"Did you think you could get away with this?"
Lucas stared at the pattern on the carpet. "I wasn't thinking about getting away with anything," he said quietly. "She was in pain and I couldn't leave her alone last night."
"Lucas. Look at me," his mom said.
He looked up, slowly and deliberately and defiantly. Tell me it was wrong, he challenged them. A girl who just attended her mother's funeral, who has no one else but me: tell me comforting her is wrong.
"What you did was very wrong," she said. "I know it doesn't seem that way, but as a family, we must avoid the appearance of immorality. What do you think God thinks of you?"
"I think God cares about people," he said. "And I think that I care about Maya. And I think that it matters what other people think, but I think that taking care of a young women whose mother is dead and whose father left when she was young is more important than what people think."
They couldn't say anything to that. Of course they couldn't. He was right, after all.
Lucas's father cleared his throat. "She can't stay here."
"Fine," Lucas said, standing up. "Then I can't stay here either."
"Lucas, don't be unreasonable," his mother huffed.
"I'm not, Mother," he said, with a bite on her name. "This is the most reasonable thing in the world, to me. I love her. I know that you don't. I love her and I'm going to take care of her, and even if I didn't love her, I hope I would still take care of her because that's the right thing to do and because it's the right thing to do it's the reasonable thing to do. So decide. If you throw her out, just know that you're throwing me out too."
His parents sat in stunned silence. Then, his father's face set. "I will not tolerate this rebellion in my own household," he said.
Sandy Friar pursed her lips, feeling seconds away from crying as the inevitable became what was happening.
"Leave," Mr. Friar said. "Do not expect anything from us unless you first repent of your rebellion. We will not pay for your education any longer. You may take your clothes, other personal items, and whatever you might have saved, but nothing more. You have an hour to pack."
Lucas's head started spinning.
Was this really happening?
He was an adult in the eyes of the law, but he had never felt like one.
Was he going to give everything up?
He saw Maya's face in his head.
Yes. Yes, he was.
Lucas nodded at his parents and went upstairs.
Maya's door was still closed. He knocked on it, but she didn't answer. He knocked again, louder. Nothing. His stomach dropped like he was on a roller coaster. Not a fun roller coaster. A haunted, rickety roller coaster without seat belts. "Maya!" he called. "Answer me!"
She didn't.
He twisted the knob, and the door opened easily. The room was completely clean.
And Maya and everything she had brought with her were completely absent.