I was always the bad guy. Sometimes I wondered, if there was a father figure around, would things be different? Or would she still hate me because I was her mother? “Don’t talk to me like that. I don’t deserve it. There’s not a mother in the world who’d allow you to take off. And if your so-called friends are doing it, I bet they have parents who don’t care. Consider yourself lucky.”

I pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine. The silence was explosive. I waited for her to rush out, scream, or come up with some more vicious verbal attacks, but she just turned her head and looked at me for a while. For a few shocking seconds, she reminded me of my mother, that same yearning and grief in her beautiful dark eyes, where once there had been love and trust and joy.

“Sure, you care, Mom. But not the way you think. Not about the stuff that’s most important.”

She opened the door and ran out before I had a chance to answer.

I sat in the car, in the dark, and watched as rain began to drizzle down on the windshield. I watched the running rivulets trickle in wiggly waves and wondered what she meant.

“I care about you,” I whispered.

But there was no one there to hear me.

CHAPTER SIX

Allegra

“Are we ready to party?”

Freda waved her hands in the air, scrunched up tight next to me in the back seat of the car. Connor shouted in agreement, pumping up the music, and blew out a steady vape stream. I liked that a lot better than the cigarettes so had gratefully switched. It didn’t give me that unpleasant burn in the back of my throat and went into my lungs smoothly, with the flavor of mocha.