After practice, Bryce drives me home. I haven’t told him about last night. It’s not that I don’t trust him, but I’m playing it safe for right now.
He takes the long way home through downtown Clover City. A few of the shops are boarded up, and while much of downtown maintains its mom-and-pop charm, a few places have been replaced with chain stores and restaurants.
I hold my hand out the window, letting my fingers drag through the warm breeze, and this is the first moment of real calm I have all day. But it’s gone faster than I can count. “Hey,” I say, “so you set up a car wash for the dance team and forgot to tell me?”
He grins. “Just trying to do my part to get my girl to Nationals.”
“Well, you couldn’t tell your girl about it instead of letting her find out in front of the whole team?”
He shakes his head. “You’re making this into a thing. I just texted Sam because I knew she would be the one you’dhave to run everything by anyway.”
I start to argue, but instead I take a deep breath. I’m on edge today. That’s all.
In the alley behind my house where he always drops me off, we share a long kiss that is quickly turning into more when my stepdad knocks on the passenger window.
The two of us knock heads as we disentangle.
Keith opens the door, ducking down to speak to Bryce as I gather my backpack and purse.
“I’d invite you in,” says Keith, “but tonight is family dinner.”
Bryce nods. “Understood, sir.”
I squint my eyes at Bryce for a minute, and I find myself almost making a comment about how he never makes any effort to call my real dad sir. Both Keith and my dad work blue-collar jobs—the kind of things Bryce will never find himself doing. The only difference between them is that one of them is white and the other isn’t. But I shake it off and decide it’s just more paranoia. Bryce isn’t racist.
Keith shuts the door behind me, and I follow him in through the back gate.
“Maybe cool it with the protective-dad act,” I tell him.
“Aww, come on,” he says as he locks up his work truck. “You can’t expect me to catch some guy getting handsy on my stepdaughter and not to step in.”
I laugh. Keith and I used to butt heads quite a bit, but we’ve come to an understanding in the last few years. At first, though, he was just some tall blond dude who married my tall blond mom and the two of them made a cutelittle blond baby named Kyla. Claudia and I were the odd ones out—short with curves that announced themselves the moment we hit middle school and deep brown hair with a slightly darker complexion that stood out against the rest of the family’s freckled skin.
For the longest time, I looked at family portraits and didn’t see a family. All I saw was two half-brown girls intruding on a perfect little white family of three. It never bothered Claudia as much. Maybe because she was older and can remember how viciously Mama and Dad fought. I guess I’m mostly over it now. But sometimes I still look at the portraits lining our walls, and I wonder what it might be like to see one of me, my mom, Claudia, and our dad framed like it was something worth remembering.
I follow Keith onto the porch and into the kitchen. He stops abruptly, and I practically walk right into his back. “Sheriff,” says Keith.
My heart rattles, nearly pounding out of my chest.Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I peer around Keith’s arm to find my mother serving Sheriff Bell a glass of sweet tea.
“Baby,” Mama says to Kyla, “take your homework upstairs.” Her tone is soft, but her lips are pursed into a thin line, and everything about the way she stands, from her squared shoulders to her arms crossed over her chest, her red nails drumming along her forearm, tells me that I’m fucked.
“Is Callie in trouble?” my little sister asks.
Of course I’m in trouble, you turd.
“Upstairs,” Mama says, her voice firm this time.
Okay, save the panic for later. Now is the time for logic. What are my options? I can just rat on the whole team. I can deny, deny, deny. I can take the blame. Or I can pin it on someone else entirely. It all depends on what Sheriff Bell knows.
The four of us watch as Kyla takes her time gathering her papers and pencils, walking toe-heel, toe-heel like she’s been taught in dance class, before stalking upstairs in a huff for being dismissed. If Mama and Keith think they have their hands full with me, just wait until that one hits puberty.
Not until my mother hears Kyla’s bedroom door shut does she say, “Callie, sit down.” She turns to Keith, her expression softening slightly. “You too.”
I think that if my life were some kind of courtroom drama, this would be the part when we call a lawyer. But my mom and Keith went to high school with Sheriff Bell. The guy was my mom’s homecoming date once, so yeah, no one’s calling a lawyer for my defense anytime soon.
“Callie,” says Sheriff Bell.
