being that far from us. I hate the thought of something happening to you while you’re there. But don’t make me fight you on this. I don’t want to fight you when I feel like I’ve spent the last year fighting a battle trying to save you from yourself.”
Her words sliced me like a knife, shredding my heart and biting through any attempt I could muster at being difficult or distant. Overbearing or not, at least she cared.
“Then maybe you should quit trying to save me and let me save myself,” I said.
Silence buried its way between us, a suffocating silence turning my anxiety on overdrive. I bit my lip until blood tasted copper against my tongue, a mountain of terrible words battling the few pieces of sympathy I had left.
“If I go, I can’t promise I’ll come back.”
“If you want this money, you will.”
2
Welcome to Texas
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Houston,” the pilot said, “where it’s a stifling one hundred and one degrees and eighty-three percent humidity. Local time, two thirty. We’ll be taxiing for a minute.”
“Which translates to: Congrats, you’re about to melt your makeup off,” I said, switching my iPhone off airplane mode.
Minutes later, the flight attendants opened the plane door. People rushed to stand, more eager to enter the world of impeding heat exhaustion than me. I waited until the aisle was clear, then yanked my duffel out of the overhead compartment and exited the plane.
Surprisingly, what I expected to be some cowboy-infested airport turned out to be a