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would be a few hundred dollars closer to my credit card max soon. Not anything to bankrupt me, but it was still money I wished I weren’t spending on a car repair. Then Ghost slid the bill across the counter.
    “Um…where’s the rest of it?” I asked. Something wasn’t right. I read my name and the car information three times to be certain he’d given me the correct invoice.
    “Yeah, it is.”
    I frowned. “Did Charlie pay for some of it?” Seemed irrational that he would.
    “Nope.” He sighed. “That’s your bill. Hurry up and pay, so I can go home already.”
    I slid him one credit card. “Why is it so small?”
    He glared at me as he swiped it through the card reader, but it wasn’t an unfriendly look. “Because Charlie is my friend. It’s just how it is.” That was it? Bro friendship? It wasn’t a satisfactory answer but I kept my mouth shut. The printer noisily spat out a stream of paper. He marked different sections with X’s then shoved it at me with a pen. “Sign, please.” Charlie had naked pictures of Ghost. That’s what it was. His dick and his face in the same shot. Had to be.
    Hiding my smile, I scribbled quickly and put the keys inside my bag. In case I’d annoyed him enough to change his mind about the cost. “Thanks, Ghost.” He’d saved my ass today.
    “Yeah, no problem. Car’s just on the side, on the right. See you later. I mean that,” he called after me. “We’re expecting you. It’s a good group, seriously; we’re kinda crazy, though. Comedy show and Coco’s right after.”
    “I’ll be there!” It wasn’t like I had anything better to do tonight. How hard was it going to be to hang out with complete strangers when I’d already gotten into a car with one of them?
    Once I was inside my mom’s car, I took a moment to relish the relief that it was fixed, before I pressed out a text to her: Running late. Car was broken into. Took care of it. Everything’s fine now. On my way to your house.
    I could’ve gotten away with the secret, with a lie about having to stay later at work. But open and honest communication was the only way to repair my relationship with my parents. In whatever way I still could. Mom was going to think I was lying, anyway, like all those times before. My track record didn’t give me much good character to stand on. But who’d blame them when their daughter was an alcoholic? I’m better and I am trying , I reminded myself. I’m trying so hard. I squeezed the steering wheel, willed the tears away. Dread churned in my stomach when I pulled into the driveway and got out of the car. My house key privileges were revoked long ago. But even if I had been able to just let myself in, I wouldn’t have anyway. I wasn’t un welcome, but there was great loss in feeling like a stranger in a place I should’ve felt comfort. 
    My younger brother, Tyler, swung the door open before I even had the chance to knock. Whatever he had expected to see wasn’t me, so he grunted. “Hey, Ty…” He gave me a quick nod and charged up the stairs. I heard my parents laughing somewhere inside. I was so jumpy I stumbled into an end table.
    “Is that my Butterfly?” my dad called from the kitchen. He walked into the living room a few seconds later, a jar of salsa and a bag of tortilla chips in his hand as he plopped down in an armchair.
    “Hi, Dad.” I strode across the room to give him a hug and to kiss the top of his head, like I had been doing since I was a kid. He was in his late 50’s now, so there was pretty much a horseshoe of salt-and-pepper gray hair up there. I had more of his features than my mom’s. People always threw out “spitting image” when we were together.
    “Hey, your mom read your text to me. What happened?”
    “Some guy broke into the car about a week ago. The officer who came to the scene gave me a case number for the report. I left my stupid iPod on the passenger seat. It was my fault and I wanted to handle it.” I knew he was