“Yes.” She took a sip of her drink. “To be honest, Halley, I’m not happy with this relationship.”

Well, I thought, you’re not in it. But I didn’t say anything. I could tell already this wasn’t going to be a discussion, a dialog, or anything involving my opinion. I was an expert at my mother. I knew her faces, her tones of voice, could translate the hidden, complex meanings of each of her sighs.

“Now,” she began, and I could tell she’d worked on this, planned every word, probably even outlined it on a legal pad for her book, “since you’ve been hanging around with Macon you’ve gotten caught skipping school, broken your curfew, and your attitude is always confrontational and difficult. Honestly, I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

I didn’t say anything and just picked at my pizza. I was losing my appetite, fast. She kept on; she was on a roll.

“Your appearance has changed.” Her voice was so loud, and I sunk lower in my seat; this wasn’t the place for this, which was exactly why she’d picked it. “You smell like cigarettes when you come home, you’re listless and distracted. You never talk about school with us anymore. You’re distant.”

Distant. If she couldn’t keep me under her thumb, I was far away.

“These are all warning signs,” she went on. “I tell parents to watch out for them every day.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I said. “I was only twenty minutes late, Mom.”

“That’s not the issue here, and you know it.” She got quiet as the waiter came by with more bread, then lowered her voice and continued. “He’s not good for you.”

Like he was food. Not a green pepper or an orange, but a big sticky Snickers bar. “You don’t even know him,” I said.

“That’s because you refuse to discuss him!” She wadded up her napkin and threw it down on her plate. “I have given you endless chances to prove me wrong here. I have tried to dialog—”

“I don’t want to dialog,’” I snapped. “You’ve already made up your mind anyway, you hate him. And this isn’t about him, anyway.”

“This is what I know,” she said, leaning closer to me. “He drives like a maniac. He’s not from Lakeview. And you are willing to do anything for him, including but probably not limited to lying to me and your father. What I don’t know is what you’re doing with him, how far things have gone—if there are drugs involved or God knows what else.”

“Drugs,” I repeated, and I laughed. “God, you always think everything is about drugs.”

She wasn’t laughing. “Your father and I,” she said, finally lowering her voice, “have discussed this thoroughly. And we’ve decided you cannot see him anymore.”

“What?” I said. “You can’t do that.” My stomach was tight and hot. “You can’t just decide that.”

“Well, Halley, with your actions lately you’ve given us no other choice.” She sat back in her chair, crossing her arms. This wasn’t going the way she wanted, I could tell. This wasn’t her office and I wasn’t a patient and she couldn’t just tell me what to do. But I didn’t know what she’d expected. That she was doing me a favor? “Halley, I don’t think you understand how easy it is to make a mistake that will cost you forever. All it takes is one wrong choice, and ...”

“You’re talking about Scarlett again,” I said, shaking my head. I was tired of this, tired of battling and putting up fronts, of having to think so hard about my next move.

“No,” she said. “I am talking about you falling in with the wrong crowd, getting influenced to do something you aren’t ready to do. That you don’t want to do. You don’t know what Macon’s involved in.”

I hated the way she kept saying his name.

“There’s a lot of dangerous stuff out there,” she said. “You’re inexperienced. And you’re like me, Halley. You have a tendency not to see people for what they really are.”

I sat there and looked at my mother, at the ease in her face as she told me how I felt, what I thought, everything. Like I was a puzzle, one she’d created, and she knew the solution every time. If she couldn’t keep me close to her, she’d force me to be where she could always find me.

“That’s not true,” I said to her slowly, and already I knew I’d say something ugly, something final, even as I stood up, pushing back my chair. “I’m not getting influenced, I’m not inexperienced, and I am not like you.”

It was the last thing that did it. Her face went blank, shocked, like I’d reached out and slapped her.

You wanted distance, I thought. There you go.

She sat back in her chair, keeping her voice low, and said, “Sit down, Halley. Now.”

I just stood there, thinking of running out the door, losing myself in Macon’s secret network of pizza parlors and arcades, side streets and alleys, riding up to that penthouse room and stowing away, forever.

“Sit down,” she said again. She was looking over my head, out to the parking lot. She was blinking, a lot, and I could hear her taking deep, deep breaths.

I sat down, pulling in my chair, while she dabbed at her mouth with a napkin and waved over the waiter. We got the check, paid, and went out to the car without a word between us. All the way home I stared out the window, watching the houses slip past and thinking back to the Grand Canyon, vast and uncrossable, like so many things were now.