Sorry about getting so upset about the Van Johnson thing. I mean, if you ever read this, you’ll probably think I was overreacting and you’ll be right. I guess I was just in shock. It was hard to believe Van Johnson did a whole song about my dad and also that he got it so wrong. My sister agrees with your mom that Van’s an immature idiot, but Kate watches him too, because everyone does.

My mom made me and Kate meet her in the living room for a family meeting. Oh joy. I already hate family meetings due to how bad the last one was. We need another name for them. Life ruiner talks? Terrible news conversations?

“Rodney, Kate, I know that was painful to see, but the internet is not real life. It’s not where we go to learn the truth about things,” said my mom, which was funny because she goes on the internet every ten minutes to look up stuff about makeup and clothes and meditation and exercise. But I’ve noticed she’s not on there talking to her friends from back home either. I guess we have that in common.

Kate and my mom were on the only couch and I was in the only soft chair in the living room. None of it was very comfortable, probably because Mom’s cousin Maria is so into exercise and being adventurous that she never bothered to get nice furniture that is good for relaxing on. She probably just uses the old couch to hold her climbing ropes and the easy chair for doing stretches or something. Maria looks like my mom, but also like everyone else around here: skinny and dusty and happy. Her girlfriend is from Germany and, in the pictures they have all around the house, she also looks dusty and happy, but she’s twice as big as Maria, which is funny.

I looked at the big framed photo over the couch, where my mom sat rubbing Kate’s back. It was a picture of Stony Butte taken from the top of the butte, and it was pretty impressive, with the pink-and-orange skies and dark-blue mountains way in the distance. The town itself was this little checkerboard below. It was nothing. It didn’t matter. I thought about that while my mom tried to tell us that the Van Johnson thing wasn’t a big deal. Ha.

Ha. Ha.

I was trying not to freak out. I thought about how you almost always stay cool in tense situations. Be like Larry, I told myself. It worked for a little while. But it was hard because Van Johnson’s most popular videos, usually his songs, get watched by twenty or thirty million people. THIRTY. MILLION. PEOPLE. Listening to a song. About my dad. A song filled with lies.

“Can we sue him?” I asked.

“Who?” said my mom.

Kate looked at me like the chair just said something.