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Steven’s wheels could use a greasing, but Mom isn’t fooled. She knows I heard her.

“I said, the guidance office is incompetent and I don’t have enough history credits to graduate.”

Mom’s eyebrows stay where they had been before—right up next to her hairline. But she did get her Botox refreshed at the beginning of the school year, so I can’t really say if she’s shocked or still in recovery.

“What? How?” Dad asks. “When did this happen? Why didn’t I know about this?”

Since he’s covered everything but the where, I assume he’s done throwing interrogatives at me, and I finish up with the good news.

“It’s fine,” I say, twisting my spaghetti onto my fork. “They know it’s on them, and they offered me what I think is an acceptable substitute. They want me to retool the podcast, cover some local history. And I think it could actually work in my favor. Remember Jeremy Dayforth?”

Mom and Dad exchange glances and nod warily. Jeremy Dayforth had been Henley’s most recent golden boy, the minister’s son, an all-state scholar athlete, and clean-cut good looks in tandem with teeth that came in straight without the aid of braces. Jeremy could have made a living in front of the camera, but he wanted to be behind it. When Ithaca College turned him down for their film school because it was impossible that Henley High could have prepared him for their rigorous academic programs, it put every liberal arts–bound teen in the county on high alert.

The message was clear—your GPA doesn’t matter. Where you are from does. Be better than smart. Be better than special. Be spectacular if you want to get out.

“I think this is going to light the fire that I need under me to take On the Ground in Flyover Country to a new level, a more honest level.”

Mom and Dad are listening, her with the same half smile she reserves for patiently bathing Steven, and him with the resolved I-should’ve-taken-that-job-offer-in-Cincinnati look that has haunted his face since I was in fourth grade.

“What do you mean by more honest?” Mom asks carefully.

“Sort of like . . .” I mentally hit rewind, looking for the phrase that Bristal had used. “Ripping off the Band-Aid of politeness and taking a good look at the wound underneath.”

Mom visibly winces at the word wound, and Dad’s hand tightens on his fork.

“Is that really a great idea?” he asks, his voice inquisitive but controlled, a planned approach no doubt taking form in his lawyer brain.

“I think it is,” I say, my riposte already loaded. “I mean, how long have we all known that the guidance counselor was an alcoholic? For a while, right?”

Mom and Dad look at each other again, food forgotten as I talk openly about the things that everyone else wants swept under the collective town rug.

“Lydia . . . ,” Mom begins, but I feel the same rush of anger I’d felt in the guidance office. Somebody is going to get fucked, but let’s keep everything nice because we all have to see each other at the same grocery store every day.

“No,” I say calmly. “Mom, just no. How long has everyone known and nobody said anything? And then your daughter ends up almost not graduating from high school.”

“Fair enough,” Dad says, leaning back in his chair. “But what specifically are you thinking about covering in your podcast? You can’t just go around saying whatever you think is true. Remember, most of what you hear is gossip, and the last thing this family needs right now is a libel charge.”

He’s not wrong, as the sagging deck on the house and food pantry spaghetti can attest to. Everyone assumes that being a lawyer automatically translates to being rich, but much like the oh-so-valuable trait of kindness, the equation doesn’t always balance out to equal success. Dad has represented more than a few people in the past who couldn’t afford him—at all.

Instead of defending white-collar criminals and making bank, Dad stands up for people who stick up the dollar store, try to casually walk their cart of groceries out the back door of the market, or drive away from the gas pump without taking the step of actually paying. While Dad can defend someone who crossed the legal line when trying to find the money to pay for their kid’s surgery, feed their family, or make the drive to a job that doesn’t pay them enough to get there, the end result is that our family finances are slowly creeping down to mow-your-own-yard levels.

If we got a libel charge because I ran my mouth on a podcast, Dad might find himself in the unenviable position of not being able to afford his own services. So, I step carefully with the next part.

“First of all, this is going to be historical, so I won’t be slandering anyone living. And no, I’m not going to mention the reason for the pivot, either. We don’t need to advertise that Benson’s personal problems screwed our public education.”

“We?” Mom asks. “Our?”

“Bristal Jamison also needs a history credit, and she’s going to be joining me on the podcast so that she can be the first person in her family to graduate from high school.”

“Oh Lord,” Mom says into her wineglass. “A Jamison girl?”

“We had a saying about them back when we were in school,” Dad says, sharing a conspiratorial smile with Mom. “There’s always a Jamison girl in each wing—elementary, middle, and high school—”

“And it’s a good bet that the oldest one is pregnant,” Mom finishes.

“Well, that’s . . . rude,” I say, but Mom only shrugs. “You guys realize that if I become a famous journalist you might have to work on pretending to be less judgmental, right?”

“Honey,” Dad says, “all we’re saying is that there’s a lot of Jamison girls.”