I roll my eyes as we reach my car and she leaves, and then I take out my phone to text him. The cars around me clear out and still no Owen and no returned text.
“What the hell is with everyone today?” I whisper-yell as I drop myself into the front seat. I suddenly feel marooned on a desert island, all my friends nowhere to be found. Before I leave the parking lot, I text Alex and ask if he knows what happened to Owen. Surprise, surprise, he doesn’t respond either. I power down my phone, sick of looking at its stupid textless screen.
When I pull into my driveway back home, my stomach immediately goes twitchy. Both of my parents’ cars are in the garage, which is totally unheard of at three thirty in the afternoon.
I throw the car in park and jog through my dad’s myriad of carefully stored tools and furniture polish and paints, opening the garage door that enters the house through the kitchen. Out of habit, I kick my shoes off, and my gray flats have barely joined Owen’s ratty Chucks before I hear him.
“—?swear to god, Mom. This is . . . I don’t get it.” His voice filters in from the living room. Our house doesn’t have one of those fancy open-concept designs. Each room is neatly in its little box, so a giant wall of cabinets blocks my view of my brother, but I don’t need to see him to hear the tremble in his words. The sound of it pulls my feet to a stop.
“He said the state attorney might press charges, Owen,” Mom says evenly, but there’s an edge to her voice, the kind she gets when dealing with an irate customer. “And you’re telling me you have no idea why?”
“No! I swear. I’d had a few drinks, yeah, but . . .” A sob cuts his words off and I hear him gasping for breath. I feel my own lungs shrink and gulp at the air.
Dad murmurs something I can’t make out, his voice soft as always. Still, there’s something off about the sound of that, too.
“Owen,” Mom says, “are you sure you asked—”
“She wanted to,” Owen chokes out. “I swear to god she wanted to.”
“Honey,” Mom says, and I hear the squeak of a body moving over our ancient leather couch. “We’ll figure it out. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. It has to be, right?”
“I’d never do that,” Owen says, his voice raised to a fever pitch. “I didn’t . . .”
“Of course not, sweetheart,” Mom says softly, trying to calm him down, but I doubt it works. I’m the only one who can get Owen to simmer down when he’s stressed or drunk. Well, me and Hannah.
“I’ll call the Priors again,” Dad says, his voice coming closer. “Surely we can work this out quietly.”
“It’s not only up to them, Chris,” Mom says. “It’s the state’s decision.”
“Well, I still think I should call.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Owen says, and he sounds so small, I can’t hold myself still anymore. I drop my bag onto the kitchen tile and nearly run into my dad on my way to the living room.
“Mara,” Dad says, eyes widening behind his black-rimmed glasses. His salt-and-pepper hair is sticking up in all directions, as though he’s been dragging his hands through it over and over. “When did you get—”
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “What’s going on?”
I don’t wait for my father to answer. Instead I circle around him, needing to see that Owen’s okay. He’s huddled in one corner of the couch, my mother’s arms wrapped around his back and his chest, joining at his shoulder. He leans into her, his messy hair messier than ever and his eyes red-rimmed.
“What happened?” I ask.
His gaze snaps to mine, something like fear blooming in his expression.
“Nothing,” Mom says emphatically. “Just a misunderstanding.”
“About what? Why is Dad calling the Priors?” Prior is Hannah’s last name. “Is Hannah sick or something?”
Owen’s mouth drops open and I wait for a joke to roll out of it like always when things get serious. When Grammy, Mom’s mom, had a stroke, he spent the entire four-hour drive to Kentucky quoting Monty Python and the Holy Grail. To an outsider, it would seem insensitive, ill-timed, totally uncouth. But I know Owen. He did it to make me laugh. Make Mom laugh. Make us all breathe a little easier until we had to deal with reality.
But a joke doesn’t come. He watches me for a few more seconds before looking down at his lap, picking at a loose thread on his shirt.
“Mom?” I say, taking a step closer to them. “Please. You’re scaring me.”
She sighs, releasing Owen long enough to rub at one eye before looping her arm around him again. “Like I said, honey. It’s a misunderstanding. Apparently . . . Hannah feels like . . . she thinks . . .” Mom blinks rapidly, the color slowly draining from her face.
“Thinks what?” I tell my feet to move, to go sit on the couch, to take Owen’s hand, but something keeps me cemented in place.
Mom presses her eyes closed and inhales a huge breath. “Hannah feels that Owen . . . took advantage of her at the lake the other night.”
