Free Skipping a Beat by Sarah Pekkanen Page A

decent-size shopping mall.
    “I’m thinking of getting something cut really low in the back,” Sara announced. “I saw this model wearing a dress like that in Seventeen . She looked so cool.”
    I could feel the envious eyes of the other girls on us, but that wasn’t why I didn’t reply.
    “Hello? Julie?” Sara asked, sounding annoyed.
    “Sorry,” I said. My throat tightened, making it hard to force out even that single word.
    “She’s thinking about Brian,” someone said and giggled.
    “Wouldn’t you be?” another girl sighed. “You’re so lucky, Julie.”
    “Pick you up at nine tomorrow?” Sara said as we shuffled forward in line. “I’m getting a manicure, too. I want to get going early.”
    I hesitated, then finally nodded. “Sure.”
    I approached Dad cautiously that night. He hadn’t met my eyes at dinner, and when Mom asked if he wanted more salad, he’d barked at her, then apologized and shoved back his chair and left the table, even though his plate was half-full.
    “Dad?” I poked my head into his bedroom. He was lying on top of the teal polyester bedspread, fully clothed. Even his shoes were on. Dad hadn’t bothered to turn off the overhead light, and his right forearm was draped over his eyes. For one terrifying moment the thought flashed through my mind that he was dead. Then I saw his chest slowly rise and fall.
    “Are you asleep?” I asked softly.
    The silence stretched out so long that I almost turned around. Then he said, “Nope.”
    “I was just wondering about the money I loaned you.” I swallowed and looked down at my toe tracing an imaginary line back and forth across the room’s threshold.
    Dad didn’t say anything.
    “I could get it out of your wallet,” I said tentatively. Dad always put his wallet and keys in a little white dish on his bureau, and I could see them there now. I began to slowly walk across the room. When his voice exploded, it felt like a punch to my gut.
    “Damn it, Julie! I don’t have the money. Now get the hell out!”
    I froze. Dad never talked to me this way; he never talked to anyone this way. This was the man who used to toss me high into the air at the river and never fail to catch me as I splashed, squealing and laughing, into the water; the guy who stepped in powdered sugar every Christmas Eve and walked around the house so I’d wake up and think Santa had tracked snowy footsteps everywhere, long after I was too old to believe in sleigh bells and magic.
    “Get out!” Dad bellowed again, and as I fled, I remembered his white fingers clenching the steering wheel as he’d asked me for the loan, and him peeling away from Becky’s house without even saying good-bye, leaving me standing on the sidewalk staring after him.
    I called Sara early the next morning and told her I had a sore throat and couldn’t go to the mall. She believed me, because my voice was so husky from crying. Two days later, I told Brian my parents weren’t letting me go to the prom after all. He ended up taking another girl, and he ignored me from then on.
    Dad never mentioned the money again, and neither did I.
    But it wasn’t because of a stupid dress that I was so angry at my father. It was because he destroyed our family.
    By the fall, creditors were calling our house and store. Dad had borrowed heavily against both, and he wasn’t paying his loans. He’d gambled away everything on lottery tickets, on sporting events, on poker games—on any bet he could find. By now he was going to Atlantic City every week or so, too.
    “I work hard,” he snapped at my mother whenever she voiced an objection. My mom hated conflict, and she was too weak to challenge him when he got angry. He never used that against her until gambling began to consume him—then anger became his most effective weapon in cutting off conversation. “So I take a night for myself every once in a while,” Dad would say, his voice rising, just before he slammed the door behind him. “What’s