Page 72 of Run Away Home: Tempered

“What’s wrong with this?”

“I bought you a bunch of new clothes not too long ago. You’re not going to school wearing an old, stained T-shirt. It’s not even properly ironed.”

“No one wears ‘properly ironed’ clothes to school.” I mimic him in my worst Scottish accent. It’s even worse than Hayley’s.

“Okay. Wear that, then.” He looks back at his phone.

Wow? Really?

“So, you want me to look bad?”

“Are you trying to fight with me right now, Daniel? You were mad when I told you not to wear it, and now that I say you can wear it, you think I want you to look bad?”

“It’s not my fault that you don’t understand how things work here in America.”

He puts his mug down on the table and blinks at me very quickly.

“I don’t understand? I think I understand quite well how things work here. You know what? You can have the TV back.”

“I can?”

“Absolutely.”

Uh oh. Uh oh. Uh oh. Uh oh.

“Peter, I’m—”

“Cable costs forty dollars per month, the PlayStation was three hundred, add in the ten dollars a month for Netflix... Okay. You can have the TV for three hundred and fifty dollars.”

“I don’t have three hundred and fifty dollars!”

“And you can carry it out of my room and hook it back up yourself.”

“I just said I don’t have three hundred and fifty dollars!”

“You can work for it. You can do the dishes, vacuum, the laundry. That’s how you get money to pay for things. I thought you understood how things work here in this great country?”

“I do understand how things work!”

“Well, they don’t work unless you do, right? Pull yourself up by the bootstraps.”

“Peter, I’m sorry... I didn’t mean—”

He picks up his wrist and looks at his watch. “Fifteen minutes until you have to leave. That’s just enough time to get the dishwasher going. Oh! Don’t forget this Christmas mug.” He pushes it toward me.

“Are you serious?”

He doesn’t answer me. He stands and walks out of the kitchen.

Peter

I’VE READ SO MANY PARENTINGbooks that say work is good for teenagers, but then I think about myself as a teenager. Work did nothing for me. Perhaps it was the wrong type of work. All children are different. What if some responsibility will be good for Danny? Then I think about—

No!I close my eyes tightly. Not that type of work. Nothing dangerous!

“I’m leaving now.” I open my eyes. Danny’s got his backpack on, and he changed clothes. Now he’s wearing clean jeans and a Nike sweatshirt.

“Have a good day at school,” I respond from the couch.

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