Everyone was scribbling stuff down. Max wrote the words: Hands shake. Black out.
“Maybe you’re noticing the same types of things are making you angry: depression or nervousness. Maybe guilt or shame.”
Max wrote down Guilt, but then he erased it. Too much disclosure, and too soon. He had another nine weeks to go with this guy. He got the impression John liked to see the progress he was making with people build slowly over time.
“It’s important to identify your triggers. That way, you can guard yourself against an overexaggerated response before you lose control,” John said.
So far, he wasn’t telling Max anything he didn’t already know. He knew why he was angry. He already knew what triggered it to flare, and he recognized it coming. The trouble was—and he was just really realizing it now—he didn’t want to stop it. Not one hundred percent anyway.
It felt good to let it loose. It felt good to step in and be able to actually do something, when he hadn’t been able to do anything before. Max guessed that when it came right down to it, he didn’t want to manage his anger after all.
What he wanted to overcome was that torturous feeling of uselessness. Quack Linda called it feelings of “ineptitude and ineffectiveness.” She could call it whatever she wanted. Max wasn’t interested in feeling those things ever again. He didn’t need a class called Anger Management, he wanted a class called How to Make Things Right Again.
“I’m a fixer,” Max blurted out, and the whole class turned to stare at him.
John gripped the podium in both hands and leaned back a little. “That’s a good observation, Max. What does that mean to you?”
Crap. What was it with his mouth today? “I get upset when something’s not right, but I can handle that. What I can’t handle is not being able to fix it.”
“And why do you think it’s your job to fix things?”
That seemed like a stupid question. Max almost told him so, but at the last second he held back and answered him honestly. “Because if I don’t, nobody else will.”
“Dude,” the kid to his left said. “Some things can’t be fixed.”
John nodded at him. Max was going to have to hate the kid. Cocky son of a bitch acted like he had this all figured out.
“Or don’t want to be fixed,” another kid chimed in, his voice barely above a whisper.
Max shook his head. None of this mattered to him. He knew what life was supposed to be like. He’d lived the perfect life for his first seventeen years, and he hated how easily things could fall apart. What a shock that life wasn’t a pendulum that swung left, then right again. Sometimes it swung left and stuck that way, and you just wanted to shake the crap out of that clock until it did what it was supposed to do.
Max absentmindedly stroked the cracked face of his wristwatch.
Thinking about how things were “supposed to be” made Max feel dead inside. But anger…anger over how things were now…that’s what reminded him he was alive. Fixing made him feel like a man.
If he ever ran into that Jimmy Krebs, he’d fix him. He’d pay for what he did to Emmie’s car and the way he made her feel. Imagining his fist connecting with that guy’s jaw gave Max a jolt of adrenaline-spiked blood to his heart. Give me a gold star, Cardigan John. It may not be the conclusion you wanted me to come to, but I just aced this self-awareness test.
Only nine more weeks to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY
TOWER GUARD
Three days after Emmie’s car had been…redecorated, her father finally decided things had settled down enough that they could check out of the hotel and move back home. According to the White Prairie Police Department, there’d been no more sketchy activity around their house. Or Aunt Bridget’s. Or at school. Her father couldn’t justify another night of room service and Emmie had run out of books to read, so they were home by Friday night.
Emmie felt like she deserved a gold star or something for making it through the week without having a complete and utter claustrophobic meltdown. If not an award, then at least a night out with Marissa. But her father was having none of it.
He might have agreed to move home, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still on high alert. He’d about jumped out of his skin when she cracked an egg for dinner.
“Come on, Dad. You can’t keep me locked up in my room like it’s some fairy-tale tower. Believe it or not, I’m no princess.”
He winced, knowing what she was getting at. He’d been there in court, listening to her testimony in Nick’s trial. Her father was the one who’d pressed the county attorney to add statutory rape to the growing list of charges against Nick.
If the prosecutor hadn’t biked with her father every Saturday since the late nineties, he probably would have let it go. It wasn’t like there weren’t enough other charges to keep Nick locked up for a good long while. The fact that he was twenty-six and screwing some teenager probably didn’t seem particularly important to the prosecutor. It was to her father, though.
Her dad had gotten what he wanted then, and he planned on getting his way now too. The guilt he apparently had over letting Emmie win the argument to go live with her mom fed his need to never let her win an argument again. Emmie felt the walls closing in.
“It’s not safe. School. Work crew. Home. I don’t even want you sticking around for school activities anymore. No more hockey games.”
“But there’s a million people at the games. Nothing’s going to happen to me there. And my car…my car got trashed at school, not at a game. If you think school’s not safe, I’m glad to—”
“School. Work crew. Home,” her father repeated.
Emmie stared at him long and hard. Waiting him out. Trying to read what was really behind his hyper-restrictions. “You don’t really think Mom—”
“How can you even speak of her? She gave our address and your aunt Bridget’s address to a bunch of drug addicts.”
“You told me she denied it.”
“There’s no other explanation.”
