Walk Me Home by Catherine Ryan Hyde Page A

hundred times more sure you shouldn’t.”
    That was true, and Carly knew it. Then again, “when hell freezes over” times a hundred might not be all that much worse than the original. Like multiplying zero by anything and still getting zero.
    Carly peeled away from the doorway and sat on the big, over-stuffed chair by the front window. Looked out at the empty street. Every now and then a car drove by, one of them pumping out that gut-shaking bass from its sound system. Teddy had set up a fake snowman draped with Christmas lights on the lawn. It made her feel like a little kid to stare at it. To like it. To be comforted by it.
    Maybe she was just a little kid. She wasn’t sure anymore.
    She also wasn’t sure she was going.
    Watching Teddy quake at the very idea of her mother’s wrath had shaken her. Wakened her senses. Was she really brave enough to do something her mother had expressly forbidden her to do?
    She envisioned her mother marching over to Dean Senior’s house to find out where the cabin was located. Or calling the police and having them ask the questions. Dean would never speak to her again, never forgive her. None of them would. Word would travel. No one she went to school with would ever trust her for anything. Here Dean might have finally convinced his dad that they were mature enough to go up there alone. Carly could ruin everything.
    She couldn’t go. There was no other answer. She just couldn’t go.
    But she had told Dean she could.
    Maybe she could feign illness.
    It twisted into her stomach so tightly, so sickeningly, that it occurred to her that she might not have to fake it. Making a fool of herself in front of those three popular boys might be enough to make her sick for real.
    Teddy came in about an hour later. Sat on the rug by her chair, arms wrapped around his knees. Looked out the window with her.
    Carly listened and realized she couldn’t hear Teddy’s three friends in the kitchen anymore. Could they really have walked right through the living room and out the front door without her noticing? And why hadn’t she noticed when the voices, the slap of the cards, the clinking of the chips stopped? She tried to track where her head had been but came up empty. She literally didn’t know.
    “Are the guys gone?” she asked, her voice sounding as though it had been in storage for days.
    “Yup.”
    “I didn’t hear them go.”
    “They went out the kitchen door.”
    “Oh. How’d you do?”
    “Bad.”
    “How much did you lose?”
    “Let’s just say…everything I had to lose and then some.”
    “Ow.”
    “I’m on thin ice with your mom.”
    “I know. You said that. Those were her words, weren’t they? She said that to you, right? Pointed her fingernail at your nose and said, ‘You’re on thin ice with me, Ted.’ Right?”
    “Pretty much.”
    Then they stared out the window for a few moments in silence.
    It was right there, right in front of them, the specter of Teddy having to move out. But she refused to make room for it. She refused to shift out of the way and give it a place to sit.
    “You like the snowman?” Teddy asked after a while, startling her slightly.
    “It’s a little on the tacky side.”
    “Thanks. Knew you’d like it.”
    “I actually sort of do,” she said. “I feel like you’re the only one who cares about me.”
    For a long moment—longer than she would have liked—Carly just listened to the sound of his breathing. Exaggerated, like a series of sighs.
    Then he said, “You have no idea how much your mom loves you.”
    “You’re right. I have no idea.”
    “She’d do anything to protect you. Why do you think she won’t let you go? She doesn’t want anything bad to happen to you. Her love for you girls is…just…what’s the word? Fierce.”
    “Yeah. Fierce. I feel the fierce. It’s a little harder to feel the love.”
    Another series of sighs.
    Teddy levered to his feet.
    “I’m going out for a little while. You OK here by