Glancing around, feeling that same feeling like when I took his car off the lot. I was in trouble. But that feeling was also the same one I had when my dad was pissed, and that was more serious. But he was dead. Still, I could hardly breathe.
"Joey, look, I'm, um, I'm sorry," I said. I was sitting on the couch, he was sitting on the ledge of the fireplace. He only really sat there when he was yelling at me about something.
"Craig, you skipped the whole day of school, practically! You went to Stouvfille! I had to drive all the way out there to pick you up! What were you thinking?"
I sucked in my breath. He knew this. Why did we have to sit here and have this discussion? He knew Emma wanted to find her real dad and that I was the only one she could find who'd go with her. What did he want from me?
"Emma wanted to find-"
"Craig, this isn't about Emma. You have to be responsible for your own actions. Are you just going to go along with anything anyone asks you to do?" He was looking at me with that narrowed, critical look. I squirmed. Man, this sucked.
"But Joey, Emma asked me if I'd go with her. And it seemed kind of important-"
"Important enough to skip the whole day of school? She could have gone to find him on the weekend. You could have gone with her then. And it isn't Emma. I know she asked you to go with her but you decide things for yourself. You decided to skip school, and now you have a week of detention and you're grounded,"
I looked down. Shit. This seemed so unfair. I mean, what was the big deal? So I'd skipped school. So what?
"C'mon, Joey, that isn't fair-"
He looked at me all incredulous. There was no way to win with him. I could never talk my way out of being grounded. Grounding me was what Joey did, my dad would have beat me. At least that's over quicker.
"Oh no? It's perfectly fair. You don't skip all day of school to go to some town miles away no matter what the reason. So you are grounded. End of discussion,"
I stared at him. Grounded. This was why being a teenager sucked. Why couldn't I just live my own life? I was already in trouble at school about it, so why did he have to make it worse? There's all these rules to follow and it's just stupid. In three years I'd be able to do what I wanted.
"Go upstairs," he said, dismissing me, and I saw the clenched jaw, the quick expelled breath. He was pissed. Fine. I stood up and went upstairs to my room.
I put music on, stared at the walls I'd better get used to. Wouldn't be going anywhere for awhile. In my old room at my dad's house I had a T.V. and all kinds of video games and stuff. Those were gone. Well, not really gone. One was in the living room, the X-box, and the play station was in Angie's room since she really liked one of the games on it. The T.V. wasn't in my room. I never got it, my dad smashed it, broke it. But music was okay. It was really all I needed. I was like one of those minimalist monks throwing away the cup since I could drink with my hands.
Still, this sucked. We might not have even got caught if we'd left earlier. I hated getting caught at shit. Hated being grounded, hated being told what to do. It was all my dad had done, it seemed. There were so many rules with him. I had to be home at specific times and I couldn't do this and I couldn't do that and all of that shit. Joey wasn't nearly as bad as that, I mean, I knew that. Still, being grounded made me feel so pissed off. It was pointless. I'd still skip school if I felt like it.
