Page 92 of Intermission

“Justfriends?”

Mom’s voice drops like a sheet of ice between us. We break apart, breathless.

“You expect me to walk in on something likethatand believe, for even one second, that you two have been behaving as ‘just friends’ for the past few weeks?”

No-no-no-no-no-no! I grip Noah’s hand, trying to catch my breath, slow my pulse, and cool my cheeks while panic screams inside my brain.

“If you’re finished mauling yourfriend, Mr. Spencer, you can remove yourself from my property.”

Noah’s breath is as ragged as mine. “I’m sorry,” he whispers and squeezes my hand. “I shouldn’t have... Faith, I’m so sorry.”

The sincerity, the anguish in his eyes melts me—frees me.

“Don’t be,” I whisper back. “I’m not.”

She is wrong about us. Even about that kiss, regardless of its heat. She is wrong to treat Noah like this.

My muscles tremble. Not from the kiss, not from the adrenaline of being caught in such an inopportune moment with the boy I love. No, this trembling is the release of a soul-deep anger, one caused by a grievous wrong. This must be what Noah meant by righteous indignation.

“I said,get out,” my mother growls.

I ignore her. Placing a hand to my heart, I spread my fingers apart and then clasp them into a fist. Pressing that fist over Noah’s heart, I open my hand. “Love never fails.”

“It always hopes,” he whispers back, nodding. “Always perseveres.”

With one hand on the doorknob, Noah pauses, turns, and meets the cold fury in my mother’s eyes. “I doubt you will believe me, Mrs. Prescott, but I have never andwillnever mean any harm toward your daughter. I hope someday you’ll see that.”

“Get. Out.” The pitch of Mom’s voice rises with each word. It’s almost painful. “Get out of my house!”

Meeting my eyes one last time, Noah presses a kiss in my hair and goes out the door.

It’s a good thing we decided to drive here from the waterfall. Eventhough it’s the end of May, Noah would suffer a cold hike back through the nature preserve with that much ice clinging to his ears.

Mom is talking—shouting, really—but her words are senseless syllables, dulled in my ears. Turning my back on her verbal tirade, I press my hand to my throat, watching out the sidelight window until Noah’s car is out of sight. When I finally turn to face her, she is silent, her lips a thin line, her face a purple shade of red.

She’s shaking. In a movement so fast it makes me jump, she pivots and storms off, but as she passes the side table, she expels a curse word I’ve only heard her use during major sporting events, and slams her hand across an eye-level shelf, taking an object from it with the same force she probably used as a volleyball star, spiking the kill.

The hand-blown vase, a Christmas gift from Aunt Becca, flies off its shelf, shattering against the closed door to Dad’s study.

Mouth open, I’m frozen. So is she, for a moment.

“Janet?” Dad calls from the living room.

“It’s nothing,” she hollers back. “Everything’s fine.”

No. No, it’s not. My throat is dry. I can barely swallow. My gaze is riveted on the fractured evidence of a moment of violent rage.

“Clean that up,” Mom tosses the cold words over her shoulders. “When you’ve made certain you’ve found every last sliver, go to your room. Don’t even think about coming downstairs again until morning.”

It’s spring, but the bitter winds of a hard winter could not be colder than the silent promises sweeping toward me on my mother’s glare.

The first week of June brings final exams for me and an unexpected, slight relaxation to the house arrest I’ve been under since Mom walked in on Noah and me kissing. If one considers getting to study for finals with Jenna—but only if Jenna’s mom is there— a “relaxation” of my mother’s attitude toward me.

Sadly, I do.

Just as I have every school day since that fate-sealing kiss, I ride the bus to school. When classes are dismissed, Jenna and I are picked up, per Mom’s conditions, by Jenna’s mother.

“Hi, sweetie. Hi, Faith.” Mrs. Slade smiles as I climb into the middle row seat of her minivan. “Did you girls have a good day?”