Poison Ink by Christopher Golden

but she had never let herself believe it could come to this. Her parents could be cold to each other, navigating around the house to avoid having to speak, but that wasn’t all the time. She’d heard them fight about money, but mostly the conflicts revolved around the amount of time her father spent at the office, the nights he came home late.
    But this? Had he been cheating on her, or had they just gotten sick of each other? Sammi stared at her mother, eyes narrowed, trying to make sense of this new information, something that would not have seemed possible to her only minutes before.
    “You guys…you fight all the time, but you make up. He’ll come home.”
    Her mother grimaced, swallowing hard, and lifted a hand to cover her mouth. Her eyes glistened wetly, but she did not cry.
    “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know which would be worse.”
    “I do,” Sammi said quickly. She wanted to stomp her foot and cry, to try to force her mother to realize that only one outcome made any sense at all. They had to stay together. They were her parents, and they belonged here in the house with her. The way it should be. Her father might not be the most attentive dad in the world, but she couldn’t imagine never having Sunday morning pancakes with him again.
    “I’m sorry, Sammi. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
    “No. You should. I’m sixteen, Mom, not some kid. I just…it’s so hard for me to imagine.”
    “Well, don’t try imagining it right now. Let’s think about happier things and not worry about what we can’t control. Your father and I aren’t going to do anything crazy, not without talking things over. I’m sure of that much. You go and order the pizza. Is your homework done?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Why don’t you take care of that, and after dinner we’ll watch a movie. Something funny.”
    Sammi nodded, wondering if there existed a movie in the world funny enough to lighten her heart tonight. The shadows of the day’s events hung over her, made her feel a little queasy. It seemed surreal, not having her friends to call right now, not having them to talk her through what was going on with her parents. But they weren’t her friends anymore. And so much for talking to her mother about the tattoos and the way the girls had turned their backs on her. Linda Holland had enough troubles of her own.
    Sammi gnawed her lower lip, holding back all the things she wanted to say. Her guitar waited upstairs. All her confusion could be put into the music, exorcised like a demon.
    But first she would keep her mother company for a little while. Sammi went into the kitchen to get the phone. She called the Aegean, the local pizza place they liked the best, and then went back into the living room.
    Homework could wait. She sat down next to her mother on the couch and they leaned into one another, huddling together the way they always had when Sammi had been very little. Mom handed her the remote control and she started surfing channels, not paying much attention, just looking for something to make them smile.

 

    7
    W hen Sammi stepped off the bus Tuesday morning, it felt like the first day at a new school. The gloomy weather of the past few days had at last abated, and the blue sky stretched forever in all directions. September always seemed a tug-of-war between summer and fall. Autumn would win in time, but on that morning summer had the advantage. Sammi wore cotton pants that zipped at the hip and a loose, short-sleeved burgundy shirt over a white tank, and she felt much too warm.
    She’d been lucky in her life. Her family had always lived in Covington. Maybe that would change if they split up— God, how can I even be thinking like that? —but other than kindergarten, she’d never had to start a school without at least having some kids around that she knew. Still, she understood what that experience must be like, everybody studying the new kid out of the corner of his eye, checking her out, watching to see if she had