Emmie sat down on the edge of her bed and flopped back against the pillows, flinging one arm over her eyes. Her father was right. Then she thought, No. No, he wasn’t. “She’s still my mom. She wouldn’t hurt—”
“Are you hearing yourself? She already has.”
“She didn’t know all of the stuff that was going down between me and Nick. It’s not like I told her.”
She could hear her father moving toward the window. He moved the curtain, and the rings scratched along the rod. Emmie assumed he was peering down onto the street below. He spent a lot of time looking out of windows these days.
After a few seconds he said, “It’s her fault you were with Nick Peters in the first place. It’s her fault that you now have a record that’s going to keep you out of any decent job.”
“I’m a juvenile. My record is sealed.”
“Your court record is, but not the BCA’s. Any employer doing a background check can still look you up on the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension website.”
Emmie uncovered her eyes and pushed herself up onto her elbows. “You mean, until you fix that too?”
He turned to face her. “I can’t fix that. And what’s that supposed to mean, anyway?” His vowels always got rounder when he was cross.
“Dad.” She was exhausted. She didn’t know how they got into this so deep. All she wanted to do was go ice-skating for the first time in her life. Marissa had invited her. She said Emmie could borrow her mom’s skates. “What if Max Shepherd went skating with us?”
“And that’s another thing,” her father said, raising a finger in accusation. “I’ve been thinking about this Mr. Shepherd. What do you really know about him?”
Emmie stared at her father blankly for several confusing seconds and tried to understand what he was asking her. “Are you…are you actually suggesting that Max might be one of Nick’s friends?”
Her father looked at her with an equal degree or sarcasm. “Do you actually know that he’s not?”
/> Emmie about choked and got off the bed. “Yeah. I pretty much do.” She pretended to be searching her closet for something to wear, but really she was hiding her expression. Her father’s suggestion was hilarious, and grinning wasn’t going to help her cause.
“‘Pretty much do’ does not mean ‘yes,’” her father said as if he’d caught her in a lie. It reminded Emmie of her afternoon with a sheriff’s deputy not so long ago. He might as well have exclaimed, Aha!
“Then yes,” Emmie said with an exasperated sigh. “I absolutely, positively know that Max Shepherd is not involved with Nick. Max was even more freaked out than I was about my car. At least I was expecting something like that to happen.”
“Well, that’s just bloody brilliant,” her father said, throwing his hands up. “When were you planning to let me in on this special knowledge you have?”
Emmie turned to face him, putting her back to the open closet. “One of Nick’s friends drove past us during work crew on Saturday. He stopped to…talk. I figured he’d pop up again. He did. At least I assume it was him. Now it’s over.”
Her father blanched. “Did Dan McDonald know this guy was one of Nick’s?”
“Yeah. Dan made him leave. But the important thing is, Mom didn’t know where I was going to be working on Saturday. She doesn’t know I’m on the crew at all. If they know where to find me, they got the information some other way. So you can stop blaming Mom for my car.”
Her father didn’t seem to be hearing anything she said. His thoughts looked very far away. “Dan didn’t bother to call me about the incident on Saturday. That’s it. No more work crew for you.”
“Dad, you can’t ban community work service. It’s court-ordered.” She knew she had him there. Her sentence was lenient enough. Not even her father could get a judge to excuse her from the work crew.
Emmie’s cell phone rang. Her father looked at it with alarm, but his level of vigilance was tiring. It was only Marissa. There was still barely anyone who knew Emmie’s number. Only Sarah, Dan McDonald, and Max had been added to her contacts since her first day back. Relax, Dad.
Emmie answered the call and listened to Marissa while keeping her eye on her father. “I don’t know,” she said. “I might not be able to go after all.” Marissa started protesting, and Emmie cut her off saying, “My dad’s afraid some undesirables might show up.”
“Like the people who trashed your car? You told me you thought it was some random prank. Ems, what aren’t you telling me?”
“No, that’s right. That’s all.” Emmie glanced up at her father as he turned over his shoulder and left her doorway. “He’s just—”
“What if you told him my parents were going along?”
“Are they?” That could work. Her father could hardly complain if she had adult supervision. His bedroom door closed with a definitive click.
“Do they need to?” Marissa asked.
Emmie scratched at a worn patch in her quilt, worrying it into threads. “It might help.”
“I’ll ask.”
While she waited for Marissa to come back to the phone, Emmie hedged her bets and called down the hall to her father. “Dad?” she yelled. “Dad! Marissa’s parents are going to go skating with us.”
His muffled voice called back to her. “I want to talk to them.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I want to talk to them,” he said, this time on his way back down the hall.
Marissa was back on the line. “My mom will take us. She’s going to read a book in the car, but she’ll take us.”
“My dad wants to talk to her,” Emmie said as he reentered her room with his hand held out.
“I assumed so. Put him on.”
Happy not to have been caught in a lie, Emmie surrendered her phone to her father, and he worked out the details with Mrs. Cooke. Emmie listened as her dad chose his words judiciously, only telling Mrs. Cooke as much about his concerns as she needed to know. Lying a little, saying Emmie had been feeling a little “light-headed” lately, and he wanted someone nearby who would recognize if she was “overexerting” herself.
