Chapter 16

 

I had to really talk hard to convince Nick to come inside and get a drink of lemonade before he headed off to wherever demon fighters live in their off-time. And while he was there,, my mom came home from work and saw us standing together in the kitchen.

“Oh. Fallin. I didn’t realize—” she stopped talking, because she didn’t know what to say.

“Mom, this is Nick. He’s one of the substitute teachers at the school,” I put in, even though I knew it was a lie. I didn’t know what else to say. That he was a janitor? That he was a demon fighter? “He came over to help me with some homework I was struggling with.” It was like homework, anyway.

“Yes. I should be going, though. Nice to meet you,” he said to Mom, and straightened up. Somehow, he made himself look older that way, like he’d put on weight and was struggling to move without creaking.

Was Mom going to buy this?

“And you, too. Thank you for your help,” she said blandly.

“Yeah, thanks!” I called out.

After he’d gone, Mom turned on me. “A substitute teacher?” she asked. “I would have thought you’d get homework help at school. Why did he come to your house?”

“He lives nearby,” I said, lying again. It was getting easier and easier with more practice. “I happened to see him outside after I rode the bus home and waved to him. He’s really nice.”

“Hmm,” said Mom.

I hoped that would be all, but it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. Dad came home and we had dinner. Then I said I had to do homework. I guess that was the signal for my parents to get together and talk about me behind my back. About a half hour later, Dad knocked on my bedroom door and poked his head in.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

I took one look at his face and knew immediately this wasn’t going to be a talk about what I wanted for Christmas. “There’s nothing creepy going on between us, I swear. He’s just a teacher who is helping me out with some tricky stuff,” I said. “No big deal.”

Dad came in and sat down on the side of my bed. I think they taught dads that when they took parenting classes. Make sure that you act casual, no matter how important it is. And keep your head on the same level, so you can look eye-to-eye. You don’t want to seem like you’re talking down.

“Tell me about him,” he said.

And that had to be step 2. Don’t accuse. Don’t lecture. Just ask for information. Because that lowers the barriers.

I shrugged. “Like I told Mom, he’s a substitute teacher from school.”

“Uh-huh,” said Dad.

And the silence felt so uncomfortable that I had to fill it. “He came in the day Mr. Barry died,” I said.

“I see,” said Dad. “And you really liked Mr. Barry.”

“Yes, I did.” The more I said, the more trouble I was going to get into here.

“But you can see your mother’s concern.”

“He just came over to give me some help,” I said. “He doesn’t think of me like I can see you’re thinking.” Maybe if he did, I would like it, I thought. But I didn’t say that. I definitely didn’t. Or remind Dad that we’d just talked about how nice he would be if I brought any boys home for him to meet.

“And why couldn’t he call you on the phone? Or email you? Or just wait until he saw you at school?” Dad asked.

“He just saw me on the street and I asked him a question, and it took him a few minutes to answer it so I asked him to come in for lemonade. It was lemonade, Dad. Nothing else.” I really hoped that no one who had seen us at the park would say something to Dad about it. I hadn’t noticed anyone staring, but you never knew. Sometimes people were looking out the window behind a curtain.

“Of course. I trust you absolutely, Fallin. I want you to know that.”

Yeah, he trusted me. But he thought I was stupid enough to let myself be taken advantage of by some old guy. It was kind of insulting, and not just to Nick. “Nothing happened!” I said. Again.

“I believe that. You would have told us if something happened, I’m sure. If he tried—anything. Right?”

“I would, Dad. I’m not an idiot.”

“So what would you do if you had a friend who told you about inviting an older man, who had been in a position of authority over her, a teacher or a counselor or something, and he came to her house to visit? Would that make you ask your friend some annoying questions?”

I sighed. “Dad, you just don’t understand.”

“I know I don’t. That’s why I’m asking you to help me to understand.”

“He was tired and thirsty. I wanted to talk to him. I invited him in and gave him lemonade. He stayed for maybe ten minutes. That’s all. End of story.”

“You don’t think he will ever come over again?” asked Dad.

I hesitated to answer that, which was exactly the wrong thing to do. “He won’t, Dad, I promise,” I said quickly.

Dad waited.

“I don’t see why there has to be a big investigation over this. Can’t he just be a good teacher who cares about his students?”

“It’s possible,” said Dad. “In fact, I certainly hope that it is more likely than the other. But with what has already happened at your school, and the fact that I know you have felt—well, neglected by boys your own age—you have to forgive us for being suspicious. There are laws against this sort of thing, you know. Laws I helped draft not many years ago, never imagining they would be in place to protect my own daughter.”

