“I hope you know,” he said, finally, “that prison was never punishment for me. Losing your mom was my punishment. Losing you was my punishment. Nothing could ever measure up to losing the two of you. Prison was just time to think about what I’d already lost.”

It was moments like this when I knew I had waded too far into Wynonna’s personal life. Now I was neck-deep in it, and the current was pulling me in farther and farther. What could I do?

What could I say?

“I’m here now,” I said.

I smiled to mask the lie.

SEVENTEEN

THE WEEKEND PASSED in a hazy blur—mostly due to the Two Very Big Things that would be happening the following weekend. This coming Friday, we would finally be presenting our legendary delinquent production of Twelfth Night, performing in the Piles Fork High School auditorium. (We were having it at school and not the Amityvale because—in Ziggy’s actual words to Principal Durden—Amityvale was an “irreparable shithole.”) Afterward, the PFHS Activities Committee would be spending the next twenty-four hours setting up for an even bigger event happening the very next evening.

Prom.

Not that I gave a shit about prom. It was mostly a haunting, surreal reminder. A cautionary tale of how an ambitious goal to ask out the girl of your dreams can lead to abandonment, isolation, and a crippling identity crisis.

That was maybe an oversimplification, but you get what I mean. Fuck prom.

Our Twelfth Night production, however, I was totally stoked for. Viola was my one and only escape from reality, and we had reached the stage of dress rehearsals. It was both daunting and exhilarating. Scripts were a thing of the past. We were reciting everything from memory, in full costume and makeup, and performing the whole thing in one fell, uninterrupted swoop.

Speaking of costume and makeup, Willow’s Malvolio was easily the best. She had been made to look like a crabby old butler with fake wrinkles, a monocle, and white powder worked into her big emo hair, resulting in something very Ludwig van Beethoven. The only thing more convincing than her disguise was her performance. She was delightfully awful.

Even as the conspiring members of Olivia’s household forged a love letter to Malvolio in Olivia’s handwriting, convincing him that she was in love with him.

Even as Malvolio followed a list of silly, humiliating instructions outlined in the letter to “prove his love” to her.

Even as he was locked in a dungeon because he was clearly either mad or possessed.

I shit you not. This shit actually happened.