Page 148 of The Illicit Play

“Calm down, Joanne. We need to let her speak. Blake, talk to me.”

I suck in a shaky breath, my chest shuddering when I release it. “I have to tell you guys something.”

“Is Wily okay?” Mom’s voice comes through loud and clear. She must have grabbed the phone off Dad and put it on speaker.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “He’s fine. Everything’s good with him.”

“Oh, thank God. I thought you were calling with some kind of knee emergency.” I can picture Mom patting her chest, then looking at the time. “Why aren’t you asleep? What are you doing calling us at this hour?”

“I, um…” With another sniff, I will my courage not to fail me. “I know I should have waited until morning, but I was worried that I’d chicken out. And then I was worried Wily might call you. And then…” My eyes fill with tears. “I mean now… I’m freaking out that you might get an email from someone named Cleo.”

“Cleo.” Dad’s voice is gruff, confused. “Who’s Cleo?”

“She was my roommate.”

“No, your roommate’s Claire. We met her.”

“Yeah.” I let out a short, choking laugh. “That was Cleo pretending to be Claire.”

There’s a thick pause, and I can picture my parents looking at each other in confusion.

“We lied to you,” I confess in a tiny voice. “I’ve been lying to you for months.”

“Wh-what?” Mom sounds thunderstruck, and I force myself to keep going.

“Cleo’s not the sweet, good girl we led you to believe. She’s a total party animal, and she pulled me into her world. I let her.”

They take a second to absorb that.

“So…” Dad clears his throat. “So, you’ve been going to parties? Drinking? You’re underage.”

I sigh. “Yeah. I’ve been… I’ve been getting up to a lot of things I shouldn’t have.”

The stone-cold silence that follows that statement is harrowing. It’s tempting to hang up and get rid of my phone, but that won’t change the inevitable, right? I still have to get this shit out in the open.

“Okay.” Mom clears her throat before I can keep talking. “So, you’re telling us that the allowance we’ve been depositing into your account each month has been going toward illegal substances and a fake ID?”

I cringe and bob my head, even though they can’t see me.

“You’ve been wasting your time and money,” she snaps. “How are you maintaining your grades?”

“I’m… I’m not.”

“So, you’re failing?” Dad barks.

“Yes,” I whisper. “And then… I withdrew.”

“What?” He obviously didn’t hear me, and I’m forced to say it again.

Clearing my throat, I suck in a breath and hit my parents with news I know will shatter them. “They were going to give me an academic suspension because I haven’t been attending classes regularly, and then I… I did something.” I suck in a sharp breath. “I spray-painted a professor’s house, and they caught me. I had no recourse, so I offered to pay for damages and withdraw from the school. I’m no longer a student. Anywhere.”

“Oh… my…” Mom’s voice pitches, and the rest of her sentence is lost to a soft wail.

“You…” Dad can’t comprehend it either. “You… you did what? You… Blake, I can’t believe this.”

“It’s all true, Dad.”

They don’t say anything after that, and I haven’t even told them about the shoplifting and Grady having to pick me up from the liquor store. Or how he had to take me to the hospital.