Meet her. I get to meet my girlfriend’s mother. How enchantingly, delightfully normal.

I’m in love at first sight with my brand-new reality.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s Father. He and Mum are here to remind me of the other side of my new life, I suppose.

Let them.

“Say what you want to say.” I fold my hands on the table and survey my parents.

The headmaster let us use one of the school meeting rooms for this conversation, for the sake of privacy. It’s quite funny, really, because between the bare walls and the table and chairs, I couldn’t think of a more fitting location to be interrogated. Or, perhaps, let go from one’s job.

Father’s face reddens, then his shoulders drop. “How could you do something so idiotic and rash?” he asks me.

Can he truly still not know the answer to that? Has he not listened to a word I’ve said over the last several months? “I won’t spend the rest of my life terrified someone will see me kissing the person I love.”

Mum closes her eyes as though she’s praying for strength. “You just threw away your future. For a high school relationship.”

“I didn’t. I did it for love.”

She opens her eyes. They’re the same shade of green as mine. A little like looking into my reflection. “You think you love this girl?”

“I know I love her. I intend to be with her forever. But if, for whatever reason, I’m not, there will be another love, and I would’ve had to watch them be harmed, over and over again, in order to force my hand, or protect my name. I would have lived to regret it if I forced myself to go through with your version of my future.”

Father scoffs. “How whimsical.”

“Pardon?”

“Love?” he asks. “What of responsibility? And duty? What of growing up, and accepting that your country is worth a thousand times more than your selfish desires?”

I wonder if he’s thinking of the girl my aunt told me of long ago. The one who had the audacity to fail to live up to our country’s lofty moral standards. The one he loved despite it all. Who was sent where he could not follow.

Mum glances at him, and I think she disapproves of his wording. Does she know of the girl who came before her? Or perhaps she thinks he’s being too harsh on me.

“What is it our country needs?” I ask him. “To believe in a lie? Or do they need to feel they can trust we are who we say we are, even if our honesty risks our popularity? Perhaps,” I add, thinking of Danni, “there are even some people who haven’t felt particularly represented by our family, yet might feel differently now.”