Page 65 of Dying to Meet You
Natalie walks around to the passenger side. “Do you even have your license on you?”
Her mother just glares.
“You can have the front seat,” Natalie tells her friend, “otherwise Lickie is going to be all over you.”
“The back is fine,” Tessa mumbles, opening the door.
Natalie dies a little more inside. She gets into the passenger seat and pointedly looks out the window as her mother pilots the car—illegally, without her license—out of the parking lot.
The drive to Tessa’s is mercifully short, and her friend is able to escape the car a few minutes later.
Natalie opens her own door, too, which makes her mother snap: “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I just have to get something out of the mailbox,” Natalie says in a small voice before she quickly leaves the car.
“Omigod’ I’m so sorry,” Tessa whispers as Natalie pulls her phone out of her friend’s mailbox. “Call me later.”
Natalie gives her a faint nod and braces for a fight as she gets back into the car.
“You left yourphonein her mailbox,” her mother says slowly. “Do you do that a lot?”
She looks out the window. “Sometimes,” she mumbles.
Her mother actually puts her head on the steering wheel and lets out a shaky breath. “Of all the stupid things.”
“Hey! I wouldn’t bother if you weren’tstalkingme!” It feels good to clap back. For a second, anyway. Because there are prisoners on parole who have more freedom than she does.
“I don’t even know what to say to you right now. Your father is not a stable person! And youknewI would never give you my permission to see him. How long has this gone on? When did he come back to Portland?”
“You don’t evenknowhim anymore!” Natalie shrieks. “If you just answer his messages, I wouldn’t have to sneak around!”
They’re still parked in Tessa’s driveway, but her mother makes no move to leave. “I asked you a question. How long has he been in the area?”
She turns to stare out at Tessa’s suburban street. It’s a nicer neighborhood than theirs. Less interesting, but nice. Tessa has a big TV room in the basement with its own little bar area stocked with sodas. And Tessa’s mother doesn’thover.
“I don’t know when he came back, exactly,” she says dully. “I’ve only met him once before this. We talk on Instagram, though.”
“Instagram,” her mother says, as if the word tastes bad. “Did he approach you?”
“No,” she says quickly. “It was me. I searched his name. I found his new band. I left a comment. And then he messaged me.”
Her mother is silent for a long moment. Finally, she takes a shaky breath and puts the car in reverse.
They roll down Tessa’s quiet street, and Natalie is hollow inside. Like every happy thought has been drained from her soul. She’d been waiting for Harrison to show up for her entire life. Then he finally did.
And now her mother is furious.
“What else have you lied about?” she asks as they approach the peninsula again.
“Nothing.”
“I’msodisappointed in you, Natalie. You want to be a grown-up and borrow the car. But then you go and pull this.”
Anger rises inside her like a fire. “I didn’tpullanything. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see my father! I’m the only one at Chatham who doesn’t have one.”
This is, of course, an exaggeration. But not by much.
Her mother brakes at a stop sign and gives her the side-eye. “Look, I’m sorry you don’t have the right kind of father. But you have to be rational about this. He went to prison for beating a man almost to death. He might even be mentally ill, like his mother.”
