To Escape the Facts
Jay opened his front door and stared a moment. "Uh, come in?" He stepped back and let Jason McCord into his apartment.
Jason sagged onto the couch. "I got your address out of Mom's office, sorry."
Confused, he turned and stared at the teen. "What can I do for you, Jason?"
"I just need to lay low for a night, I swear that's all. I just need to put off what's coming. And if you can vouch for where I've been then I won't be in even more trouble on top of the other trouble."
Jay rarely interacted with the now-eighteen-year-old, their paths simply never had much reason to cross. "Why?"
"I said something to someone and apparently someone else recorded it and…"
He started to understand. "And whatever you said is online?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I guess you sort of came to the right place then." Jay located his phone and started typing out a text to Daisy. "What is it you said?"
"Um…" Jason frowned, pulling out his own phone and finding the video before handing it over. "I just need to hide out until Mom and Dad have time to…" He shrugged.
He watched the video through before answering. "Well, they're not going to just get over it. I wouldn't. But Daisy will help, I already texted her. Now I'm going to text your Mom and just tell her she doesn't need to be calling morgues looking for you, which is exactly what she'll jump to if you go AWOL."
"Okay."
"And you better start thinking of ways to apologize for that."
"Yeah."
Jay turned away as his phone beeped. "And if you really want to help your mom, you need to spend the next year pretending you're boring and have nothing worthwhile to say."