This was a nightmare. I was going to get sued, and we’d lose everything. That, or someone would involve the police, and I’d get arrested. I didn’t know what for, exactly, but there was probably some law I wasn’t aware of that covered leaking information. Then they’d find out what I did with Ray and it’d be all over.

I couldn’t hold the tears back any longer.

Mom glanced sideways at me, caught sight of my expression, and softened just a touch. “You’re right, though,” she said, her voice still firm. “You did get lucky that nothing worse happened. It could’ve been a lot worse. As it stands, miss, we will be issuing a notice through the school that anyone who would like a refund can come to see me. I’ll organize that, and you can pay me back. If it takes you fourteen more years, so be it.”

“I don’t see why we need to offer refunds to everyone. I did what they paid me to do.”

“Damage control,” Mom said simply.

All the work I’d done over the last few years. All of it, over. Everything I’d earned, turned into debt. No more locker. No more advice. No more warm glow when I’d solved a tricky problem. No more knowing I’d helped people with no one else to turn to.

It was all done.

“And it goes without saying that you’re grounded,” Mom said. “And I’m out of town for the ninth-grade science camp tomorrow night. I don’t know if I can trust you anymore. Do we even have trust between us?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Well, I don’t know, Darcy. You didn’t tell me this.”

I scoffed. “When was I supposed to do that, Mom? You make me hang around here every afternoon but you’re too busy grading papers to talk to me when I need help. I have to go to Ainsley for everything—”

“That’s not fair.”

“It is! Ainsley drives me everywhere, and gives me all the advice, and comforts me when I’m crying in my room, not that you ever noticed. You don’t even know about Brougham, for god’s sake.”

“What about Brougham?”

“I don’t want to talk about Brougham right now,” I said. “That’s not the point. The point is that I did want to talk about him with you and you were too busy. Like you always are.”

Mom stared at me with a wounded expression. “I’m always asking after you. How could you say I’m too busy for you?”

“You ask, but when I start telling you, you drift off!”

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

Mom took a measured, deep breath. “You’re upset, and you’re projecting onto me, and that’s not fair.”