And I will crush him. Not intentionally, and probably not without crushing myself a bit in the process, but it’s going to happen. Not because Aiden is a bad guy—I think the fact that he’s in my bedroom despite all Mom’s rules speaks for itself. As does the fact that he made a cute Rapunzel joke instead of complaining when I told him he’d have to climb the drainpipe and sneak into my bedroom if he wanted to see me. I couldn’t risk letting him use the front entrance like a normal person (I wouldn’t put it past Mom to rig the door with some kind of undetectable sign to check if it’s been opened when she leaves me home alone).

I should probably explain about my mom.

She’s amazing and funny—but nearly every hour of the day she’s terrified out of her mind that something terrible is going to happen to me. I think it has to do with how she grew up. She’s never been exactly forthcoming about her past, but I do know that her mom dropped her on the doorstep of her unsuspecting father’s trailer when she was three, never to be seen again, and that the height of her dad’s parenting skills was remembering to feed her most of the time. He died shortly before I was born, so I’ve never met him, but given my mom’s lack of parental supervision growing up, it seems like she swung really far the other way with me.

Until a few years ago, the only time I was allowed on the computer was for school—home school, that is. And I think it was more my mom’s fear of algebra than any of my pleading that finally made her relent and allow me to go to public school. Though, to be fair, it might also have been the hunger strike I enacted.

It took me a little longer to convince her to let me get a cell phone, which I finally accomplished by printing out news stories at school about kids who got kidnapped and saved themselves by calling for help. Were some of them stories I wrote myself using mock- up layouts I found online? Maybe. But sometimes my mom needs that extra push to rein in the superparanoid would-keep-me-in-a-bubble-forever mentality that defines her as a parent.

I’ve learned that the best way to get what I want is to either convince her I’m in more danger if she doesn’t listen to my suggestions (e.g., public school, a cell phone) or just keep a few harmless details from her (e.g., Aiden).

Most days, I think she knows I cut corners when it comes to her rules, but I like to think she’s the teeniest bit proud of me when I figure out how to get around one. I’m not stupid enough to flaunt Aiden in front of her, though, which is why I practically shove him off the chair when I hear the front door open downstairs.

She did break her record. It isn’t even nine o’clock yet.