Free Skipping a Beat by Sarah Pekkanen

mail,” my father fumed, while my mother and I watched him silently, somehow unable to ask why the electric company wouldn’t have sent a warning and another bill first.
    Then, during my sophomore year of high school, a year before Michael and I met, a guy named Brian Lucker swaggered up to my locker and asked me to his senior prom. I managed to stop gaping long enough to stutter out a yes. If there was a handbook for girls’ crushes in our high school, Brian would be the cover boy: He was tall, dark, and a running back on the football team.
    I had some babysitting money saved up, and I decided to use it to buy my first formal dress. I knew better than to ask my parents to buy me one. The bumper had fallen off their truck after Dad had been in a fender bender, and they hadn’t had it fixed. Our phone had been cut off for a week the previous month, and even though Dad muttered about idiots at the phone company mixing up our bill with some delinquent’s, I sensed something was terribly wrong. My mother wasn’t smiling as much as she used to, and once when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, I walked past her sitting at the kitchen table. I spoke her name twice before she looked up.
    “Hi, sweetie … I couldn’t sleep so I came in here to get a snack,” Mom said, but the table in front of her was bare.
    But whenever I started to get really scared—when the knot in my stomach grew so big I had trouble eating—Dad would sweep in the door carrying a box of Mom’s favorite dark chocolate-covered caramels and a handful of the glossy fashion magazines I adored. He’d make a production of sitting down with his checkbook and paying the bills with a flourish. “Are my favorite girls free for dinner, by any chance?” he’d say, and we’d head to the pizza place, where Dad would overtip the waitress and insist on ordering ice-cream sundaes. “Don’t skimp on the fudge!” he’d shout, and people sitting on stools at the counter would swivel around to look at him as he pumped his fist in the air and grinned. “We’re a family of fudgeaholics and we’re not ashamed of it!” During those magical times, I believed everything would be okay. No, I let myself believe it.
    A week before I planned to go dress shopping with my girlfriend, Sara, who’d been invited to the prom by one of Brian’s buddies, Dad surprised me. He was waiting for me outside of school in his old Ford pickup truck. The bumper was still missing.
    “Thought I’d give you a ride to Becky’s,” Dad said. “You’re sitting today, right?”
    I nodded and happily hopped in, inhaling the faded-wood smell of Dad’s Old Spice cologne. It had been a while since Dad and I had ridden together. He’d been too busy lately for our Sunday drives.
    “Is Mom at the store alone?” I asked.
    “Mmm-hmm,” Dad said absently, his eyes on the road.
    “It must’ve been a quiet day. You know, for you to get away,” I offered, but Dad didn’t say anything else. We rode in silence for a moment, and I could feel tension in the car, as thick and bulky as a passenger squeezing onto the seat between us. For the first time, my fingers struggled with the urge to reach for the radio button.
    “I hate to ask this,” he finally said, his eyes fixed straight ahead. “Julie, the thing is, a bunch of people didn’t pay their bills this month. I had to extend them credit. They’ve all got families, so what could I do? But I need to pay our suppliers, and I’m short. It’s just for a few days.”
    I told him where to find the babysitting money I’d been saving in the sock drawer of my dresser and tried to swallow the sour taste that filled my throat.
    Just for a few days, Dad had said. But a week passed, and he made no mention of the money.
    The next Friday, Sara turned to me in gym class while we waited in line to do the rope climb. “We’re on for tomorrow, right?” Her mother had offered to drive us to the next town over, where there was a