“She really does,” Dad said.
“Sandy is your spy, isn’t he?”
“You bet he is,” Mom said.
“No firemen for Sandy!” I decreed.
“You’re going to make me a spinster,” he muttered.
“And that should do it,” Dad said. “You know, you kids today with your fancy iPads and iPhones and iTunes and iPods. None of those would have hel
ped you here. Maybe I should market this as the iScrewdriver and see how much money I could make.”
“Billions,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure the market value just dropped 300 percent on my house since you unscrewed this door. Thanks, Dad.”
With a grunt, he lifted it out of the way and set it against the wall. I glared at the four of them, especially when I saw that Nana did not have Ding Dongs and a burrito from Los Betos. One should not promise Los Betos if one cannot deliver, for it might make another person extraordinarily pissy.
“You done pouting?” Mom asked.
I crossed my arms and stuck out my bottom lip. “I’m not pouting.”
“He’s not done pouting,” Dad told Mom.
“Okay, well, let’s get this intervention started,” Nana said gleefully.
They all started forward into the room, forcing me to take steps back until my legs hit the bed and I had to sit. Nana pulled out my desk chair and sat in it with a grunt, scooching closer to me until our knees bumped together. Mom sat to one side of me and put her hand on mine, and Dad sat on my other side, pressing his leg against mine. Sandy sat on the floor near my feet, and I suddenly understood what it meant to have your family smothering you.
“Who would like to begin?” Mom asked.
“We’re not really doing this,” I snapped. “This is ridiculous!”
“I will,” Nana said as she pulled a massive pile of paper from her purse. She began to read in a flat monotone. “Paul, when you do stupid things, it makes me sad. I couldn’t believe when Sandy called us and told us that you’d—”
“When in the hell did you have time to write this?” I asked, dropping my jaw. “These things just happened! Sandy just called you!”
“I already had something written,” Nana said, affronted. “I modified it on the way over here. Can I finish, please?”
“Of course you can,” Mom said, patting her hand.
“No, she can’t—”
“Paul,” she shouted over me, starting to read again, “when you do stupid things, it makes me sad! I couldn’t believe when Sandy called us and told us that you’d gone behind your partner’s back to see his mom! And then, to make it worse, you locked yourself in your room and started to cry!”
“I didn’t cry—”
“It hurts me to see you like this! I want you to be happy, but you keep sabotaging yourself! You need to allow yourself to be happy and to stay off meth and—Wait… I don’t think I got this far to change it. Hold on a second.” She pulled a pen from her purse and squinted down at the paper, starting to scratch off words and muttering to herself.
“You know,” I told her, “I don’t know what’s more unreal: the fact that you already had an intervention speech written out in case I got strung out on meth, or the fact that this is actually happening right now.”
“I like to prepare for every eventuality,” Nana said.
“I told you to open the door,” Sandy said mildly. “Since you didn’t, this is what had to happen.”
“We’re here because we love you,” Mom said.
“And because Vince is pretty great,” Dad said. “You’d have to be pretty stupid to let him go.”
“He made me go,” I reminded them.