The Daughter They Abandoned Is the Doctor They Can't Reach novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Under Review

Her father takes her laptop and notebook and cuts her phone line, and her counselor reveals he tried to hold her transcript; he waits outside school and tells her not to make them do this in front of people.

My father didn't raise his voice.

He never did, which was why people at his credit union trusted him with their retirement.

"Ingrid," he said, and sat down across from me with his own coffee. "Nobody is taking anything from you. I'm trying to protect you."

"From what?"

"From mistakes. You're eighteen. You've never managed an account."

"I've managed it for six weeks."

My mother laughed, a small bright sound she used when a room got tense.

"Honey, he does this for a living. Let him look."

"Then he can look at a statement," I said. "I'll bring one home."

I would not, and we all knew it.

My father nodded slowly.

"We'll talk tonight," he said.

At school I kept my head down through two tests and a lunch period.

When I got home at four, my bedroom looked wrong.

The desk in the corner was clear.

The old laptop with the flickering screen was gone from its charger.

I found my mother in the kitchen, folding dish towels.

"Where's my laptop?"

"Dad took it to a man he knows," she said. "To be repaired. Isn't that nice?"

"I have applications on it."

"Then they'll be waiting when it's back."

She did not look at me.

My applications were in a library account, not on that machine, and I thanked my own stubbornness for it.

But my notebook, the one where I wrote down what I was owed and what I had paid, was gone from my desk too.

I found it later, in my father's study, on top of the printer.

It was open to the page headed Savings.

I took it back, closed it and put it in my backpack, and nobody stopped me.

On Tuesday morning my phone said No Service.

I tried it twice, then stood in the hallway holding it.

"The family plan is under review," my father said from the kitchen. "We're trimming the budget."

"You're trimming mine."

"Everyone's," he said pleasantly.

Faye was at the table with a bowl of cereal she wasn't eating.

Her brown eyes went from him to me and back.

"I can lend you my old phone," she said.

"No, thank you."

I said it more gently than I had said anything all week, because she looked like she might cry.

Then I went to the pharmacy across from school before first period and bought a prepaid phone with my own money.

It cost twenty-nine dollars.

I wrote it in the notebook.

At lunch I went to my counselor's office.

She looked up as soon as I came in, and she did not look surprised.

"I was about to send for you," she said. "Close the door."

She turned her chair toward me.

"Yesterday afternoon your father called the district office. He asked them to hold your transcript and your recommendation letters until he had reviewed your applications."

My mouth went dry.

"They can't do that."

"They can't," she said. "You're eighteen. Your records belong to you now, and nobody else can ask for them without your signature, parent or not."

She slid a sheet of paper across the desk.

"I've written down the date, the time and who he spoke to. If he calls again, he gets the same answer."

I looked at her tidy handwriting.

"He told them I was unstable?"

"He told them he was worried."

She did not say anything else about it.

"Your transcript went out this morning," she said. "All eleven schools."

I let out a laugh I hadn't planned on.

It sounded strange in the little office.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. It's the rule, and it was always your right."

When the last bell rang, I walked out the front doors with my backpack on both shoulders.

My father's car was parked at the curb.

The window slid down.

He had his reasonable face on, the one for clients who were about to hear bad news.

"Get in, Ingrid."

"I'll walk."

"Then listen from there."

Other students were streaming past us, and some of them looked.

He knew they would.

"Thursday is Thanksgiving," he said. "Your cousin wants the whole family at the table, and I'd like that for her."

"I'll be there."

"Good." He smiled. "Don't make us do this in front of people."

The window slid up again, and the car pulled out.

I stood on the sidewalk with a prepaid phone in my pocket and the date on a counselor's note in my backpack.

It was Tuesday.

I had two days to find somewhere else to sleep.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend