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to surprise you,” she said, her voice tight
and more than a little angry. “We wanted to watch the two of you compete—we
thought it would be a good opportunity to get together as a family.”
    “So you didn’t even call us this morning? It would
have been just as surprising then.” Mom scowled slightly.
    “We were going to tell you after the meet, take you
out to dinner. It was supposed to be fun.” I felt a lurch in my chest—a mixture
of guilt and discomfort. I wanted to be angry at Mom and Bob both, but I could
see things from their perspective. They had thought that Jaxon and I had worked
it out so that we could just be brother and sister—so they hadn’t even
considered the possibility that they’d walk up on us making out.
    Bob was still half-yelling at Jaxon, keeping his
voice low enough that at least the people still lingering in the stands nearby
might not hear him. He was berating Jaxon, saying things that were almost as
bad as what they had yelled at each other at the lodge during Thanksgiving
break. I watched as Jaxon got angrier and angrier, his scowl deepening, and his
lips getting tighter. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Bob, not
breaking eye contact or speaking.
    All at once, Jaxon seemed to have enough of it. He
shook his head quickly. “I’m out of here.” He turned on his heel and stormed
away and I was left to Mom and Bob, standing there, as the silence stretched
out awkwardly between the three of us. I swallowed. As bad as it had been to
watch Jaxon being ripped to shreds by his dad, it was somehow way worse to have
my mom and Bob staring at me, silent, looking disgusted.
    “So,” I said, gathering up the last shreds of my
courage. “You were going to take us out for dinner?” Mom glanced at Bob, and
then back at me. I wanted more than anything to make things right with my mom.
Even with the way things had improved ever since the disaster that had come up
during Thanksgiving break, we were still not totally okay. There was still that
tension between us.
    “We were,” Mom said, her voice still tight. I took a
deep breath.
    “Give me a chance to change and get cleaned up and
let’s go.” I didn’t dare propose that Jaxon should come with us, or even that I
would try to find him. In the state of mind that Bob and Jaxon both were
obviously in, them being in a restaurant together was the last possible thing
that would help. I would just do my best to make things okay with our parents
and hopefully the whole situation would blow over in time for Spring Break. It
was obvious that Jaxon and Bob had enough issues as it was; from what he’d told
me when we finally got together, it wouldn’t have mattered one way or another
that Jaxon and I were seeing each other. Bob was determined to find fault with
his son, though I had no idea why.
    I hurried to the bus while everyone else on the team
was in the lodge, drinking hot chocolate, coffee, beers, or whatever they felt
like having. Normally, I would have been thrilled to go out to dinner with my
mom after a meet—but I was tense all over. I had no idea where Jaxon was. I
knew the dinner would be tense, but I thought that if I could spend some time
alone with the parents, maybe things could get better. Maybe at least I could
get them to stop thinking about the situation between Jaxon and me. We were
both adults; it was our business, whether they liked it or not.
    I grabbed a quick, hot shower and blow-dried my
hair. I wondered what Mom was saying to Bob, where Jaxon was and what he was
doing. I tried to tell myself over and over that it would be okay, that Bob
would calm down and that we’d have a civilized dinner, and then later on we
could discuss the situation like rational people. I got dressed and grabbed a
ride to the restaurant where Mom said they would meet me. At least, I thought, Bob
seemed to have gained enough self-restraint not to try and humiliate people
publicly—he had kept his voice down when we’d been