CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The next day, Sarah and her mother were going to get Sarah a puppy. Sarah had been wanting a puppy ever since Jane could remember, and this Christmas, Ms. Camden had finally given in. Jane was supposed to be going to ask her dad if she could go with them; she had already told Sarah that she would. Unfortunately, she had no clue if he would let her.

Jane kind of felt bad about how she had acted the day before. Her parents weren't bad people, and she shouldn't have said any of those things.

Well, it's their own fault, said something in the back of her mind. Dad's a pushover, and Mum is selfish sometimes.

Jane pushed the thought away.

"Hey, Sarah, come with me to ask my dad if I can go," Jane said; she knew her father couldn't say no to Sarah.

They walked to her house, and Jane poked her head in the door and looked around before entering.

"Hey, Dad," she said.

Her father peered at her over his reading glasses and sat down the morning paper. She could tell that he was still mad at her just from the look in his grey eyes.

"Sarah wants to know if I can go with her and her mum to help her pick out a puppy," Jane said, making sure to throw Sarah's name in there. Mr. Hensworth looked to Sarah and then back to Jane.

"Where at?"

"A pet shop in Winchester," Sarah answered for Jane. He pondered over it for a moment.

"All right."

Pushover, thought the voice again.

"But you and I are going to have a talk when you get home, do you understand?" he said, pointing to Jane.

"Yes, sir," she said.

When they walked out of the house, Sarah gave Jane a curious look.

"What'd you do?"

Jane smirked a bit.

"Nothing; he just overreacts sometimes," she lied.

After that, they climbed into Ms. Camden's car and drove the fifteen-minute drive to Winchester. After Sarah had gotten over the fact that Jane had been drunk at the time of the kissing, she was very jealous that Jane had already kissed someone.

"I feel like I'm never going to get a guy to kiss me," Sarah said quietly so as to keep her mother from hearing.

"We didn't use tongue or anything," Jane whispered back to Sarah.

"But you still kissed him," Sarah pointed out. "Is he cute?"

Jane thought for a second. She supposed Remus wasn't bad looking. He was one of those people whose personality makes or breaks how attractive they are. He was nice enough, and he could be funny whenever he really wanted. Jane nodded, deciding that, yes, objectively, he was cute.

"Yeah, I guess so," she said.

"You guess so?" Sarah asked.

"Well, he's one of my best friends, isn't he? I've never really thought about how cute he was before."

Sarah got quiet for a second, but Jane didn't know why. She hadn't seen the slight widening of Sarah's eyes as the words "best friends" left Jane's lips. Jane looked at her funny.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," Sarah said, putting on a smile. "Still, I think you should've kissed that James boy."

That day, Sarah came home with a brand new, chocolate lab puppy, that she named Max. Jane stayed over at Sarah's for a while after they got back. She wanted to play with Max, but she also didn't want to go home to see her dad just yet.

It's not even fair that he's mad at me, the little voice in the back of her head proclaimed, I was just speaking my mind. Am I not allowed to have an opinion anymore?

Jane waited until late in the afternoon to walk back down to her house. She braced herself as she walked through the door, but what greeted her was not what she had expected. She smelled food, which meant that her mother was cooking, which meant that her mother was actually up. Jane walked into the kitchen to find her mother stirring something in a pot on the stove. Her mother looked over at her and smiled.

"I was wondering when you were going to come home!" her mother exclaimed happily as she hugged her. Jane smiled warily. "I must've missed you yesterday."

No kidding, thought the little voice.

"Where's Dad?" Jane asked, walking over to see what her mother was cooking.

"Oh, he's gone to the market for me. He should be back any minute now."

Jane nodded.

"Do you need any help?" she asked, figuring that she should try and be nice.

"Oh, I would love that," her mum said.

When Jane's father got home, he seemed to be in a pleasant mood, and after dinner had passed, Jane realised that he had seemingly forgotten all about the talk they were supposed to have. Still, she decided to stay in her room for the rest of the night lest her dad looked at her and was suddenly reminded of it. So, she walked up to her room and shut the door behind her.

Jane took her Thin Lizzy album out of her record player and searched through all her other ones until she found what she was looking for. Abbey Road by the Beatles. It was one of the only two Beatles albums she had (the other one being their last album, Let It Be). Sirius had talked about them so much at school, that she was starting to feel the urge to go out and buy the rest of their albums as well.

Here Comes the Sun was her favourite song on Abbey Road. It always made her feel light and happy no matter what mood she was in. Jane put the album on and lay on her bed, just staring at the ceiling. After a while, she got up and walked around the room, looking around at the walls. She really needed to redecorate or something. Maybe she'd put up some posters. What she really wanted was to redo her room in red and gold. She'd have to ask her parents about that this summer. Right now, her room was dreadfully boring.

Later that night, as Jane lay awake in her bed, unable to go to sleep, she listened to her parents argue about the only thing that they ever really argued about. She couldn't help but feel a little responsible, especially after her father brought her name up, which was a new addition to these arguments.

"I think this whole thing is starting to affect Jane," he said.

"What are you talking about? Janie's fine," her mother said.

"It's affecting her attitude towards us, Mary. Jane's a smart girl, and she's at an old enough age to kind of understand what's going on. She understands that you're choosing to—"

"I didn't choose to be this way," her mother interrupted.

"No, but you're choosing to not get help, and she sees that. And it's causing her to lash out."

"Why would that cause her to lash out?"

"A loss of respect for us, maybe? I don't know," he said.

"All kids Janie's age go through a rebellious stage. I have nothing to do with it."

"Oh, no? Because the first argument she had was with you, and the second time she acted this way she was talking about you, so you wanna try that again?"

"Well, what do you want me to do, Patrick? I'm doing the best I can! I'm not going to a doctor that's just going to put me on medication that probably won't work anyway or turn me into some sort of zombie. It's not that big of a deal—"

"Not that big of a deal? Mary, you stay hidden in our room for days at a time just sleeping. That's a problem. You need to be there for our daughter."

"I'm not hurting anyone, and I am there for her; Janie knows that. I'm not taking any medication or going to a shrink; I'm not crazy."

"No one said that you were—"

"That's enough; I don't want to talk about it anymore," Jane's mother said.

That was where the conversation stopped. Jane's father didn't even say another word after that.

Pushover, thought the little voice in the back of Jane's mind, only this time it seemed louder.