“Hello?” I try instead. I’ve never been one to get myself into trouble, so all this sneaking around is entirely new to me. Mom’s grounded me twice in sixteen years. Dad hasn’t been around to ground me in the first place. “I’m home.”
“Yeah, I can see that you’re home,” Dad says, his voice gruff and scolding as he gets to his feet. Ella watches from the couch. “Which is where you were supposed to be the whole night. You weren’t feeling great, but now it seems you’re feeling absolutely fine. What’s up with that?”
“I was at Tiffani’s house,” I blurt. This is partially true. “Girls’ night. I felt a little better, so I went. I thought you’d be okay with it.”
“Tyler’s girlfriend?” Ella chirps. She too gets to her feet.
Unfortunately for Tiffani, yes. “Yeah.”
“Speaking of Tyler,” Dad mutters, “where the hell did he sneak off to?”
“I don’t know,” I lie. Right now, he’s smoking joints and snorting coke and drinking beer and laughing at slurred jokes that aren’t even funny. “He was still here when I left.” It would be so easy just to blurt out to Ella that her son is a pothead. That would teach him not to be a jerk to me. But for some reason I feel as though it’s not my place to tell, so I continue to cover for him. It’s as though I can’t stop the words from spilling out of my mouth. “Maybe he went to get food or something.”
“His car’s still here,” Ella points out. She looks disappointed, like she was hoping he would be the child who walked through the front door and not me.
“Maybe a walk?”
“I doubt that,” she says. “He won’t answer my calls.” It must be hard for her having to deal with a kid who is almost impossible to handle.
“Eden,” Dad says. “I smell alcohol. I don’t like you lying to me.”
I stare at him, wondering what he’s referring to: lying about being sick, lying about being at Tiffani’s, or lying about not knowing where Tyler is. For some reason, there’s a sudden wave of anger flowing through my veins and I have no idea why. My face contorts. “And I don’t like you walking out on Mom, but things don’t always go the way we want them to.”
I don’t wait around to hear Dad’s reply. I ball my hands into fists and quickly dart up the stairs and into my room. The tequila churns in my stomach, reminding me that I could barely survive the party for more than an hour. The loud music has given me a headache, and I can still recall the powerful reek of weed. Now I really do feel sick, and this time it isn’t just an excuse.
*
I awake in the morning to the sound of Ella’s voice bouncing around the house and Tyler’s voice echoing twice as loud. I stare at the ceiling for a little while, listening to their yelling and wondering what time it is. And whatever time it actually is, it feels way too early for this. Tyler must have found his way home from Austin’s.
With the sunlight streaming into my room and the sound of someone mowing their lawn difficult to ignore, I decide to get up and pull on some clothes. As I’m doing this, I hear loud footsteps on the stairs and cursing. It can only be one person, and this one person just so happens to decide to enter my room.
“Did you know there’s this thing that exists called—oh, I don’t know—privacy?” I fix my intruder with a firm glare before I finish pulling on my hoodie.
Tyler cocks his head to one side as he shuts the door. “Here’s your stuff.” In his hands, he’s holding my clothes that I left behind at Tiffani’s, and he lays them down on my bed. Surprisingly, his voice is calm now. Five seconds ago, it was loud enough to deafen a small child. “And your, uh, phone.” He edges a little toward me, and I take it from him, slowly, as I stare up at his face. He’s struggling to meet my eyes.
“Thanks,” I say bluntly. I’m still unbelievably furious at him.
Silence captures my room for a long moment. He slowly turns to leave, but before he reaches the door, he spins back around again. “Look,” he starts, “about last night—”
“I already know that you’re a jerk and that you do drugs and that you’re pathetic as hell,” I say. “You don’t have to explain it to me.”
He frowns, his lips forming a firm line as he furrows his eyebrows and takes a few hesitant steps toward me. “Just—just don’t say anything.”
I fold my arms, gazing at him curiously. For once, he doesn’t look terrifying. “Are you asking me not to snitch?”
“Don’t tell my mom or your dad anything,” he says, and his voice is so soft and almost pleading that it’s leaving me slightly confused. At least the begging side of him is nice. “Just forget about it.”
“I can’t believe you’re involved in that stuff,” I murmur, glancing down at my phone—four missed calls from Dad—and then tossing it onto my bed. “Why do you even do that? It really doesn’t make you look cool if that’s what you’re trying to do.”
“Not even close.”
I throw my hands up in exasperation. “Then what?”