Taking the Heat (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 3)

He could have his family or he could have Veronica. It was as simple as that, and he couldn’t walk away from his family. Not even for her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

HE WAS A SOPHOMORE at her old high school just as she’d suspected. When the police had arrived, his parents found three half-empty bottles of his mom’s old Valium prescription in his bedside table. He hadn’t taken any yet, but he’d been saving up. They’d also found the Dear Veronica blog open on his computer.

The police told Veronica that the boy had denied everything at first, but then he’d broken down in tears and cried in his mom’s arms. He’d said that he was miserable and wanted to be dead, but he didn’t want to make his parents worry. He’d said he was sorry he’d caused all this trouble.

That had made Veronica break down and sob. That he’d thought killing himself would have been less trouble for his parents and the community than just asking for help. That he hadn’t wanted to bother his family with his pain. That he thought he wasn’t worth it.

She’d cried because if she hadn’t had an escape plan already in place, maybe she would have thought about hurting herself, too. After all, she’d had nowhere else to turn. She had asked for help, and her father had ignored her.

A week later, Veronica was only more angry. Angry for that boy and herself and everyone else like them. But she didn’t know what to do with that. She wrote to the school to ask how she could help. There were already bullying programs in place at the school. They taught suicide awareness and prevention. But the principal admitted that with budget cuts, the school counselors focused mostly on getting kids ready for college and addressing problem children.

“They simply don’t have time to meet with kids unless those kids are acting out. We’ve only got two counselors for the whole school.”

But one of those counselors wrote back with an idea that got stuck in Veronica’s mind like a bur.

There’s a program designed to reach out to kids who are going through depression or anxiety, but it costs a lot to fully fund. We’ve only been able to scrape up the money for brochures and a few lesson plans. If we could do the whole month-long program every year, I bet the kids would take it from there. There are clubs they can organize themselves, to get together and feel like they belong to something.

Money. The one thing Veronica didn’t have. But she knew who had plenty of money and nothing worthwhile to spend it on. And she was feeling way too angry to be afraid of him anymore.

She knew her dad was home tonight. He’d asked if she was coming for dinner. Funny that he asked her about dinner at least twice a week. Maybe there was something inside him that loved her. Maybe he got lonely. Maybe late at night he wondered if he’d focused on the wrong things in his life and felt regret. She’d never know, because he’d never admit it.

She couldn’t remember her dad being any softer, but her mom had loved him and her mom had been a gentle soul. She must have seen something tender in the man she’d married. Perhaps her struggle with cancer had changed him. Veronica didn’t remember what he’d been like before those years of illness.

She tried to keep that in mind through dinner, waiting until they were halfway through their silent meal to bring up her request. “Dad, I have a proposal for you.”

He grunted as he scrolled through something on his phone.

“There’s a program I’d like to get started at the high school. It helps kids with mental health problems recognize what’s going on and teaches them to reach out for help. Kids really struggle with things like anxiety and depression.”

“Another thing you won’t get paid for?”

“I get paid for my job, Dad. And no, I wouldn’t get paid for this. In fact, the program would need money. Lots of money. Eight thousand dollars a year for the full program.”

“Eight grand a year to make posters for crazy kids? Good luck with that.”

She stared at him until he looked up from his phone. “Eight grand a year,” she said, “to help kids who are suffering the way you let me suffer all through high school.”

“Now you’re telling me you were depressed?”

“I don’t know if I was depressed, but I know I was scared and anxious, and I could have used someone to talk to. God knows you didn’t want to hear it.”

?

?Jesus, Veronica. Do you know what my teen years were like? Growing up on a farm in Nebraska? You want to know how many times my dad asked about my feelings?”

She could practically feel the sneer slide over her skin and she was transported back to her childhood, to her dad dismissing everything. Her grief, her loneliness and then her despair over the new family he’d delivered to her. Her emotions had always been an inconvenience, a nuisance, a weakness.

“He tortured me, you know,” she said calmly.

“Who? Jason? Now you’re saying he abused you?”

“No, he never touched me. He just ruined my life. He didn’t want to live here, he didn’t want to be here, so he took it out on me, and you never did a damn thing about it.”

He waved his fork. “I told you not to let him see you sweat. You let him get to you.”

She laughed. The smell of the lasagna her father’s housekeeper had cooked was making her nauseous, so she pushed her plate away and scooted her chair back. “This wasn’t some asshole in my algebra class, Dad. He lived with me. He was around twenty-four hours a day. He called me ugly. He called me stupid. He told everyone at school that I was creepy and disgusting and that he moved to a room on the other side of the house so he wouldn’t have to be near me!”