Oh, I think someone’s calling my name? They’re pretty far away, but?—
“Callum.”
My first instinct to hearing my name is that it’s Sabrina or Laura, but their voices aren’t as?—
“Callum! Look at me.”
My blood runs cold, all the warmth leaving my body in a single, shocked breath.
I recognize that voice.
It’s Mom.
My parents found me for real.
I ball one hand up into a fist and put the other in my pocket, palming my phone as I steel myself to face them. If I need to call campus security on them, I will. I have half a mind to make a break for it right now and do that.
But what would I even say?
Fighting every instinct in my body, I force my feet to turn my body around, and I swallow my nerves.
Both of them are no more than ten feet away from me.
The crowd of students falls silent and steps back, forming a kind of oval around my parents. While Icouldwalk with them and try disappearing into the crowd, my parents are already here. They’ve already seen me.
It’ll be better if I deal with them now and try to make them leave, if that’s even possible.
I stay still, and now, the three of us are surrounded like a clearing in the woods.
Every last one of my instincts tells me to shrink down and hide. My mom is fixing me with a withering, disgusted stare, one that I got well acquainted with when I was a kid, and I have to take a breath to keep myself stable. Well, a couple of breaths. One isn’t nearly enough.
“Okay, you found me.” I keep my voice level. “What do you want?”
Mom’s nostrils flare, her face reddening. “Howdareyou speak to me like that?”
I wince. Nobody’s raised their voice at me since I left, and before I have a chance to respond, she lunges at me, forcing me to take a large step back. She doesn’t stop approaching, and I keep walking backward.
“Are you going to keep chasing me in a circle?” I ask, raising my hands in a questioning gesture.
Oh, thank god, she stops.
Mom stays still, huffing breaths in and out, before she purses her lips. “What onearthwere you thinking?”
I shrug like the bad son I already am. “What on earth are you referring to?”
For the first time since I saw him today, Dad speaks up. “Everything. Callum, you absconded in the night and left your family, just to run amok and commit every sin under the sun.”
And I was having a great time doing so, at least until you guys showed up.
“It’s what I needed to do,” I reply, and I hold back from apologizing. “I couldn’t live the life you wanted for me, so I had to leave.”
“The life we wanted for you was respectable, Callum!” Mom yells. “How could you treat your family like this? Why did you have to throw everything away?”
A small, familiar tendril of guilt snakes into my throat, and I swallow it down. “Because it wasn’t respectable tome!” Never before have I raised my voice around my parents, but fucking hell, it was a long time coming. I take a much-needed breath to calm down. “Not that either of you cared, but I wasmiserable. What did you expect me to do, suck it up and hate my life?”
“You don’t seem to have a problem sucking something else, do you? You were my perfect, pure boy! Why did you have to go run around and corrupt yourself like it’snormal?”
I almost laugh. Almost. Now that I’ve finally gotten away from my parents, seeing the way they’re acting…
