Page 37 of The Moment I Knew

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, but apparently my silence was answer enough.

“A boy!” she exclaimed. She grabbed the remote from Dad and paused the TV. “I knew it.”

My jaw tightened. “It’s not a big deal.”

“What did he want?” she asked.

I sat back down on the couch, picking at a loose thread on the cushion. “He asked me out.”

Hilary’s face lit up. “Oh my gosh. And?”

I shrugged and dropped back into the spot I’d been in before. “I said no.”

She stared at me like I’d told her I didn’t believe in gravity. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want to go out with him?” I said slowly, the words raising more like a question. What other reason was there to say no to a date?

She laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “Okay, but why?”

“I just don’t,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t like him like that. Actually, he’s kind of annoying.”

Hilary turned toward my dad. “Did you hear this?”

He sighed. “Hil⁠—”

“No, this is important,” she said, cutting him off. She looked back at me. “You can’t just say no to things like that.”

I felt heat crawl up my neck. “I can, actually.”

She waved a hand. “I mean, you can, but you shouldn’t. This stuff matters. Socialization matters. Especially at your age.”

I stared at her. “I’m not unsocialized.”

She hesitated for a second, then reached out to put a hand to my knee. I was so bewildered by the gesture that I didn’t even shove her off, I just stared at it in confusion.

“Honey,” she said and immediately, I knew this was going to turn into a terrible life lesson moment, “sometimes when you have lots of siblings, it can be easy to fall back on them as your only friends.”

I openly stared at her, not sure how to even begin responding to that. It was a bold assumption to make that I had no friends, especially since she’d never even seen me with my siblings or met any of them. For all she knew, we all hated each other.

I shoved her hand off my knee.

“I have plenty of friends,” I said coolly. “I just don’t need a boyfriend.”

“That’s not the point,” she said. “You don’t have to marry him. It’s just a date.”

“I know what a date is.”

She smiled, tight. “Then you know it’s not that serious.”

“Exactly,” I said. “So it doesn’t matter that I said no.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, clearly recalibrating. “Sweetheart, sometimes you have to push past discomfort. You can’t just avoid things because they’re awkward.”

“I’m not avoiding it because it’s awkward,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m avoiding it because I don’t want to.”

My dad shifted beside her. “If she doesn’t want to go⁠—”

Hilary shook her head. “You don’t understand. This is how girls end up isolated. If you turn people down, they stop asking. And then suddenly you’re left out, and you don’t even know why.”