Well, one thing changed. Nathan and I had changed.
Was this my fault too?
“Mama, you have to calm down, okay? You need to listen to me.” Deon’s hands were clenched into fists as he tried to keep his temper in check. If his mom had just randomly seen the news, it was totally reasonable for her to be freaking out, even if what they were saying wasn’t true.
“Be patient, Deon,” I whispered to him. “She’s panicking.”
He nodded and took a deep breath. “I’m on my way home, Mom,” he said a bit more calmly. “Where are you?” Though I couldn’t make out the words, I could hear Deon’s mom, Ciara, yelling from the other end of the call. “I’m with Cherri.” He chuckled. “Yeah, a bit of good news with the bad.” He looked at me and said, “She’s excited about that.”
I did a lackluster fist-pump. “Yay.”
“Yeah. We’ve actually been talking for a while, but things finally”—he looked over at me and smiled—“happened.” He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Mom. I’m brazenly aware of the fact that I made you lie to Cherri and you always felt bad about it. Yes, of course I told her I made you do that.” He looked over at me. “By the way, I asked my mom to lie to you about where I was.”
“I gathered that,” I replied.
“Yeah, Mom, she knew that,” Deon said. Then he scoffed. “I told you, we’re on the way. Just listen to me, Mom. If there are any cops there, don’t talk.” He sighed. “Shouldn’t have mentioned cops.” He tried a few times to cut into what I could only imagine was a long string of Ciara freaking out, and then finally got in, “Mom. It’s not going to happen again because I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You didn’t do anything last time!” I yelped, and Ciara must have done the same because Deon’s eyes widened. “Sorry.”
Deon didn’t hang up with his mom on the entire drive home, which left me without a good opportunity to explain to him what Nathan had told me about Miss Abrams. I wish I hadn’t gotten so caught up in everything that happened because I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was an important piece to the mysterious puzzle. I had no idea what was about to happen, but hopefully, I’d have a chance to mention it to Deon before things got too crazy.
I parked my car in front of Deon’s house, and gratefully, there were no police there yet. Deon rushed in the house, and Ciara was standing in the living room with the news on. Deon’s mugshot was on the screen next to a glowing image of Jessica Abrams.
“Oh, it’s not like she was an angel, anyway!” I yelled at the television and then turned to see Deon and Ciara both staring at me. “Sorry. I’m not a big fan of hers.”
“Hello, sweetheart,” Ciara said, reaching out her hands. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yeah,” I said with a smile, walking into the hug.
Ciara looked over at Deon as we parted. “She got even more beautiful.”
“It’s unreasonable, right?” Deon said. “How am I ever gonna get used to it.”
I smiled at them. It felt like taking a step back in time, being in the same room with them both again. If only we had the time to sit and catch up. We had to figure out how to get Deon’s name cleared of the accusations against him.
He walked over and looked at the television. “So, have they come up with any real evidence?” he asked.
Ciara shook her head. “No, nothing yet, but they claim to have lots of witnesses, and a warrant has been issued for your arrest.”
“They can’t do that, can they? You didn’t do anything wrong,” I whined.
Deon walked over, wrapped his arms around me, and pulled me into a hug. “Unfortunately, they can do whatever they want.”
“Do you think it’s your father, Deon?” Ciara asked, and we both looked over at her.
Deon kept a close hold on me but turned to face his mother. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, it’s the same teacher, isn’t it?” she said with an odd shake to her voice. “The same one Nathan was caught with.”
“It is,” he replied, “and Sicily did find out that Nathan and Connor had made the entire school agree to these mini NDAs. Everyone got paid five hundred bucks to keep quiet.”
I remembered getting the snap myself when it went out. I didn’t think anything of it at the time because I was just so happy that it was being covered up for Deon’s sake. “People who were there got paid more,” I added.
“Yeah, a thousand bucks more,” Deon said. “So, yeah. I think it was either Connor or Nathan. Maybe both. I don’t know. They had all the cards. They were treating it like it was a non-issue at school today, and Principal Hix told me I was off the hook. For it all of a sudden to be cropping up now, it must have been one of them.”
“Did something happen to upset them?” Ciara asked.
Deon and I side-glanced each other, but I chose to speak up in defense of Deon. “I broke up with Nathan. He was…abusive, and he and Deon got into a fight about it.”
Ciara raised an eyebrow at me. “You were dating Nathan?”
“It’s complicated, Mom,” Deon defended. “I think Cherri got caught between Nathan and me.”
Ciara shook her head. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. All of this drama is happening because of the man I chose. There’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
“If you hadn’t,” I piped up, “we wouldn’t have Deon.” Deon squeezed me closer to him and kissed me on the forehead. “This is tough, but we just have to figure it out.”
“I need to go see Sicily. He’d told me before that he was prepared
