“Cassie’s mom. Cassie was worried about you. She said you left the meeting to help some boy in the street?”
To the layperson, my mother probably sounded genuinely concerned, but I felt the bitter sting of her disapproval and immediately attempted to placate her. “It wasn’t as dramatic as she made it sound.”
“Oh?” was the only response. A single syllable that conveyed a myriad of meanings carefully dropped into the conversation. It was an old television producer’s trick used to make guests uncomfortable enough to fill the silence, and potentially hang themselves in the effort. Though I was aware of my mother’s interview technique, I rose to the bait.
“She’s right that there was a boy in the street, but what she didn’t say was that there had been an accident. He was badly hurt.”
“And you were attempting to help,” she said with a raised eyebrow, more an accusation than a question.
“I didn’t feel there was a choice,” I remarked, giving a direct, if not fully truthful, answer.
“Weren’t there any police around? Didn’t someone call an ambulance?”
“I don’t know. He was gone before any authorities arrived.”
“I thought he was badly hurt.”
“He was. But…he stumbled away.” My voice drifted off lamely.
Her keen eyes spotted my notebook and she pulled it closer, trailing her finger down the page. “Is this your mystery boy?”
I nodded while laying my arm over the notes about him at the bottom, hoping it would be interpreted as a casual, nonconcealing gesture.
“Hmm. Perhaps I should place a few calls, try to track him down so he can get some medical help.”
She was heading into the realm of making Amon her business, and I couldn’t allow it. It wasn’t that she would do something to hurt him, but my mother had very strong feelings about people needing to be shuffled into what she considered their proper place.
In her care Amon would likely end up in an institution. I wasn’t sure he didn’t belong in one, but the idea of him being put away felt very wrong. Needing to throw her off the trail by agreeing, I swallowed thickly and squeaked, “I’m sure he could use it.”
I experienced a brief moment of panic as she hesitated over my sketchbook. If she decided to confiscate it, I didn’t know what I’d do. Instead, she closed it and pushed it to the corner of my desk.
“You know how tolerant I am of your little hobbies,” she began. “I just hope that you weren’t rushing into a dangerous situation for the sake of documenting someone…new?” Her sentence was part command, part warning, and part query. Smiling back, I just shook my head, as if the notion were entirely unwarranted.
After a painful moment of my mother’s scrutiny, during which I was sure she could somehow read my mind and discover each and every little secret thought, she dropped the subject and gave me her social-media smile. A small part of me was panicked that she would search for footage of the incident with Amon.
As long as I didn’t jostle the frame too much, I could safely cross between the world my parents lived in and the world I’d fashioned for myself. The incident with Amon was the most dangerous, and admittedly exciting, thing that had ever happened to me, and as much as I wanted him to find his home, and he could probably do so with their help, I also wanted to keep the events of the day all to myself.
“Well, we have a little humanitarian in the family, then, don’t we?”
Quickly, I turned my grimace into a small smile and hoped my mother didn’t notice the difference.
“Just be sure to reschedule your meeting,” she continued. “You know how important it is to your father.”
“Yes. I know. I’ll give the Weird Sis…the girls a call tonight.”