FOUR.

Cent: "I thought Dad was the ruthless one."

The second time was like this: "Why is there a water stain on the library ceiling?" Dad asked.

Shit. I had an answer ready but I hadn't expected that particular question.

"I was cleaning my room and I took some water in to scrub out a stain in the carpet. I'm sorry, I tipped over the bucket."

The question I'd been expecting was "Why is your carpet wet?"

I'd disposed of the snow in the bathtub, running the shower hot to melt it. My room never looked better. I'd gotten to the books soon enough to keep them from getting soaked but, as noted, a substantial amount of snow melted into the rug-more than I'd realized.

I'd run three loads through the laundry. Mom was right. The dirty clothes were mixed up with the clean and all of it was wet. Also the cushions in the reading nook. Between loads, I'd also culled three cartons of books that I would never read again.

I am so over vampires.

Mom looked surprised, pleased, and finally suspicious when she saw my room. On the grounds that the best defense is a good offense, I said, "See? Boy-toy posters gone. I get that new bookshelf, right?"

She pulled open a drawer at random. It was full of clean, mostly folded T-shirts-shirts that had been on the floor that very morning.

"A new bookshelf. Right."

Dad jumped to IKEA Funabashi in Japan, since that was the time zone that still had a store open, and purchased a matching shelving unit. I told him that I wanted to put it together so he left the unopened flat pack in my room. But instead of leaving, he leaned against the doorframe.

"Dad."

"Yes?"

"I don't need, or want, an audience."

He looked mildly offended. "Oh. Okay."

I felt guilty but I really didn't want him to discover just how wet the carpet really was.

Yes, I would tell them eventually. Well, maybe not about the avalanche. But about the jumping, certainly. I finished assembling the shelf and putting the rest of the books up. That lousy generator was still chugging away in the basement so I turned up the living room stereo to drown it out. After an hour of this, Dad, shouting to be heard over the music, said, "Okay! We can go someplace."

You'd almost think he preferred the grind of the generator to Electroclash.

I turned the music down. "Where?"

Mom stuck her head over the railing of the upstairs landing, a surprised look on her face.

"Someplace quiet," Dad said.

"Someplace with people?" I said.

"Someplace warm?" Mom suggested, walking down the stairs.

"Mall of America," I said.

Dad said, "No."

"Why not?"

"Surveillance cameras. Thousands."

"Wear a disguise," I said. He has disguises. So does Mom.

Dad got a stubborn look on his face. "No."

"Well, where do you want to go?" I said belligerently.

He frowned at me. "Queensland."

"It's night there," said Mom. "And you both need to calm down. You don't mean overnight, do you? One of the islands on the Great Barrier Reef?"

Dad backtracked. "Uh, not overnight."

"That sounds wonderful," I said. "We could go snorkeling in the morning. And I could do some marine science units."

Mom bit her lower lip. I could see she liked the idea.

Dad got that wild, desperate look in his eyes. He lifted his hand to his collar and I winced. He wasn't going to pull out the big gun, was he?

He did.

"You see these?" Dad pulled his shirt collar to one side, exposing two parallel scars, three-inches long, just below his right collarbone.

"Yes, Dad. I see them. I've seen them. I've heard the story."

Mom stepped closer. "Davy, your concerns are real but you need to stop doing that."

Dad's voice rose, "She's got to realize how dangerous it is out there!"

I didn't think we'd be going to Queensland.

Dad was captured once by some nasty supersecret multinational corporate group. They put a device in him to try and condition him, to control him. It was nasty and it went on for months. Eventually Mom got him out, but he's been super paranoid ever since.

"I do know, but it's not dangerous everywhere," I said. "I was in Pakistan two days ago and Australia the day before that. Do you expect me to live in this house the rest of my life? I need to make friends."

"You have friends!" he said.

"What friends?"

"What about Awrala and Xareed?"

