Free Echo Bridge by Kristen O'Toole Page B

it into my purse. My parents still forgot that I had my own cell phone. When my brothers and sister were growing up, they’d had epic battles over getting extensions of our parents’ landline in their bedrooms.
    “Okay, honey.” My mom turned away from the sink and looked at me for a moment. “Did you have a falling out with Melissa and Hilary?”
    “No, I’m just hanging out with some new friends.” I buttoned my coat and tied the belt. “I’ll be home at twelve, okay?”
    “You’d better be,” my father joked. Midnight was my curfew, and I’d never broken it. It wasn’t hard—when I wanted to stay out later, I just told my parents I was sleeping at Melissa’s, whether the party was there or not.
    “Courtney,” said my mother. “Are you sure everything is okay?”
    “Mom,” I said. “Yes. Everything is fine. And even if it weren’t, you can’t start a heart-to-heart as I’m walking out the door.” I turned on the exasperation; clearly this scene called for Angry Teenage Daughter.
    “Have fun,” said my dad as I stomped out.
    Over the sound of the storm door slamming, I heard my mother say, “Don’t you think she’s been a little withdrawn lately? And now new friends…” I frowned as I walked down the flagstone path to the driveway.
    “What’s up?” Lexi asked as I climbed into the passenger seat. The windows were down and the car smelled like cigarettes and leaf smoke from the night air.
    “Nothing. My parents were being annoying.” I’d thought my parents and I had an unspoken agreement: they wouldn’t parent too hard, and I wouldn’t give them cause for worry. I figured they’d already done all the parenting they’d planned on with my siblings. But obviously I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain. “My mom thinks I’ve been acting weird. I mean, she’s not wrong, but I’ve been trying so hard to seem normal. Obviously it’s not working, because she just asked a whole bunch of questions about Ted and my friends and why I’m not going out with any of them tonight.”
    “You wouldn’t tell her the real reason?” Lexi narrowed her eyes. She looked tough with her cigarette set in one corner of her mouth. Her honey-colored hair was tied in a long braid that hung over one shoulder, and a bracelet of narrow leather wrapped around her wrist, crossing over the snake inked into her skin.
    “God, no. She’d tell my dad, and they’d call the school, the cops, and Hugh’s parents, probably. That would be a disaster.” I paused. “Why, did you tell your grandfather?”
    “No. But only because I’d have to explain that I smoke pot and wasn’t a virgin to begin with. Max isn’t big on cops. Max’s parents—my great-grandparents—were murdered by Stalin’s secret police when he was a child in Russia. So he believes in vigilantism on general principal.”
    “Wow,” I said. Lexi’s grandfather sounded like no adult I’d ever known. “What happened to him? After his family was killed, I mean.”
    “His parents’ political allies helped him escape to Paris, and he lived there with family friends until he came here for college. Harvard, obviously. Max has very high intellectual standards.” Lexi lit a cigarette. “The neighbors asked him to join their book club once. They were reading
The Secret
. He was totally horrified.”
    I laughed and lit a smoke of my own. “He sounds kind of awesome.”
    “Oh, he is,” said Lexi. “I’m lucky as hell.”
    We crossed over Route 2 to the part of town where the houses were smaller and there were no historical landmarks to slow the sprawl of fast food franchises. Lexi pulled up to a small apartment building, opened her phone, and sent a text. A moment later, Farah opened the front door and ran out to the car. She went for the handle on my door, but jerked her hand back when she saw me through the window and got into the backseat behind me.
    “Sorry, did you want shotgun?” I asked, but Lexi was already pulling out of the