MY PUNISHMENT FROM DAD TURNS OUT TO BE A three-week grounding, along with the loss of car privileges except for driving to and from school. All in all, I expected much worse.
For the next two weeks, I’m perfect. I go to school, study, clean up around the apartment, and most important, I stay away from stores. I don’t see my friends outside of school, but no one suspects anything’s amiss because we’re all stuck inside studying for finals anyway. I don’t hear anything about my shoplifting charge, and after a while I start to wonder if I ever will. It was a stupid pair of sunglasses. Maybe they were just trying to scare me. Maybe they forgot all about it.
I try to forget about it too, and shift my focus to exams. After finishing my last one, English, on Thursday morning, I meet up with Alyssa outside the classroom.
“How’d you do?” she asks.
I make a don’t ask face. Like we suspected, the exam was mostly essay questions, which hopefully I managed to bullshit my way through. “You?”
She shrugs. “I don’t even care. We’re done. Let summer begin!”
I force a smile. My grounding doesn’t end until next week. What am I supposed to tell my friends when they try to make plans? Alyssa and Sophie easily believed my excuse for ditching them at the mall the day I got caught—I told them I came down with a stomach bug and had to go home immediately—but each lie makes me feel like a total jerk. Still, telling them the truth would be so much worse.
Before Alyssa and I head home, we stop in to visit Sophie in the cafeteria, which has been turned into an extra study area for exam week. We find her at a table by the window, surrounded by papers and empty chip bags. Her last exam is this afternoon.
“Hi, guys!” She waves cheerfully as we approach. “I’m so glad you’re here to witness the complete meltdown I’m about to have any second now.”
I wince in sympathy. “That bad, huh?”
Just as we sit down, Dawson breezes by and taps his knuckles on the back of my chair. I look up to see his wide smile. “Got the job at Ace Burger,” he tells me.
“Awesome! Congrats.” I hold out my hand, which he slaps hard before continuing on his way.
“You got him a job?” Sophie asks, momentarily distracted from her breakdown.
“Ace Burger is right across the street from Royal Smoothie,” I remind her. “I noticed a Help Wanted sign in the window there when I went for my interview, and I mentioned it to Dawson. That’s all.”
Alyssa’s eyes follow Dawson as he exits the cafeteria. “Huh. He didn’t tell me he applied at Ace Burger.”
One of Sophie’s blond eyebrows shoots up. “Do you guys have a private group chat going on or something?”
We exchange a quick glance. Does Sophie see it too, this quiet connection between Dawson and Alyssa? Maybe his crush is more obvious than I thought.
“We text sometimes,” Alyssa says, her tone mildly defensive. “Hello? We’re friends.”
Now both of Sophie’s eyebrows go up, along with one corner of her mouth. “You could do a lot worse, you know.”
Alyssa stares at her for a moment and then shifts her gaze to me, as if checking to see if I agree. I give her a slight nod. Dawson is one of the sweetest guys I know, and great boyfriend material.
“Seriously?” She rolls her eyes. “Even if I did have any interest in dating someone—which I don’t—I wouldn’t choose Dawson. He’s one of my best friends. Besides,” she adds, glancing again at the exit, even though he’s long gone, “my grandmother would freak.”
Sophie frowns. “Because he’s black?”
“No, because he’s not Greek. You know my yiayia wants me to settle down with a nice Greek boy. She doesn’t listen when I tell her I don’t want to settle down with anyone right now, Greek or otherwise.”
“Um, she knows it’s the twenty-first century, right?” Sophie asks.
Alyssa just shrugs and changes the subject, something she does whenever her family is brought up. She and I have that in common. We weren’t friends with Sophie, Zach, and Dawson yet when Lyss’s father suffered a massive heart attack and never made it out of surgery. Or when my mother shattered our family with her cheating and lies. They’re aware of these things, but we’ve never really discussed it in depth, even though Alyssa and I know our friends would be sympathetic. Still, they didn’t live through them with us. Alyssa and I just had each other then, two lost girls stumbling their way around a frightening new reality. The difference is, I could see my mom, if I wanted to, but Alyssa will never spend time with her father again. Yet somehow, even in the face of grief, she eventually adapted while I stayed more lost than ever.
“Morgan has zoned out again.” Alyssa pokes my shoulder.
“What?” I meet her eyes. I was listening but only caught about every other sentence.
“Do you want to all drive together to Jasmine’s pool party on Saturday?”
“Oh.” I squirm in my chair, uncomfortable. Again, my mind flashes on the striped bikini, folded among my underwear. All that work and I’ll probably never get to wear it. “Um, I’m not going to that.”