"Awrala has two babies and a husband who is afraid of us. Xareed is married with sons. He's almost twice my age." I like them both. They live in Somalia and I've known them since I was little, but they're more my parents' friends. "I need to go to school. I need to know girls my age." I pulled out my big gun. "I'm an overbright, undersocialized, discipline-challenged teenager who is going to grow up to be a maladjusted sociopath at this rate."

Mom's eyes went wide and her hand went to her mouth. I guess she hadn't realized I was listening when she'd said that to Dad.

"You aren't going to school. It would be like staking you out for the bastards!" Dad's eyes were wide, the whites showing all around, as bad as I'd ever seen him.

"You can't follow me around all my life to protect me!" I said.

"Wanna bet?" he yelled.

"Stalker, much?" I yelled back.

Mom started crying and I flinched.

I mean, I flinched so good, I was upstairs in my reading cubby.

That was the second time.

I heard Mom scream, then Dad-a startled, hoarse yell.

I almost screamed myself.

Now they know how it feels.

They started calling my name. Mom even said the old line, "Where did she go?" but there was nothing playful about it. I almost stayed there, under the bed, but the note of desperation in their voices was too much.

I walked out onto the landing and said, "Boom. I jumped."

Mom's mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but she remembered. She got it.

Dad's knees buckled and he sat down hard on the floor. Relief, I guess.

Before they said anything, I said, "Unless you're willing to chain me up or cut me open and put one of those things inside me, I'm going to school.

"Now, do you want to be a part of that or do I have to do it alone?"

Mom sent Dad away, to keep him from hovering. "Go work on the generator. Or relieve a drought. Wait a minute." She ducked into their bedroom and reemerged with a book in her hand. "Go read this."

Dad looked at the book. "I read this. When she was little."

"She's not little any more. Time to reread it."

"Is it still current?"

"Sadly."

Dad tucked it into his coat pocket and then, almost shyly, hugged me. I squeezed him back and kissed his cheek.

Mom made shooing motions with her hands and he almost smiled, then he vanished.

The memory of his almost smile was so vivid that for a moment I felt it was hanging in the air, like the Cheshire Cat's.

Mom shook her head. "Poor boy."

"Daddy's hardly a boy."

Mom smiled. "Sure he is. In his head. He's the same young man I met in New York City. Or, sometimes, the frightened kid who flinched at every sound from his father's end of the house." She looked at me. "And you frighten him so very much."

"Me?"

"Well, something happening to you. It's his biggest fear."

"What about you? Isn't he afraid something can happen to you, too?"

"Sure, it's only natural. But I'm afraid when he was captured that time-" Mom made an abbreviated gesture toward her right collarbone. "Well, lots of people have had PTSD from less. After that, he tried to control everything, especially while I was pregnant." She sighed. "At first it was nice. But my second trimester, when I felt great and could really do anything, he started hemming me in, trying to say what I could and couldn't do and where I could and couldn't go." She laughed softly. "I used to tell my clients that they needed to not run away from fights, to stick it out ... but it was only my ability to jump away that made him ameliorate his behavior."

My mouth dropped open.

Mom nodded. "Right."

"He's seeing reason because I can jump now? Because he has no choice?"

Mom shrugged. "To be fair, there's more to it than that. Now he thinks you might have a chance out there. That he doesn't have to be there every second to jump you away from danger. You can do that yourself." She glanced at me. "Hopefully."

I stuck my jaw out. "Of course I can."

She said seriously, "Your father jumped into trouble often enough. It's not automatic."

"Well, so far it's been automatic," I muttered.

"Well, yes. About that-what happened?"

I knew what she meant. "Pardon?"

She raised her eyebrows and looked at me over her glasses. I hate it when she does that. Well, I hate it when she does that and I have something to hide. I blushed furiously.

She nodded to herself. "Like that, eh? Was it really stupid?"

"It wasn't stupid! It wasn't my fault!" I clamped my mouth shut. I'd broken several rules by going snowboarding. Perhaps it was my-no! Stupid avalanche!

"What wasn't your fault?" Mom asked.

"Uh. My jumping."