Chapter 12
TWELVE
CLARA
Once my mother stops screaming incoherently in my ear, she asks me a question and actually waits for my response. I don’t have to even think about the answer. I’ve known it for months, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself, especially Luke.
“Yes, I love him.”
“He’s your brother,” she wails.
Laughing, I lean back in the chair and close my eyes before I let out a long exhale. “No, he’s not, Mom. We only met once when I was sixteen. Why does everyone keep calling him my brother?” I demand.
“Because I’m married to his father,” she snaps. “Which makes him your brother.”
I almost hang up on her because she is being beyond ridiculous and, besides that, hysterical. She acts like this is happening to her. She didn’t have three girls film her having sex and then sell said pictures and probably video to the media. She’s not the victim here. She’s just embarrassed—meanwhile, I’m mortified.
“What happens now?” she snaps.
“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to Luke yet.”
She lets out a cackle, almost as if she’s won some sort of victory. “Isn’t that just rich?” she asks. “He does this to you, and then poof , he’s gone. Typical.”
I don’t ask her what she means. I don’t have to. I know that was a dig at Luke’s mother. She has had some sort of vendetta against her since she started dating Luke’s father, which I don’t understand and probably never will.
“I don’t know what that means, and I don’t want to,” I say. “I’m finished with this conversation. I love you, but this is not helping anything.”
She doesn’t say anything, and when I hear the silence, then the faint click, I know she’s ended the call. Whatever. She’ll get over it, or she won’t. My mother and I haven’t been close… ever .
She always put whatever man she was dating before me, which hurt when I was little, but as I got older, I realized it was a blessing in disguise because I didn’t want her kind of attention.
Now, I really don’t.
“Have you talked to the school?” Barbara asks as I walk out of my bedroom and into the living room.
Sarah is gone. She had a shift at the department store she works at on the weekends. I should have taken a second job like her. That way, I wouldn’t have had the time to fall in love with Luke.
“I haven’t,” I murmur.
I graduated college a year ago, finished all my licensing, and realized that I didn’t want to live in Wisconsin. So, when a school in Cleveland, Ohio, offered me a job, I ran. Initially, I was hired as a long-term substitute middle school social studies teacher.
Although my tests don’t transfer, they gave me a year to become certified in Ohio. I finished everything in August and was hired full time and given my own classroom in September. It’s only been five months, and I’m still on probation.
They can fire me for breathing funny if they want to. Which means they can definitely fire me for this scandal. And I have a feeling they will. There is no way they’re going to want me on their campus after they read the article and see the picture… or worse… the video .
Ugh.
The thought of anyone seeing that makes my stomach turn. I want to cry just thinking about it. But I can’t do that anymore. I need to accept that this is what’s happened and woman up about it.
I did nothing wrong.
Nothing.