“This isn’t about me being neglected by boys my age or my wanting some attention from some older guy.” Blech! This was about demons. “It’s about school work.”

“But there are people who go into the teaching profession to have access to children, Fallin. You have to know that.”

“I’m not a child,” I said sharply.

Dad put up his hands and shrugged. “Maybe not, but you are vulnerable.”

“You know, he doesn’t treat me like that. Like I’m going to break. He treats me like I’m grown up. Like we’re equals.” As soon as it came out of my mouth, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. It was true, but it didn’t sound good at all.

“Fallin, you have to see this from my perspective,” said Dad.

“Looks bad, doesn’t it?” I said, sighing.

He nodded. “I want you to promise not to see him again.”

“Dad, what if he’s at school? What if he’s a substitute again?”

“At school, you can’t avoid him, but I don’t want you to seek him out. I don’t want you to invite him to this house or to spend time alone with him again. Is that clear? I’m doing this for your own good.”

“It’s stupid,” I said. “You don’t understand him. If you just met him and talked to him a little, you’d see.” Or he wouldn’t, depending on if a demon showed up and we had to throw knives at him to take him down. I was thinking Dad wouldn’t like that anymore than what he thought was going on.

“Maybe there will be an opportunity for that. But for now, make me this little promise.”

I hated lying to my parents. I hadn’t told them everything, but I was pretty sure that trying to explain about demon bargains was not going to make either me or Nick sound better. So I nodded my head. “Fine,” I said softly.

Dad let out a long breath. “Thank you, Fallin.” He put an arm around me.

I stiffened up, and thought again about parenting classes. This was probably what they told you to end any tense discussion with. Make sure that your kid knew that you loved her. Well, I didn’t doubt that with my parents. I knew they loved me.

It was funny, because when I was little, other kids used to ask me how I knew, since I wasn’t “really” their child. We didn’t look alike, they’d point out. We weren’t alike inside, either. But to me, my parents had picked me out of all the other kids in the whole world. With “real” parents, it’s not that way. You never know who you’re going to get. My parents had decided to love me. They hadn’t been forced to be my parents by biology, and that made it feel all the more secure to me.

But that didn’t mean we didn’t have problems. Just because we loved each other didn’t mean that Mom and Dad trusted me. No, they still thought I was this stupid teenager. Sometimes it felt like they thought I’d gotten more stupid since I was a little kid, like puberty had made me turn into a raging maniac. They treated me half the time like they didn’t want to get too close to me, and the other half of the time like they were going to squeeze me to death with love. I didn’t want much. I just wanted to be treated like an equal, like my ideas and thoughts counted as much as theirs did.

The next morning, Georgia met me at my locker. “What is up with your parents?” she asked.

I felt suddenly sick. “What happened?” I asked.

“They called and talked to my parents. About some substitute teacher from your German class.”

“Oh,” I said. I still didn’t know his last name.

“So who are they talking about? I said I knew all about him and whatever, that he was fine. But my mom and dad still freaked out. They made me talk to your dad on the phone. And then they lectured me for about an hour afterward.”

“Sorry,” I said. I hadn’t meant it to go that far. “It’s Rumpy.”

“They saw Rumpy?”

“He was teaching me some more lessons on demon fighting and we were by my house. I just asked him to come in to get a glass of lemonade. That’s all.”

Georgia rolled her eyes. “Oh, him. Well, now I know why your parents were so worried.”

“Hey, don’t start with me about that,” I said. “What did my dad ask you, anyway?”

“Your dad wanted to know how often you met him, what you did together, how serious I thought you were, if I had ever seen you doing anything together that he could take to the police for action.”

My ears were starting to burn. “What did you tell him?”

She shrugged. “I told him that there was nothing going on. That was it.”

“Thanks,” I said.

When I got home before my parents, I went into my dad’s office and checked the history on his internet use. It turned out he had been trying to track Nick. He had checked into all the houses in the neighborhood to see who was new. He’d also gone to the sex offender registry to see if we had any offenders in the area. Nick wasn’t on the list.

But it gave me an idea. Maybe I could find out who Nick was, if I had his full name. Or if I cross-referenced enough other stuff I knew about him. I know I’d said I wasn’t going to find the girl he was in love with and tell her he was still waiting for her, but I wanted to know who she was at least for myself, if for no one else. What was wrong with that?