NO. No, no, no, no, no.
Kinley’s mind repeated the word, over and over and over, an endless cycle of pain and denial. It ran through her blood and stuck in the lining over her stomach and worked its way into her throat.
Kinley bent over the toilet and vomited. Her mother held her hair back and knotted it with a hair tie. “Baby,” Mrs. Phillips whispered, rubbing her back. “Oh, sweetheart. Should we take you to the doctor?”
The idea of setting foot outside the house put her stomach in motion again and she heaved into the bowl, the vomit burning her throat and her mouth.
Her mother disappeared for a moment and returned with a box of Kleenex and a glass of water. “Here, sweetie. Wash out your mouth.” She helped Kinley take a drink, like she had when she was a little girl, and after Kinley had spit the water into the toilet she dabbed her mouth with a pink tissue.
Kinley’s mom flushed the toilet, sending her sickness into the plumbing. Kinley wished all her pain and guilt would go with it.
“Did you eat something funny?” Mrs. Phillips asked. Her dark brown eyes, almost black, were filled with concern, which Kinley rarely saw in her mother. Mrs. Phillips was a perfect politician’s wife. Everyone called her the second coming of Michelle Obama—with better dresses. Which was hard to do.
It also made her hard to be around. She was determined. She was intelligent and poised. And she had no idea that her daughter wasn’t equally intelligent. In other words, she didn’t know about Kinley’s little secret.
“I haven’t eaten much lately,” Kinley murmured. Her voice was scratchy from getting sick.
Mrs. Phillips put a hand to her daughter’s forehead. “You might be running a fever, sweetie. Are you worried about your professor? Is that making you sick?”
Kinley’s eyes filled with tears. Her mother had hit the nail on the head. She had no idea.
Just like Tyler had no idea.
Kinley had thought he’d just lifted one of her study recordings—probably the psychology one, or maybe even the Russian literature one she had been reviewing for a college course she had taken last summer—but no. He had taken one she thought she’d hidden away in her desk.
One that no one should hear unless the circumstances were incredibly, incredibly dire.
One flash drive that could ruin everyone and everything.
Kinley had tried to call him. But since she’d seen him last—since she had confessed—he had all but disappeared, save for a few one-word texts here and there.
He had disappeared with her deepest and darkest. And who knew what Tyler the Delinquent would do with it?
And to think she’d trusted him.
She started to cry, harder now. The kind of crying that made faces swollen and red.
And right there on the floor of the bathroom, Kinley’s mother gathered her up in her arms and held her, just like when she was little.
Kinley, who preferred proud and cold and perfect to weak and shallow and useless, let her mother hold her. She closed her eyes and was dozing off, when there was a knock at the bathroom door. It opened, just a crack.
Her father stuck his head in. “Kin, are you okay?”
She lifted her head. Her skull pounded.
“Great, Dad.”
“Okay, good. Do you think I can talk to you?” He cast a look at her mother. “Eleanor, she’s fine.”
Fitting that her mother was named for a great president’s wife.
Her mother helped her slowly to her feet, and Kinley smiled weakly at her. “Take it easy,” her mother warned, and Kinley collected the words and stored them as close to her heart as she could.
It wasn’t something her mother said often. In fact, Kinley couldn’t remember the last time she’d said something so soft and kind. She wanted to fall back into her mother’s arms and be a child again. But there was no room for that.
Her mother followed her into her bedroom with her father in tow. Mrs. Phillips tucked her tightly into her bed and left a fresh glass of water and a box of tissues on her nightstand, then moved the trash can close to the side of the bed before leaving.
“Are you really sick?” her father asked once they were alone. “Should I get a doctor?”
“I’ll be fine,” Kinley said, coughing. Her throat was raw, like she had swallowed a handful of nails. Part of her was angry at her father for the question, for dismissing her obvious pain, but the rest of her was grateful. Deeply grateful. She wanted to be normal again.