Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,74

I asked.

Of all the things I didn’t expect—after thinking for a moment, he said, “I misinterpreted God’s message for me when I married your mother. But we all make mistakes and ask for forgiveness.”

If he hadn’t married my mother, there would be no me.

In a jarring change of subjects he said, “There’s a Christian school near our new place, but I’ll have to see it before I decide whether to have you homeschooled or not.”

“You’re going to homeschool me?” It made no sense. He was a workaholic.

“Or Judy.”

I’m sure homeschooling me would be the last thing my father’s mistress would ever want, but it would make no difference to my father. I suddenly felt sorry for Judy Morgan.

I glanced in the side mirror, but there was no bicycle coming up behind us. I felt myself caving in again, my ribs tightened up so it was hard to breathe. I knew what Helen would do—she’d reach up and tear the roof off of this bad dream.

I squeezed my bag to my chest, and that’s when I felt it. The top of the bag was stuffed with things in baggies my mom had tucked in it—a granola bar, some tissues, little bottles of hand sanitizer. But the bottom of the bag felt soft like a pillow. I reached in and pulled out what had been buried—Billy’s sweatshirt jacket. I held it to my face and breathed in the scent of him. I leaned forward and pulled the jacket around my waist, tying the sleeves in a knot in the front.

Maybe my silence annoyed my father. “You’re my child,” he snapped at me. “You don’t get to decide where you go to school.”

Strange for him to act possessive when a minute ago he had implied that I was a mistake.

We stopped at a red light.

I pushed my hands into the jacket pockets and felt the specks of lint and grit at the bottom. And there were three things Billy had left behind—in the right pocket a gum wrapper and a bus transfer, and in the left an old tardy slip. It was scrawled with the date and time and his first-period class, his name printed BLAKE, W., and on the back, sketched by Billy’s hand, not a ghost’s, a cartoon of a dinosaur devouring a math book. I smiled and hid the paper in the pocket.

“I decide where you go and what you do,” my father told me.

I took a deep breath and sat up straight.

“No,” I told him. “I’m the one who decides where I go and what I do.”

He glared at me as if I’d used a four-letter word.

“Hear me out,” I said, “because I have some very important information for you that you’ve never heard before.”

“Is that so?” He smirked. The light turned green and he drove on, turning right at the next corner. Only one block and we’d be on the freeway on-ramp, only a few miles from the airport.

“I’m not going to San Diego,” I said, “and I will never live with you.”

“Really?” He was amused.

“If you don’t let Mom have full custody of me,” I told him, “I’ll tell the judge how you treated me, everything, all the details.”

His face went chalky. “Plenty of marriages dissolve,” he pointed out.

The traffic was backed up—our car sat still.

“I don’t mean about leaving us for another woman or lying about it,” I told him. “I mean how you held a measuring tape against my thigh to see if my skirt was long enough. How you made me jog in place to see if my breasts jiggled.” These things sounded crazy when I said them out loud, but it was all part of his daily routine since I turned twelve. Once, after I’d been to a Bible camp party with a few college-age boys present, he’d threatened to take me to a doctor and have my virginity checked. All I had to say was “And remember how you wanted to take me in to the doctor’s—” before me stopped me, a raised hand in my face.

I stopped talking. He lowered his hand. I knew he was furious. Veins stood out on his temple and neck. Could it be he didn’t know what to say?

“That’s what I’ll swear to in court,” I added.

“Are you trying to blackmail me?” he asked. “I had no idea you were this far gone.” For one moment I thought I’d thrown him so far off his game that he was going to let me go quietly.

“You don’t