Page 97 of The Midseason Fakeout

Determination makes me lift my chin, but my mother isn’t having it. She’s so stubborn when she wants something. It’s her personality trait. She waves her tissue dismissively. “We’re not paying for you to attend Warner. We agreed so you could get this flirtation out of your head. I thought you would’ve worked it out of your system by now, but when I saw you on the TV, I knew I had to step in. We’re paying for you to go to Carnegie. A real school. And that’s that.”

“Well, theflirtationisn’t out of my head,” I tell her, glancing at Aidan. “In fact, it only got stronger. We’re—”

“Don’t tell me you’re pregnant.” She sucks in a breath and somehow, simultaneously, stares at my leggings in distaste.

“Jesus, Mom,” I snap. “We’re in love. We’re young, but we’re not stupid. I like these leggings. And not because I’m getting fat from carrying a baby. They’re comfortable, and they go with so many things.”

Aidan chuckles next to me, and I hit him with my elbow. He shrugs it off. “I was just thinking that you look great in leggings, but maybe that’s not the point to make right now.”

“Leggings aren’t the point!” I turn to my mother, frustration raising my voice to a shout. “I want to live my own life!”

My mother peers between all of us, exasperated. She latches onto my brother. “Darrin, please tell her. Make her see.”

He presses his lips together, his gaze falling to the floor. “I don’t want to be in the middle of this,” he starts, but his voice strengthens the more he talks. “But, Mom, I’ve seen Bailey thrive here. She has friends. She’s doing well in her classes. What she and Aidan have is real. I think it would be a mistake to take her away from here.”

I knew I loved my brother. I give him a thankful smile.

“This is preposterous,” my mother states, standing so fast that Darrin has to take a large step back. “The movers will be here in five minutes. They’re packing this place up today. I already ended the lease with the landlord. Talking with you was only a courtesy.”

I gasp. “Mom—”

“No, I won’t hear it,” she snaps. “I knew this was a terrible idea, but your father insisted. He thought it would be good to give you a bit of freedom before you went to school—a real school—but I knew this would end terribly. Look at you.”

“What’s so terrible about it?” I exclaim. “I’m a straight-A student. I have a boyfriend. I have friends.”

“We want better for you.” Her husky voice breaks along with her façade. Real tears form now, and they come faster and faster. She wipes at her cheeks furiously. “Bailey, Carnegie is where your dad and I went. It’s such a great school. It’s going to set you up for life. Everything you’ve ever wanted will be in the palm of your hands. There for you to take.”

“Set me up foryourlife, you mean.” I shake my head. “Mom, I love you, but I don’t want tobeyou. I want to be my own person.”

Her mouth drops, opening and closing like a wayward fish. After a few moments, her face crumples, and my heart sinks with it. She brings shaking hands to her face, and I walk over to her, wrapping my arms around her.

“I’m sorry.”

“This is…unacceptable.” She tries to keep her strong voice, but it catches with a sob.

I hold her tighter. “If that’s how you feel, that’s how you feel.” What Aidan told me yesterday flits through my head. All that stuff about how much it hurts to have been abandoned, and for the fraction of a moment that I saw my mom’s face when I told her I didn’t want to be her, a piece of me wondered if I did that to her. If it felt like I was letting her go. “I don’t want this to change anything between us, Mom. If you want to cancel the lease, if you want to move everything I own out of this house, it doesn’t matter. I’ll still love you. I just want to make my own life. You’ll still be in it, I just don’t want you to run it.”

“But…for a boy?”

“Aidan’s…the chocolate drizzle on a sundae,” I tell her, smiling to myself.Jeez, she’s really going to think I’m pregnant…I try to find a different analogy and fail. Instead, I speak from the heart. “I know you’re worried about me. I am too. But I’ve been lost. I tried to be the best daughter you could want, but in doing so, I gave up on being myself.”

My voice cracks, and I try to knit myself together. “I wish I’d known what Darrin was going through because we would have had a lot to say to each other. And I didn’t know how to tell you that living with you felt so stifling. But I am old enough now and ready to make decisions for myself, and if I screw up, that’s on me. It’s not on you. If I fail, it’s not because you did something wrong. Failing every once in a while just happens. It makes you stronger.”

I chuckle to myself when I realize where that thoughtful statement came from. I was at one of Aidan’s practices, and Coach got in Aidan’s face. He’d grabbed his facemask, and I stood up like I was going to shield him, but then I heard his words. He told Aidan not to get down about the incomplete pass he’d thrown.

Failing makes you better. Failing means you figured out one way that doesn’t work, so you can discard that and look for a different way. Now, get out there and find a way that works.

Aidan must recognize them too because he starts to rub my back. In turn, I squeeze my mom even tighter, and she actually hugs back. “That sounds so grown up of you.”

“I think you’d like grown-up me if you gave her a chance.”

She pulls away, her smudged mascara giving her a moody, crazed look. Not something I’m used to seeing on her. “You’re my little girl.”

“Yeah, and you don’t have to let her go. You just have to give her space.”

She lets out a ragged breath. “I still don’t like this idea.”

“You don’t have to.”

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