Heroes Deep Within ✔

16. Nancy Might Not Be (That) Insane

“Um…two hours?”

“Two hours,” Dad repeated. “For two hours your mother and I have been lansacking this house looking for you!”

“Ransacking,” I corrected immediately. Then I wished I hadn’t when Dad’s face began to turn purple. That couldn’t be good.

“Son, I have never been more disappointed in all my life,” Dad said in a carefully controlled voice. Which was what he said every time I screwed up, so he can’t have been that serious this time...right? “We had to call the party off just to look for you, and all along you were fooling around with some girl?”

“Allison is not just some girl—”

“Kevin, I do not care who she is. You can’t just disappear on your own,” Mom snapped.

I threw my hands up and surrendered myself—to my parents or the forces above that were making a comedy show out of my life, I didn’t know.

“I’m sorry, okay?”

“Go to your room. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” Mom looked so sad that even though anger was still flaming through my body at my parents’ treatment of Allison Lotte, I didn’t defend myself. I could recognize when the fight was lost.

So I ran up the stairs and slammed the door to my bedroom, hating everyone and everything.

I hated the fact that my parents hadn’t even given me a chance to explain myself.

I hated that they automatically assumed the worst when they heard I was hanging out with a white girl.

I hated that Mitch had betrayed me.

I hated that he had probably been laughing at me all along, and I’d just been too stupid or stubborn to realize it.

I hated that thanks to him, the one girl in the entire world who didn't make me feel like an oversized moron was no longer going to associate with me.

Above all, I hated myself for never being able to do anything right.

Through the floor, I could hear Mom and Dad yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. Great. After ruining two parties in one night, I was now going to single-handedly cause my parents’ divorce. The universe really didn’t let up with its crap, did it?

“Hear that?” Nancy, who didn’t have a tactful bone in her body, poked her obnoxious head into the bedroom and squinted at my figure sprawled on the bed. “You’re disintegrating our household.”

“Shut up,” I said bitterly. “Your face is disintegrating.”

“Are you sure it’s my face and not your ability to think of creative comebacks?”

“Nancy, I’m really not in the mood.”

Surprisingly, my little sister actually shut up after that. She must have sensed that she was one button shy of pressing my very last nerve.

I heard the rustling of bed-sheets and thought she was going to bed without making a single snarky comment about my oversized body (something she had made a habit of every night we’d been bunking together). Maybe there was hope left in this terrible world after all.

Unfortunately, Nancy ruined my euphoria by rolling over and clicking on the light.

I blinked at the harsh flood of yellow and threw the sheets over my head. “Do you mind? I’m trying to sleep off this bad night here.”

 “Oh, hush,” she said (she actually said those words to me). “I just have to turn in my science fair template online. I’ll be done in two seconds.”