Anger surges in me. “Maybe if you do my homework for me.” My voice rises. “How are you at parametric, polar, and vector functions? Do you know how to analyze planar curves? I spend so much time doing a bunch of crap that doesn’t even need doing! And the one time I actually need to put homework first, you’re telling me I don’t help enough? That’s bullshit!”

“Watch your language!” Mom snaps. She doesn’t move toward me but looks like she wants to. Her body is tight as a piano wire.

Now that I’ve started ranting, I can’t seem to stop. “What’s more important to you? My room being clean, or my grades and my future? If you need help around the house so badly, maybe you shouldn’t have driven Dad off. Or at least you should have had more kids first. Then you’d have a whole army of minions to clean all day long!” My voice rises like a tsunami until it’s no longer under my control.

All the color vanishes from Mom’s face. Guilt and anger tug me in opposite directions, but anger is stronger. “Has Dad ever talked to you about me visiting him? Or him coming here?” I ask.

She blinks at me like she can’t decode the question.

“He says you’re not keen on it,” I continue. “What does that mean? What did you say to him?”

She comes the rest of the way down the stairs and turns away from me, headed for the laundry room.

I follow.

“He’s been upsetting you from the start.” She loads the laundry aggressively, like every item of clothing wronged her somehow. “You used to come back from those camping trips with your lower lip chewed half raw. He was always letting you watch those alien shows that gave you nightmares. And then he moved back to England after promising he wouldn’t. Of course I try to protect you.”

“Protect me? From knowing my own father wants to see me?” She won’t look at me and it’s making me livid. “Why didn’t you tell me he wanted to see me? I thought he didn’t even care!”

“We’ll discuss it later,” she says, still refusing to meet my eyes as she closes the washer.

There’s no point.

“Forget it. I’m going to study at Coffeehole.” I snatch my messenger bag from where I dropped it, hoping Coffeehole isn’t too crowded. My anger with my mom smolders. If she’d let me drive the car, I could go somewhere farther away — somewhere I’d be less likely to see anyone I recognize.