Chapter 25 I Drove Us To The Grocery Store 2

• Apparently I passed the test, because the shadow on Derek’s face passed and he beamed. “He is – he’s great. Anyway, he took me home and we jammed in his basement the first week of school, and his family just kind of adopted me. When I dropped out of school and Trevor finally kicked my ass out, I crashed at Ryan’s for a couple of weeks, but it made his mom uncomfortable that I was just hanging out all day, not going to school, not doing anything. And Mara started acting… weird. It was a little inappropriate.”
• I liked Derek even more when he said that. He genuinely agreed that a 12-year-old girl should not be living in a house with a non-relative like him, no matter how upstanding he was in his conduct with her.
• “So anyway, Ryan broke the news to me. He was all apologetic and embarrassed – it was pretty funny. He said my parents would let me stay until I found a job and a place, and I would always be welcome back to practice and have dinner, but I had to move, and soon. Like I said, I didn’t blame them at all. I went out the next day and found a job at the 40 Watt cleaning up and shit, and I moved out a week later.”