Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,25
secrets. He’s way older than me.
I put my hand on Dad’s arm before he gets off the bed. “Are you worried about him?”
He stops, and he’s got his thinking face on for when he’s trying to think how to answer me. I hate that. But then he drops that face and he sighs. “Yeah,” he says, and he pulls me in for a hug. “Yeah. I am.”
He stands up and takes my hand and I let him hold it even though I’m a big girl and I don’t need his hand to get down the steps. “We got pizza,” he says. “No one wanted to cook.”
“Do you have any leads?”
He stops on the steps and gives me this funny half-smile. “Leads? Where did you pick that up? You’re not reading murder mysteries, are you?”
“Not yet. I saw it on CSI.”
“CSI? Your mother lets you watch—”
He interrupts himself and bites his lip, looking away, and my stomach pinches up because I did it again, tattled on Mom, but I didn’t mean to. He starts back down the steps. “Anyway. No, not yet.”
My mom rushes up to hug me when I get downstairs. She tries to smooth down my hair. “Baby, are you okay? Are you feeling sick?”
I shake my head. I’ve learned my lesson about admitting to stomachaches.
“Hi, kiddo,” says Casey.
I almost didn’t see her because she’s sitting on a high barstool in the corner of the kitchen, balancing a paper plate on her knees. She looks like she could be as young as Angel, especially with her hair in a ponytail. And I’m not sure exactly why, but that really makes my mom mad, and Angel, too.
Well, I do know why it bugs Angel. She’s told me before that Casey tries to be her friend and she doesn’t want to be Casey’s friend. That just because she wears high-top Converse doesn’t make her “cool,” and it’s embarrassing to think that Casey might be our stepmom when she looks like a kid instead of like the other moms. One time at the mall a lady thought Casey was our big sister, and I thought Angel was going to barf.
I sneak Casey a little smile, then look quick at my mom, who was talking to my dad and didn’t see it.
The adults are talking again, so I pretend to be invisible so maybe they’ll forget I’m here and stop changing what they say around me.
My dad is talking about how he must have some other friends they don’t know about, someone who knows what’s going on, maybe he’s sneaking around with a bad crowd or something, since none of his band friends know anything, and since his best friend Jacob isn’t his friend anymore. That’s news to me, and it’s a bummer. I liked Jacob.
They all look at Angel, and she goes, What? Stop looking at me, I told you I don’t know anything about it. Angel is ripping apart the pizza with her fingers, pretending to eat it. She’ll throw it away, later, when none of the adults are looking.
My mom starts talking to my dad about why he doesn’t know all his friends and we need to break into his Facebook account and they turn to Casey and she just looks down at her pizza and starts picking at it.
“I made him give me the password when he started Facebook,” Dad says, “just so I’d know, but that was a long time ago and he changed it.”
“Girl Genius can figure it out, though. Right?” says Mom, pointing at Casey, her hand making like a gun, like she’s playing cops and robbers.
They don’t allow that at my school, not even pretend-finger guns.
“I can try,” Casey says, still picking at the pizza. “But it’s not like the movies where anyone who knows a little code can punch buttons and break into anything. It would be just me, guessing the password. Anyway, didn’t you make him take you as a Facebook friend? Look at his profile. You might not have to break into anything.”
My dad looks down at his feet. “I tried that already, at work. I think he put me on restricted view of his profile because there’s pretty much nothing on it. Angel, what about you?”
She tosses her hair behind her shoulder. “No. Not since he wrote on this guy’s wall and told him he was being a jerk to me. I defriended him.”
My dad stands up straight, his eyes wide all of a sudden. “Wait! Casey, you set up a