Emmie rolled her eyes and flopped backward onto her bed again. It was a dramatic move. It was designed to be quintessentially teenagery. What it didn’t say was how good it felt to have a parent who knew how to parent, even if he was going completely overboard. It was a nice change of pace. Unlike her mom, her father never looked to her for approval. His self-esteem was not dependent on his daughter.
Emmie, honey, do I look okay? Can I go out like this? Would you explain things for me when we get to the dealership? Tell them how much I need to keep the car. They’ll listen to you.
When her dad hung up with Marissa’s mom, he reached out to hand Emmie her phone. She surprised them both by getting off the bed and coming in for a hug.
“Sorry I’m not always the easiest person to live with,” she said.
He held his arms out at his sides for a second before hesitantly wrapping them around her shoulders. His cologne smelled nice. It reminded Emmie of when she was younger, and it pained her to realize that she couldn’t remember the last time they’d done this.
“I’m glad to have you back at home, Em. You know that, right?”
She pulled out of the hug and stepped back. “I do. I’m sorry. I know this whole thing has put you through hell.”
“You’re the one who’s been through hell, love. I want you to let me pull you out.”
Emmie nodded and fought back the unexpected tingle of tears pricking at her eyes. “Deal,” she said, choking out the word. “So can I go skating?”
“You can. For two hours. And you need to listen to Mrs. Cooke. When she says it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”
“Understood.”
“And I’m not going to be upset if your friend Max is there too. In fact, I think it may be a good thing. You should call him.”
That deserved another hug.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NOT A DATE
Max’s phone buzzed in his back pocket once, twice, three times. He ignored it. If it was someone he knew, they’d text. Chris, Jordy, and he were playing the newest version of Call of Duty in Jordy’s basement.
Jordy’s girlfriend, Lindsey, was sitting off to the side, cross-legged in an overstuffed chair with her calc homework spread over her lap. She never played video games with them, content just to be near Jordy. Max had never understood that before, even with Jade, but he had a better understanding since meeting Emmie. Weird that he should miss her.
“Look out!” Chris shouted at the television screen. “Are either of you paying attention?”
“Holy…I saw somebody,” Jordy said, his elbows working. “Let’s see how long it takes me to shoot him.”
“Who said this new map was small?” Max asked. “This map is not that small.”
“You’re small,” Chris said.
Max started to get up, just rising an inch from his seat, and hip checked Chris to the other side of the couch. Chris dropped his remote, and Max grinned.
“Head shot! Ha! I’ll lie and say I did that on purpose.” Max was perched on the edge of the cushion, leaning forward.
“Damn it, Max. How did I miss that?” Chris asked.
“Oh, I just got a double kill by accident.” Max raised his arms, victorious.
“How do you get a double kill by accident?” Jordy asked.
“Because someone ran in front of me when I was shooting the first guy.” Max’s phone buzzed again, and this time he looked to see who it was. He picked up immediately.
“Emmie?” But she’d already disconnected.
It was probably a pocket dial. Max couldn’t imagine she’d meant to call him. But then he felt a flutter of panic in his chest because he could think of only one reason why Emmie would call. She was in trouble. That guy Jimmy was back to bother her. Emmie needed him.
“Who’s Emmie?” Chris asked. “That girl from the work crew?”
Max dropped
his remote and stood up. His feet had fallen asleep, and they buzzed like a hive as he walked on prickles across the basement to the sliding glass door, his back to Chris, Jordy, and Lindsey. He called Emmie back.
She answered with an apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“You’re not bothering me.” Was she kidding? He couldn’t begin to explain the weird kind of flip-flop that his heart did, like a fish lying in the hull of a boat. Flip-flop. Flip-flop. Part worry. Part excitement. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. He could almost hear her eye roll, and his stomach relaxed. She was okay.
“What’s going on then?” Max’s breath had steamed up the glass door, and he drew a tic-tac-toe grid before wiping it off with his sleeve.
“You wouldn’t by chance want to go skating?”
Max laughed low in his belly. “I think I need a second to let this sink in. Are you asking me on a date? A skating date?”
The racket of machine guns stopped behind him. Or maybe it had stopped the moment he walked away from the couch, but he was only noticing it now. If he turned around, Max was pretty sure all three heads would be turned in his direction. Their interest was no surprise. They’d all been waiting for something to bring him out of his funk.
“No!” Emmie exclaimed. “God, no. Not a date. I just need…I mean, my dad wants you to be there. This is embarrassing. Listen. Marissa and I are going to be at the outdoor rink by St. Francis Church in an hour. If you can be there, that would be great. If you can’t, that’s okay too.”
It took Max’s brain a few seconds to process. She wanted to meet him, but she wasn’t asking him out. Her dad was? Was she embarrassed because her dad thought she needed to have him there? It wasn’t a bad idea. Max’s chest swelled with dumb-ass pride to think that her dad wanted him to be some kind of bodyguard. “I’ll see what I can do.”