Illusions

keys, Laurel attempted to sneak into the house and was immediately foiled by her mother sitting in the front room sipping a cup of tea and reading a gardening magazine.

Laurel shut the door behind her. “Um, hi,” Laurel finally said.

Her mom studied her for a minute. “I got an interesting call from the school’s attendance office today.”

Laurel cringed on the inside. She busied herself with loosening her petals from their silken bonds.

“You were absent from all your afternoon classes.”

The speech she’d planned all the way home evaporated. So she remained silent. A single petal came free with her scarf, and Laurel wondered if she would lose them all tonight, or if this one had been jarred loose by the day’s activities.

“And then you walk in after seven o’clock on a school night — with no word whatsoever — and your eyes are sparkling like I haven’t seen them in weeks,” she finished, her voice soft.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” Laurel said, trying to sound sincere while suppressing a smile. Her apology was sincere, but a guilty smile would undermine that.

“I wasn’t worried for long,” her mom said, swinging her legs over the side of the couch. “I’m a quick learner. I went out to the backyard and talked to your sentry friend, Aaron.”

Laurel’s eyes widened. “You talked to Aaron?”

“He told me Tamani checked in at about noon and told them you were safe with him. So I stopped worrying.”

“That was enough to make you stop worrying?”

“Well, I stopped worrying about your safety, anyway. I saw the look in that boy’s eyes the other night. There’s no way he would let anything happen to you.”

That grin she just couldn’t stop curled back onto her face.

“Don’t think that gets you off the hook though; you’re still in trouble. We’ll talk punishment when your father gets home.” She sobered now. “Seriously, Laurel. What were you thinking? Does David know where you are?”

Laurel’s face fell and she shook her head.

“Is he at home worried sick?”

“Probably.” She felt awful.

“Did you want to call him?”

She shook her head in a stiff, jerky way.

“Oh.” Then a long pause. “Come in the kitchen,” she said finally, pulling gently on Laurel’s arm. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

As far as her mom was concerned, tea fixed everything. Have a cold? Have some tea. Broken bones? There’s tea for that too. Somewhere in her mother’s pantry, Laurel suspected, was a box of tea that said, In case of Armageddon, steep three to five minutes.

Laurel sat on a barstool and watched as her mom fixed her a cup of tea, then stirred in ice cubes until it was cool.

“I noticed you losing a petal there,” her mom said conversationally. “Would you mind if I preserved a few? They really smell fantastic. I bet I could make a killer potpourri.”

“Um, sure,” Laurel said, trying not to feel too weird about her mom making something out of her petals.

“You get rained on much today?”

“A bit.”

“Well,” Laurel’s mom said after spooning some sugar into the tea, just the way Laurel liked it, “that’s all the small talk I’ve got. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Laurel put it off just a few more seconds as she sipped her tea. “David and Tamani got in a fight at lunch. A fistfight. Over me,” she finally said.

“David? Really?”

“I know, right? But they’ve been angry and mopey lately. And there have been little confrontations the last couple weeks. I guess they just blew up today.”

Her mom was smiling now. “I never had two boys fight over me.”

“You say that like it’s fun. It’s not fun!” Laurel protested. “It was awful. I broke up the fight, but it was just too much. So I left.”

“And… Tamani followed you?”

Laurel nodded.

“Where did you go?”

“To the cabin in Orick.”

“And Tamani joined you?”

“I didn’t ask him to,” Laurel said defensively.

“But he did.”

Laurel nodded.

“And you let him.”

Another nod.

“And then…” Her mom let the question hang in the air.

“And then we went to the cabin. And hung out,” she tacked on, feeling like a moron.

“Hung out,” her mom said wryly. “Is that what the cool kids are calling it these days?”

Laurel rested her face against her palms. “It wasn’t… like that,” she muttered through her fingers.

“Oh, really?”

“Okay, fine. It was kind of like that,” Laurel said.

“Laurel.” Her mom walked around the counter and put her arms around Laurel, leaning her cheek against the top of her head. “It’s all right. You don’t have to defend yourself to me. I’d be lying if I told you I was surprised.”

“Am I really so predictable?”

“Only to a mother,” her mom said, kissing the top of her head. “I have an idea. Why don’t you call Chelsea and tell her everything’s okay, and she can pass the word on to David. He’s called here twice already.”

“Good idea.” Laurel smiled up at her mom, if a little weakly. In truth Chelsea wasn’t a lot easier to face than David, but after today she’d take what she could get.

* * *

“Homigosh,” Chelsea said breathlessly before Laurel even said hello. Thank you, caller ID. “You broke up with David!”

Laurel winced. “Yeah, I guess I kind of did,” she admitted.

“In front of the whole school!”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen in front of the whole school.”

“So you meant for it to happen?”

Laurel sighed, glad she’d decided to call Chelsea from the privacy of her room instead of downstairs in front of her mom. “No, I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“So are you taking it back?”

“No,” Laurel said, strangely sure of her answer, “I’m not taking it back.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. At least… for now.”

“So what does that mean? Are you with Tamani now?”

After this afternoon? “I–I don’t know,” she admitted.

“But maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Whoa.”

“I know.” Laurel toyed with a sugar-glass vial on her desk. She had no idea what to say. “I, um, I called to tell you I’m okay since I disappeared kinda fast today. And in case you were worried…” Her voice trailed off as she heard a soft tap and spun around to catch a hint of movement outside her bedroom window. Tamani raised his head and smiled. Laurel smiled back and almost let go of the phone. “Hey, Chelsea, I gotta go,” she said breathlessly. “Dinner.”

“At eight o’clock?”