“Of course you are,” her mom said. “You’re not staying here alone. Not with what we know about how dangerous it is.”
“I’m sorry, but you know just enough about Morganville to get yourselves in trouble,” Hannah said. “This really isn’t up for discussion. You have to pack, and you have to go. And Claire can’t come with you, at least not yet.”
“I can’t,” she said. “It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s not,” her dad said, with a steely undertone in his voice she couldn’t remember hearing before. “It’s absolutely simple. I’m your father, you’re under eighteen, and you’re coming with us. I’m sorry, Chief Moses, but she’s too young to be here on her own.”
“Dad, you sent me here on my own!” Claire said.
“Why do you think we were fighting, Claire?” her mom replied. “Your father was just reminding me that I was the one who thought sending you to a school close by, just to get some experience with it, would be a good idea. He wanted you to go straight to MIT, although how we were going to pay for that, I really don’t have any—”
Dad interrupted her. “We’re not going to start this up again. Claire, we were wrong to let you go off on your own here in the first place, no matter how safe we thought it would be. And we’re fixing that now. You’re coming with us, and things will be better once we’re out of this town.”
“Are you listening to me? It’s too late for all that stuff! I can’t go with you!”“It’s the boy, isn’t it?” Claire’s mother said. “Shane?”
“What? No!” Claire blurted out a denial that, even to her own ears, sounded lame and guilty. “No, not really. It’s something else. Like I said, it’s complicated.”
“Oh my God . . . Claire, are you pregnant?”
“Mom!” She knew she looked as mortified as she felt, especially with Hannah looking on.
“Honey, has that boy taken advantage of you?” Her father was charging full speed down the wrong path; he even stood up to make it more dramatic. “Well?”
Claire stared at him, openmouthed, unable to even try to speak. She knew she should lie, but she just couldn’t find the words.
In the ringing silence, her father said, “I want him arrested.”
Hannah asked, “On what charge, sir?”
“Are you kidding? He had sex with my underage daughter!” He gave Claire a look that was partly angry, partly wounded, and all over dangerous. “Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong, Claire.”
“It . . . wasn’t like that!”
“You mean you didn’t? Oh, Claire. It’s your body!”
“Mom, of course I—” Claire took a deep breath. “Can we just pack? Please?”
“Believe it. You’re getting on, and getting out of here. Now. I need you to be safe.” He hugged her, but she stiff-armed him with an angry glare, and turned and boarded without another word. She slumped into the seat behind Jennifer and Gina, next to her mother, and folded her arms in silent protest.
Richard breathed a sigh of relief, then turned to Claire’s parents. “Please,” he said. “We need to get these buses moving.”
Claire’s father shook his head.
“Dad,” Claire said, and tugged on his arm. “Dad, come on.”
He still hesitated, staring at Hannah, then Richard, then Claire. Still shaking his head in mute refusal.
“Dad, you have to go! Now!” Claire practically shouted. She felt sick inside, worried for them and relieved to think they’d be safe, finally, somewhere outside of Morganville. Somewhere none of this could touch them. “Mom, please. Just make him go! I don’t want you here; you’re just in the way!”
“Don’t you talk to us like that, Claire!” her mother snapped. Her dad put a hand on her shoulder and patted, and she took a deep breath.
“All right,” Dad said, “I can see you’re not going to come without a fight, and I can see your friends here aren’t going to help us.” He paused, and Claire swallowed hard at the look in his eyes as he locked stares with Hannah, then Richard. “If anything happens to our daughter—”
“Sir,” Richard said. “If you don’t get on the bus, something is going to happen to all of us, and it’s going to be very, very bad. Please. Just go.”
“You need to do it for your daughter,” Hannah added. “I think you both know that, deep down. So you let me worry about taking care of Claire. You two get on the bus. I promise you, this will be over soon.”
**************************
“Cold?” A jacket settled around her shoulders. It smelled like Shane. “What did I miss?”
She turned, and there he was, wearing an old gray T-shirt and jeans. His leather jacket felt like a hug around her body, but it wasn’t enough; she dived into the warmth of his arms, and they clung together for a moment. He kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay,” he said. “They’ll be okay.”
“No, it’s not okay,” she said, muffled against his chest. “It’s just not.”
He didn’t argue. After a moment, she turned her head, and together they watched the caravan stream away toward the Morganville city limits.
“Why is it,” she asked in a plaintive little voice, “that I can fight vampires and risk death and they can accept that, but they can’t accept that I’m a woman, with my own life?”
Shane thought about that for a second; she could see him trying to work it out through the framework of his own admittedly weird childhood. “Must be a girl thing?”
“Yeah, must be.”
“So I’m guessing you told them.”
“Um . . . not on purpose. I didn’t expect them to be so . . . angry about it.”
“You’re their little girl,” Shane said. “You know, when I think about it, I’d feel the same way about my own daughter.”
“You would?” There was something deliciously warm about the fact that he wasn’t afraid to say that to her. “So,” she said, with an effort at being casual that was probably all too obvious. “You want to have a daughter, then?”
He kissed the top of her head. “Hit the brakes, girl.”(asta e partea mea preferata ;;))
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