Blood on My Hands

pass. I decided to take the middle road.
    “We can’t all be gourmands, like you,” I said with a somewhat forced smile.
    “You mean ‘gourmet,’ ” she replied with a dismissive roll of her eyes. “A gourmand is an indiscriminant eater.”
    “Ooh, look who remembers all that vocabulary we learned for our SATs,” Jodie teased in a way that I suspected was meant to defuse the situation.
    “I am so happy that’s over with,” Zelda groaned, and turned to me. “So what are your plans for after high school, Callie?”
    I assumed she’d meant the question in a genuine way, to change the subject. But unfortunately it was one I’d been trying to avoid. I hoped I’d go to Fairchester Community College, which I hoped we’d be able to afford with the help of financial aid. I was a pretty good student and had been a pretty good cross-country runner, but didn’t excel at either enough to deserve any kind of scholarship. But the prevailing attitude in Katherine’s crowd was that community college was for losers. So I answered her question with “I don’t know.”
    “I wish I could be like that,” Jodie said with a wistful sigh.
    “Like what?” I asked uncertainly.
    “Just not having to worry,” she said. “I mean, about the future.”
    I was about to argue that I did have to worry about the future, but then I caught myself. She was right. I wasn’t that worried about the future . I was too caught up in the present—busy thinking about Slade’s recent announcement that he’d signed up for the Army National Guard and would leave on May 21 for three months of training, and wondering whether my mother could cope with taking care of my father, and whether there was still a way to appeal the judge’s decision that had put my brother in prison for eight to fifteen years.
    “You know, maybe if you were with the right kind of guy …,” Katherine said, then pretended to catch herself. “I mean, maybe if you were with a different kind of guy … Someone more goal oriented.”
    “Slade is goal oriented,” I said.
    “Oh, yes,” Katherine said, dabbing some white cream filling off her lip with a napkin. “Construction.”
    “Drywall,” I said. “It’s what’s in most houses and buildings unless they’re really old. Slade and his dad install it.”
    “Manual labor,” Katherine said with a snarky and superior little smile. It was one of those moments when another girl might have backed down and pretended to ignore the insult. But I resented the insinuation.
    “It’s honest work,” I said, jutting my chin forward.
    Katherine’s eyes sharpened, and she leaned toward me, as if accepting the challenge. “No one said it wasn’t.”
    For a moment we stared at each other as if it were a contest. Katherine was right. No one had said that what Slade and his father did wasn’t honest work, but she’d made it obvious that she thought it was the sort of honest work only a moron would do.
    “I’m just curious,” I said. “What does your father do?”
    A pall swept over our table. Zelda stared down at her caramelmeringue cupcake, and Jodie suddenly seemed fascinated by the pedestrians passing. Katherine gazed at me, appearing unruffled, although I thought I detected a tic under her left eye.
    “He’s”—she hesitated, then continued—“between jobs.”
    I was just about to ask her how long her father had been unemployed when Zelda suddenly said, “Katherine’s family is in real estate.”
    There was nothing wrong with being unemployed. It happened to lots of people. But it certainly didn’t put Katherine in a position from which she could look down on people who were at least doing something, even if it did involve—God forbid—manual labor.

Chapter 7
    Sunday 1:05 A.M.
    MOM HAS GIVEN up trying to reach me. Slade either hasn’t gotten my messages or has decided to ignore them. So now what? I can’t hide in this playhouse forever. What am I going to do? How am I going to fight this? There is no way I’m going to turn myself in, like Mom suggested. I saw what almost happened to my brother thanks to an inexperienced public defender. You may be innocent until proven guilty, but sometimes you’re guilty in people’s minds long before you set foot in a courtroom.
    And I will not allow that to happen to me, or to my mother, or to what little is left of our family.
    The phone vibrates. I flip it open and look at the number. It’s Slade! My heart leaps.
    “Where are you?” he