Chapter 41: : Chapter 41

Two Days After the Trip, 10:01 a.m.

“Hey,” my roommate says the next morning when I get back to our room. She’s sitting at her computer, messing around on MySpace. “I take it things either went really, really well or really, really bad.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Well, you never came home last night. Which means you either made up with your boyfriend, or you didn’t make up with him, and spent the rest of the night trolling around the streets, looking for mischief. Or holed up with some other random guy. Or crying your eyes out in an alley.”

I giggle. “It went…well, let’s just say I’m being cautiously optimistic.”

“Good,” she says, smiling. “Cautiously optimistic is good.”

“Hey,” I say. “I’m sorry about last night. I’m not crazy, I swear. I just have a lot of stuff going on.”

“Not a big deal,” she says. She shuts down her computer and picks up her purse. “I’m heading over to the financial aid office, because they screwed something up with my forms.” She rolls her eyes. “But do you want to have breakfast together? We could meet at around eleven? You can tell me about last night.”

“Sure,” I say. “I have some phone calls to make now, so that works out perfect.”

“Cool.” She smiles.

Once the door shuts behind her, I pick up my cell phone and take a deep breath. I have to call Lloyd. I have to call my mom, my dad, and Jocelyn. I told Jordan he had to stop protecting me, and now I have to stop protecting myself. I decide to go for it, to jump right into things, to make the hardest call first. I dial my dad’s number at work. The sun is shining through the window, casting stripes of light on the floor. “Hey,” I say when he answers. “It’s me.”