“Can I have some cereal now?”
I chuckle. “Sure thing.”
We pour bowls of Rice Krispies, and I cut up some strawberries to add in. We sit at the table and eat, and Ivy asks some more questions about OCD, and even though it’s still not the easiest thing to talk about, it’s easier than I thought it would be.
I’m clearing my bowl from the table when Blake and Lukas arrive. Ivy is still slowly picking at hers, as usual, her Rice Krispies turning into a soggy mush.
“ . . . And then the dragon swoops down, and the whole castle is about to be on fire,” Luke says as the door swings open. “Wooooosh!” He flings his arms up for emphasis. Costanza jogs over to them at the sound of Luke’s voice and nearly knocks Luke over.
“That does sound pretty intense. And you wantmeto be in this movie? With all these dragons and stuff? Sounds dangerous.” Blake grins at me, then sees Ivy at the table. He raises his eyebrows.
I try to communicate with a smile that things are going . . . better. For the moment, at least.
“It wouldn’t be a real dragon, Dad,” Luke says, scratching Costanza’s head. “They use computers.”
“Well, that’s good.” Blake pulls out a chair and sits down at the table. “Hey, Ive. How’re you feeling?”
She avoids meeting his gaze and speaks around a spoonful of cereal. “Good.”
Blake’s smile slips; I know how it hurts to have her not even want to look at us.
“Mom and Ivy should be in it, too,” Luke offers. “And Costanza. But especially Mom, because she knows what she’s doing.”
Blake laughs. “Yes, she definitely does.” He squeezes Ivy’s arm and says to us, “Luke has decided his Lego castle adventure would make a good movie. I think he’s probably right.”
“We’ll need to have Peter Jackson over for dinner again,” I say, giving Lukas a hug before he runs off to his corner of the room, Costanza bounding at his heels (and then crashing into a stack of Ivy’s books).
“Obviously,” Blake says, but his eyes cut back to Ivy.There’s a moment of awkward silence—well, silence punctuated in the background by Luke making blaster noises with his Star Wars Legos.
I’m trying to figure out how to bring up the things we still need to say to Ivy, but she sets her spoon down with a heavy clunk.
“I’m sorry,” she says, mostly to her cereal.
Blake and I look at each other, wide-eyed. Did Ivy just apologize? Of her own accord? And sound like shemeansit?
“Okay,” Blake says slowly. “For what?”
It’s an honest question. She’s had plenty to apologize for over the last several weeks.
Ivy’s cheeks are bright red. “For sneaking off withTanner,” she says, barely above a whisper. “And eating the brownies when I knew they had drugs in them.”
A knot forms in my gut. She hadn’t told us yet if she knew, or if she’d really thought they were just plain brownies.The idea that my twelve-year-old knowingly took drugs is terrifying.
Then again, she’s confessing to it, when she could easily have lied. And she’s clearly ashamed; that’s something. I pull out the chair and sit down again, forcing myself to breathe evenly.
“Thanks for apologizing,” I say, then exchange a glance with Blake. Neither of us knows how to handle this perfectly, how to say just the right thing.
But we’re in this together.
“You know why we were so worried, right?” Blake asks. “About you running off withTanner? About the drugs? About running off to meet Chris at Comic-Con, and . . . all of it?”
She sucks in her lower lip. “Because it wasn’t safe,” she mumbles.
We’ve talked to her before about sexual assault—we even mentioned it again after Comic-Con, so I know she knows why exactly it wouldn’t be safe. But that clearly didn’t stop her this last time.
“I know it seems not so dangerous sometimes,” I say. “It seems like you could be in control of the situation—and sometimes you can, and it ends up fine. But the problem is, the more dangerous situations you put yourself into, especially with these older boys, and god,especiallywith drugs, the more risk there is that you could really get hurt. And we love you so much, Ivy. We’re your parents, always, and we want to do anything we can to keep you safe.”
Her lower lip quivers, and I reach out and grab her hand resting by the spoon, glad that she doesn’t pull away.
