Free The Bubble Wrap Boy by Phil Earle Page A

personality, I couldn’t help but feel slightly nervous.
    He wasn’t livid like her, though—more surprised and disappointed, which in some way felt worse. He stood there shaking his head as I told him again where she’d found me.
    It was the most animated I’d seen him in years.
    “Not your finest moment, son.”
    “I know, but it’s not like she gave me any choice, is it?”
    “She only wants the best for you—”
    “Don’t you dare say what you’re about to say,” I interrupted.
    He looked at me quizzically.
    “Don’t give me the line. The
she’s your mom
line. Not today, Dad.”
    “Then what do you want me to say?”
    “Say you’ll explain things to her. Tell her I’m only doing what everyone else my age does. Tell her she’s being ridiculous, that she needs to let me grow up. Do my own thing without her running behind me with a cushion in case I fall over.”
    It was probably the most I’d said to Dad in months, and certainly the most honest thing I’d ever said. He was the only one who could put a stop to Mom and her meddling. The only one she would possibly listen to.
    I watched my words sink in, saw his face twitch as he processed what he could do to help. Maybe this was it. The moment he stepped over the line and took my side. Just this once. That’s all I was asking.
    “There’s nothing I can do.” He sighed, running his index finger along the cleaver’s blade.
    “And that’s it, is it? That’s the full extent of your powers? Could you for once be a man and help me out, here? I’ll do anything, Dad. Just do me this one favor, will you?”
    “I don’t think you have any right to ask favors of anyone right now. Not of me or your mom.”
    “But you can see it, can’t you? What she’s doing to me? I’m a joke because of her. And it’s getting worse. I can’t go anywhere or do anything without her looming in the background. It’s not right, Dad—she’s not right.”
    “She has her reasons, you kn—”
    “Does she? Really? Then you need to tell me what they are, because I haven’t got the faintest idea why it always has to be like this.”
    But it was pointless asking for answers. Despite the tension, despite the reprimands being dished out. To me it was the perfect time to get to the bottom of why all this was going on, but to them? I was persona non grata.
    Dad’s shutters came crashing back down in ten seconds flat.
    “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to work it out, won’t you? What with being grounded.”
    And that was that. Off he slumped, back to the sanctuary of his kitchen, but not before throwing a long, concerned look up the stairs, where Mom was either seething, or weeping.
    I wasn’t sure which was worse.
    The duration of my grounding was vague.
    Indefinite.
    With no parole, and no TV, Internet, or video game access until I learned my lesson or turned thirty. Whichever came first.
    I had visions of being an adult, sitting at the counter of Special Fried Nice in a sweater Mom had knitted me, still taking orders, still pedaling away on the rhino, dressed in fluorescent gear that had lost all its powers of reflection.
    I was going to live a long, dull, and cushioned life if Mom had anything to do with it. I might live to a hundred and fifty, but I’d never venture out of my comfort zone again.

    Days lasted decades.
    My head replayed the events of the past few months on repeat, but no matter how many different ways I thought of telling Mom honestly about the skating, the result would’ve been the same. There was no way she would have let me do it.
    I suppose that should’ve made me feel better, that she’d
forced
me into lying, but it didn’t help. I was banished to my room and my board locked up in a secret location. If she hadn’t burned it already, or sealed it in concrete and dumped it in the Atlantic Ocean.
    The worst thing about the fallout, though, was that Mom didn’t seem satisfied with the punishment. If anything, her fussing got