Backlash

My stupidity.

I stare down at my plate, fighting tears as Mom argues back.

“Your business! What about my business? You’re not the only one paying bills around here, Sean.”

Dad slams his fist on the table so hard the plates jump. My father has never, ever done anything violent like that before, and it even shocks Mom into silence. It freaks me out so much my hands are trembling. Liam looks from my father to my mother, wide-eyed, as if he doesn’t know who they are anymore.

“Let’s just eat,” Dad says, his voice gruff but quieter now.

We eat the rest of di

Liam and I are doing the dishes after di

All of a sudden we hear Dad exclaim a slew of curse words, and Mom shout, “Turn it up!”

Liam and I exchange a brief “What was that?” glance, then race into the living room to see what’s going on.

Their eyes are glued to the TV. To the evening news. The national news. The news that they show on TVs all across the United States of America.

The box in the upper left-hand corner of the screen next to the newscaster’s head has a picture of Mom — the one that’s on all those awful bus shelter ads around town that make Liam and me cringe every time we see them — and underneath it, in big horror-movie-style letters, the caption “Monster Mom.”

“I’m going to sue the pants off them,” Mom fumes. “They can’t slander me like that.”

I listen close to hear what they’ll say about me. If Mom is a monster, and I’m her daughter, what does that make me? Monster Spawn?

There’s a shot of the outside of our house and of the high school. It’s hard to hear everything the newscaster is saying over Mom’s ranting and Dad telling her to calm down. Something, something, “cyberbullying tag team shocked the community.” Then there’s Mr. Kelley in his pj’s again, the same footage from the local news, something about “outraged father” blah blah blah “cited for disorderly conduct.”

When the news a

“Hand me the phone, Sean,” Mom says. “I need to call a lawyer. They can’t do this to me. It’s libel. They’re going to ruin my business.”

Only Liam is brave — or stupid — enough to point out the obvious.

“It’s not libel if you actually did it, Mom.”

I hold my breath, waiting for the explosion in 3 … 2 … 1 …

“What, now my own kid is turning on me? Get out of here!” Mom shouts.

Dad gives us a look that says we’d be better off upstairs. So we go.

“Thanks a lot, Bree,” Liam says. “School’s going to suck even more now.”

“It’s not like you did anything.”

“Duh! I know that!” he says. “That’s what sucks. I did nothing, but I’m still lumped with you and Monster Mom.”

He stalks the rest of the way up the stairs and slams his bedroom door. Normally, my parents would have yelled about that, but Mom’s too busy threatening to sue the TV, and Dad’s too busy trying to calm her down.

Thanks a lot, bro. Way to make me feel like a total leper. I know Liam is mad at me. I know he thinks what I did was wrong. But it’s hard enough knowing that the rest of the world is going to think I’m a monster without my own brother hating me.

Getting to sleep is almost impossible. I toss and turn, worrying about what is going to happen, how people are going to react.

When I finally get to sleep, my dreams are filled with nightmares of me being chased by enormous black microphones, all asking, “Why, Bree? Why would you do this?”

The TV trucks are still there the next morning.

I beg Mom to drive me to school so I don’t have to walk through them to take the bus.

“I can’t. I’ve got a showing,” she snaps. “At least this one hasn’t canceled.”

“People are canceling showings because of …” I trail off, not wanting to actually call her the name I’m sure she’s being called behind all the doors in our neighborhood. Behind doors all across America.

“Because people don’t want Monster Mom as their broker.”

“I’ll take you,” Dad offers. “How about you, champ? Do you want a ride?”

“Nah … I’ll take the bus,” Liam says.

“Are you sure?” Dad says. “You don’t want to have to walk through that mob outside.”

“I’m sure. I’m going to leave early and cut through the Nu

I know why he’s doing it. He’d rather be anywhere that I’m not, because he wants to avoid being known as Monster Bro.

“How’re you holding up, Breenut?” Dad asks me when we’re alone in the car. “This is all pretty insane, huh?”

“Yeah,” I mumble, looking out the window.

“I had a bunch of really nasty voice mails on my cell when I woke up this morning,” Dad says. “There are some sick people in this world.”

“The news made it sound like Mom’s the one who’s sick. And me.” I look at him and ask the question that’s been haunting me all night. “Am I, Dad?”

My father doesn’t respond right away, and I turn to look at him, wondering if he thinks I’m some kind of sicko, too. He’s biting the side of his lip, the way he always does when he’s gearing up to tell Mom something he’s afraid might set her off.

“I wouldn’t say you’re sick, Breenut. You’re a teenager who made some …” He pauses, searching for the right words. “Very foolish decisions.”

He means bad decisions. Because he thinks I’m bad.

Dad’s the one person in my family who even slightly understands me, and even he thinks I’m a screwup.

“As a result, we’ve decided to take away your computer privileges. From now on, if you need the computer to do your homework, you’ll have to wait till I get home from work to supervise.”

“But, Dad —”

“There’s no negotiating on this, Bree.”

I want to ask him what Mom’s punishment is going to be, but I know that’ll just make him angrier. Still, the unfairness of it means I have to fight the lump welling in my throat to get out the next question.

“What do you think’s going to happen?”

Dad glances away from the road to look at me for a second.

“I wish I knew, honey. We’re in uncharted territory here.”

I wanted him to reassure me, to say everything is going to be okay, even if he had to lie. But Dad’s never been a fibbing kind of parent. Like when Grandma died, he didn’t say she “went to heaven” or was “with God now” or any of the stuff people normally say to kids so they can avoid saying the D word. He just cuddled Liam and me on either side of him and told us that she died. Flat out. She died, but she loved us and it was okay to feel sad because we were going to miss her. That he was feeling sad because he missed her, but we should also remember all the fun things about her, because that’s what she’d want us to do.

And then he told us all these fu

“The one thing I do know is that things are going to get worse before they get better,” Dad continues. “With all this press coverage … the voice mails … emails … just since the news last night I’ve had over a thousand emails through my website. None of them … pleasant.”