“What?” Sophie shrieks. A girl studying at the next table over shoots us a dirty look.
“Since when?” Alyssa asks.
Since I got caught stealing at the mall while you guys were waiting for me just a short walk away. I swallow. My throat aches with the effort of keeping the truth from slipping past my tongue. But I can’t say anything. My friends are good people, with values and integrity. They’re rule followers, and they believe I have all these qualities too. They’d never understand.
“Since I got grounded. Long story.” Maybe a half-truth will be enough to dull the ache.
Sophie and Alyssa gape at me, shocked. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been grounded, and this is the first grounding given out by Dad. He’s always trusted me, given me lots of freedom. Until now.
“What did you do?” Sophie finally asks.
“Nothing horrible.” I take off my glasses and pretend to wipe a smudge off them so I don’t have to look at my friends. “I don’t really want to get into it. Too embarrassing.”
“Well, that . . . sucks,” Sophie says.
“Yeah.” I put my glasses back on and their faces sharpen into focus. Sophie’s bottom lip sticks out in an exaggerated pout while Alyssa regards me thoughtfully, like she’s trying to figure out exactly what I’m holding back. She knows as well as I do that my father would only punish me if I did something really, really bad.
When I walk into the apartment an hour later, I startle a little to see Dad sitting on the couch. Sometimes I forget that he’s off on Thursdays.
“How was your exam?” he asks dully, like he’s not very interested in my answer.
“Fine.” I move closer and notice he’s just sitting there, not watching TV or on his phone or laptop. A white piece of paper lies faceup on the coffee table in front of him. “What’s that?”
He looks down at the paper, then back up at me. “This came in the mail today. Apparently, that nice police officer referred you to a diversion program.”
His words make zero sense to me. I sit next to him on the couch and pick up the letter.
“It’s for first-time offenders,” Dad continues, his voice sticking on the last word. “An alternative to prosecution. Instead of going to court, you’d need to complete certain requirements, like counseling, for instance. If you do what they ask, the charges will be withdrawn.”
“So I don’t have to go to court?”
He leans back and rubs a hand over his face. “Not if you agree to their requirements.”
I scan the letter for this list of available “requirements,” one or more of which I will have to complete. Each one sounds more humiliating than the last. Counseling. Restitution. Apology letters. Charitable donations. Community service.
“I spoke with the diversion coordinator this morning,” Dad says. “In your case, he’ll usually recommend a shoplifting education class, which you can do online, and restitution, meaning you pay the store back for what you took. But since they got the sunglasses back, that doesn’t apply to you.”
I place the letter on the table and look at my father. His head is tilted away, as if he can’t even stand to look at me, and I feel a jolt of self-disgust. All this time, I never once thought about how my getting caught would affect him. How it would only add to his stress and burdens, and make him feel like he’s failed me somehow. Even though none of this is his fault at all.
“Okay,” I say in a steady voice. “I’ll do the online course, then. And if it costs money, I’ll pay for it myself. I start my job next week and it won’t take me long to save up.”
He turns his head toward me, meeting my eyes for the first time since I came in. “Yes, you’ll do the course and pay for it, but that’s not enough. You need to do something else too . . . something meaningful.”
“Meaningful?”
“You need to see how your actions affect other people,” he goes on. “You have to learn to give back instead of selfishly taking.” He leans forward and points to an item on the list. “The coordinator recommended this.”
“Community service? But I’ll have work and—”
“Thirty hours’ worth,” he cuts in. “Thirty hours of being an active, contributing member of the community this summer. That’s how you’re going to make up for what you did.”
I open my mouth to protest, to reiterate about my summer job and time constraints and having to explain my sudden burst of “volunteerism” to my friends, but his expression is so stormy that all I can manage is, “So, what, will I have to pick up litter off the side of the highway or something?”
He shakes his head. “Do you remember Rita Sloan? She was a receptionist at the dealership for a couple of years when you were about eight or nine.”
I stare at him blankly. No, I don’t remember a receptionist from almost ten years ago. There seems to be someone new at the front desk every time I go in.
“Anyway,” Dad goes on, “we’ve kept in touch over the years. She went to business school after she left the dealership, and now she manages a thrift store for a not-for-profit organization. I’m going to get in touch with her and see if she’ll give you a job.”
A thief. Working in a store filled with potentially steal-worthy items. I stare at him, waiting for the irony to sink in, but he doesn’t even blink.
“It’s either that or prosecution, Morgan,” he says, standing up. “Your choice.”
He heads for the kitchen, leaving me alone on the couch. His words linger in my head. Your choice. But the more I think about it, the more it seems like I don’t have any choice at all.