Page 99 of The Sun
“Sunny?” Daddy’s door slammed shut, but I kept storming toward the porch, trying not to cry. “Sunny Ray!
I stopped on the step, fist clenched at my side and a tremor of anger rattling through me. “What!”
Daddy placed a foot on the stair, bending his leg at the knee and resting his hand on his thigh. “I know you don’t understand, but one day you will.”
I stared at him, fighting for a good breath. I was two months away from graduating. Two months away from being old enough to vote, and he was no closer to letting go of me than he was when I was fourteen.
“I won’t, Daddy. I won’t ever understand how you, of all people, could tell me that boy isn’t good enough when he was good enough for you to almost adopt!”
“Sunny. . .”
“I love him.” My voice echoed across the yard. “I love him, and he loves me, and I hate that you can’t see that.”
Daddy’s shoulder fell hard. “I know you’re upset.”
“No. I’m upset when I make aBon a test. I was upset when my favorite book series ended. Right now, I’m shattered, but most of all, I’m disappointed in you.” I went for the door, then ran up the stairs to my room, and locked myself inside.
I paced at the foot of my bed, glancing around at the pink walls. The tattered bear I once slept with on my dresser. Pictures of Daisy and me. Honor roll ribbons.
I was stuck somewhere between a kid and an adult. Almost eighteen. Almost out of high school. Almost in college. And almost married.
Almost still their baby. . .
I didn’t godown for dinner that night. I didn’t want to look at my father. I didn’t want to be tempted to tell my mother she should be ashamed of herself for going against her lifelong motto of not judging a book by its cover. Instead, I sat on my bed and thought.
I wondered if I had been wrong for going behind their backs to see Elias. I questioned if it made me a bad daughter or if it made them bad parents, or maybe if it just made us all bad. Most of all, as I crammed clothes into my backpack, I wondered if they would ever forgive me for what I was about to do.
I zipped my bag, grabbed my stuffed bear, and took one last look around the room that had been mine for as long as I could remember. The door to my parent’s room banged shut. I didn’t have to press my ear to the wall to hear that discussion. It came through, loud and clear.
“David! Do you want to lose her?”
“No, Clara. Of course not.”
“She turns eighteen in two months. She moves off to college in less than three months. She’s not a baby anymore, and if she loves him—If she really loves him, we’re going to lose her. So, you think about that long and hard.”
I shouldered the bag, hopeful Daddy would have a change of heart.
“I see enough of his type come in and out of the station. It’s a cycle, Clara! A cycle. And don’t act like you didn’t agree with me. You agreed months ago he would get her in trouble and—”
“Don’t you think I remember that?” There was a pause, and I could imagine them standing at opposite ends of the room. “I’ve felt guilty over that for months because we don’t know him.”
“I know enough.” But Daddy didn’t know anything. He didn’t know that boy would do anything to be my everything. He didn’t know he had a scholarship or that he was the sole reason him and his brothers had even made it for the past three years. He knew only what he wanted to know, which was nothing.
“Do you?” Momma said, the volume of her voice teetering on yelling. “Because it seems to me, we’re judging him because of his family, because of everything he had no control over. And how is that fair, David? How is it fair when he almost was our son?”
“Clara, I feel for the kid, I do, but he doesn’t stand a chance at life.”
“No. I guess he doesn’t stand a chance when people like you refuse to give him one.”
My eyes stung, my chest ached, and I reached for the door while Momma and Daddy continued yelling at one another.
My door swung open to Simon. He glanced at the strap of my backpack and frowned. “Who’s Elias?”
“It’s a long story, buddy.”
He rubbed over his arm a few times. “Momma said if Daddy didn’t give that Elias boy a chance, you’d leave. If I give him a chance, will you stay?”
My heart cracked, tiny fissures ripping in every direction.
