Page 40 of Dear Debbie

I can’t stand my daughter’s so-called boyfriend. She thinks the sun rises and sets on that boy, but I see right through him. He drives much too fast, he is barely passing his classes in school, and he’s as lazy as the day is long. And don’t even get me started on his attitude problem. The mouth on that boy!

Every time I try to talk some sense into that little girl, she acts like I’m overstepping my bounds! She gets all huffy, like I’m just supposed to sit there twiddling my thumbs while she throws her life away on an asshole.

Please tell me how to open my daughter’s eyes before it’s too late! Do you know of any reverse love potion recipes? I’ll pay anything!

Sincerely,

Hates the Boyfriend

Dear Hates the Boyfriend,

Unfortunately, I don’t know any recipes for reverse love potions. Wish I did!

I’m sure you know that when it comes to teenagers, the more you try to convince your daughter to dump her boyfriend, the more she’ll stubbornly want to stay with him. You might do better by trying the opposite approach and getting to know him better. Perhaps you can invite him over to your house for a nice home-cooked dinner. After an hour of bonding over a pot roast, I bet you’ll find that he isn’t as bad as you thought he was!

And if after your family dinner is over, you still feel the same way, I would suggest that you sneak out to his car while he’s busy with your daughter after dinner. It’s a simple process to snip the brake line. You say he drives fast, but with no brakes in his car, I bet he’ll go even faster!

Debbie

31

DEBBIE

After leaving a plate of pancakes for Cooper on the kitchen counter, I drive the kids to school.

It’s about a ten-minute drive. There’s a brief fight over which of the girls gets to sit in the front, which reminds me of all the fights they used to have in the car when they were little. When I picked them up from school, they would argue over who got to tell me about their day first. We tried to divide it evenly, but since there were five days in the week, I told the girls that if the date was an even number, Lexi could talk first, and on odd days, it would be Izzy’s turn. It was an excellent opportunity to teach them about odd and even numbers.

Lexi wins out and climbs into the passenger seat beside me. She has brushed her dark brown hair back off her face into a ponytail, and she looks so much like me, it feels like I’m looking into a time machine taking me back to when I was seventeen years old.

I wish I had a time machine. I wish I could talk to seventeen-year-old Debbie and warn her about everything that was going to happen to her. The first thing I would have told her would be to stay home that night during the second semester of her sophomore year.

If I had, everything would’ve been different.

The drive to school is blessedly free of conflict, and Lexi only criticizes my driving twice. But when we pull up to the drop-off line for students, a police car with flashing lights is parked in front of the school.

“What’s going on?” Izzy pipes up from the back seat, craning her neck to get a better look.

“Maybe some kid got arrested!” Lexi says a bit too eagerly.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” I murmur, waiting patiently for the drop-off line to creep forward. “It’s just one car.”

“But the lights are flashing, Mom!” Izzy points out.

Very true.

We finally pull up in front of the school, and both girls climb out of the car. Like all the other kids, they are ogling the police car, trying to figure out what’s going on. I remember how it used to be when I was a kid and there was something out of the ordinary going on at school. A burst of excitement in the otherwise monotonous day.

Oh, who am I kidding? I loved school. But it was still fun when there was drama.

After the girls are out of the car, I would ordinarily drive back home, but I too am curious about the parked police car. So I pull around the side of the school and park in the guest lot. There aren’t a lot of spaces, and I have to circle a few times to find a spot that would really be better suited to a compact car rather than my SUV. But I work my parking magic and squeeze into the spot.

After parking, I walk around to the front of the school again. The police car is still parked with the flashing lights, but there’s no other indication of what’s going on. It could be anything from a bomb threat to some drugs found in a locker. But I’m fairly sure I know why the police are here.

This is going to be interesting.

32

A group of parents are milling about close to the school. I recognize one of them—Tabitha, who still looks a little green after our book club meeting yesterday. I approach her, plastering a disarming smile on my face.