Page 37 of Off Limits

“He just works near the school,” I explain. “It’s easy. Plus, he’s never late. So then…neither am I.”

He lowers his voice in a mock whisper. “If you need help escaping, Holland, just blink your eyes twice.”

“Stop!” I bat his arm playfully. “It’s honestly just easier.”

He shrugs. “It’s just weird to me that you were absent from school for, like, a month, and then when you come back, suddenly, you’re, like, living in a mansion with some mafia boss type who drives you around, and there’s, like, no sign of your mom in your life anymore. Like, for real. Is something up?”

“What?” His comment surprises me so much that I bark out a laugh. “Mafia boss? No! They’re getting divorced. You just met me when I was living with my mom is all.” Maybe I’m getting high from all the smoke in the car, but seeing Jean-Luc through Kye’s eyes is giving me a case of the helpless giggles. Mafia boss.

He laughs and hauls on his pen. “I don’t know. That guy is like eight feet tall, man, and he’s always in a suit. Always angry, like—“ he furrows his brow and speaks in a low baritone, “‘Get in the car, Dani,’ ‘Get out of this house, young man.’ I just, I don’t know…you do not seem related is all.”

“We’re not related!” I cackle, and I’m just about to explain what stepfather means, when there’s a knock on the car window. My eyes jerk up and Kye’s head swivels to his window, and there’s Ms. Caldwell, the school principal, rapping on the window and frowning.

Jean-Luc

I GET OFF the phone with Principal Caldwell in a blind rage.

Drugs…school property…

…And Kye fucking Knight.

It was the mention of Kye’s name that made my blood boil. Of course it’s him. Dani would never get high in a school parking lot, that’s not who she is.

She’s a good girl. My sweet girl. And Kye…

If he so much as laid a hand on her I will break every one of his teenage fingers.

I’m clenching my jaw as I storm down the school hallway only a half hour later. For the first time in a long time, I surprise myself by wishing Melanie was here. Melanie would know how to handle this. How to handle the principal, how to handle Danica. How to handle me.

If Melanie were here, maybe Danica wouldn’t be getting in trouble at school in the first place. Maybe everything would be the way it should be. Maybe I wouldn’t be so fucked up and confused, and maybe Danica wouldn’t be, either. It would be my wife in bed beside me…

Instead of her daughter.

I take a deep breath, trying to ground myself, as I round the corner to the school’s administrative office. Danica and Kye are sitting side by side in the waiting room, looking sheepish. They both look up guiltily at me as I identify myself to the receptionist.

“Dad,” entreats Danica, but I stop her with a hand gesture.

“Not. One. Word,” I snarl. She closes her mouth, eyes wide, and Kye ducks his head. Too afraid to look at me, that little shit. He thinks he’s the big man who can put his dick in my daughter’s mouth, but he can’t even look me in the eyes when I’m angry.

Danica’s principal, Ms. Caldwell, and I are beginning to have history. I remember meeting her at a tour of the school when Dani was fourteen, before she registered. She knows Mel—not well, since Danica has never been in trouble before—but we also had a conference call last month with Dani’s social worker to discuss Dani’s absence. She knows Dani was abandoned by her mother, and she’s sympathetic to my exasperation, reminding me that while smoking pot is a great offence at school, it’s not abnormal behaviour.

“I’m sure I did the same thing when I was her age,” she tells me with a wink.

In the end, she agrees not to suspend either child, although I was only advocating for Dani. They’re two weeks away from graduating high school and, “at least in Dani’s case,” she specifies, “there are no other disciplinary issues. Now that she’s back in class,” she adds.

I shake Ms. Caldwell’s hand and storm back out into the waiting area, indicating Dani should follow me with a gesture and not slowing my pace to wait for her. She jumps out of her seat and whispers, “I’ll text you,” to Kye.

In the car, she has an alert, nervous energy but doesn’t seem high. When I speak, my voice is caustic with anger, despite my attempt to modulate my tone. “Do you understand that special accommodations were made for you to allow you to graduate high school this year?”

“Dad—“ she starts, but I’m too angry to let her continue. It’s not a dialogue.

“Don’t even start with me! What the hell were you thinking, Dani? You’re skipping school and using drugs? On school property? Do you know how hard I had to work to convince Ms. Caldwell that you’re a good kid who deserves a chance? And you just threw that away.”

“I didn’t use drugs!” she wails. “I didn’t! I was just in the car, okay? I said no!”

“But why weren’t you in class? Why were you skipping school to sit alone in a car with that boy?”

“I…I…I’m sorry, okay?” She throws her hands up uselessly. “I don’t have a good reason. I was just succumbing to peer pressure. I’m sorry.”

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