Chapter 8

I agreed, albeit reluctantly. We planned for me to come over that night and pick Desiree up, which gave me a whopping seven hours to figure out what we were going to do.

When Mom heard about my plans, she lit up. “You should take her to that new restaurant out on Dixon. I hear they have great Italian.”

“The point is to have fun,” I stressed. “She can eat anywhere.”

“You’re not going to feed her at the bowling alley, are you?”

“Only if she says that’s what she’s in the mood for.”

I bussed her cheek and scooped my keys from the coffee table before she could hold me up with more questions. Mom followed me to the door like I was heading off to prom, calling out, “Don’t worry about how late you get home!”

My worries were bigger than inadvertently waking my parents by slamming the front door after they’d gone to bed. For the entire drive to Janet’s, I weighed my options, itemizing them into a list to see how they stacked up against each other.