That night, I cooked dinner, but it grew cold by the time I heard the garage door open. Courtney came in with an exuberant smile, lifting her arms to the sky, and kissed me on the forehead. She held a small paper bag with a cell phone emblem on it.

My heart soared, and I shook with happiness as I realized what had to be inside.

Slowly, she sat into the chair at the dining room table, hands poised daintily as she opened the small rectangular box. "Now, you have to be careful. If it breaks, I can't afford another one." She shot me a cold warning stare. I reached for the phone but she glanced at my hand and back to the phone, ignoring me. I pulled my hand back. She pushed a button on the side and the screen lit up. "The battery needs to be charged." She pulled the charger out and laid it on the table. "Also, you have to understand that I have access to your GPS, and if I ask to see your phone, I can, and will exercise my right to check every app, message, or website you visit."

Time stood still as I digested this information. I didn't understand why she felt the need to invade every corner of my privacy, but it didn't surprise me in the least. The cell phone was now a liability that could give her incriminating evidence about anything I did. "What?" I asked. It came out accusatory.

She tilted her head back and scrolled down without changing her expression, ignoring me again. "It will take you a while to set everything up."

I clasped my hands together with anticipation. "Can I... have it?"

She laughed deeply. "I'm glad I could get you something you'll enjoy." She placed it carefully in my palm.

Finally.

These things were delicate and I couldn't imagine she would spend hundreds of dollars on it without making sure it was protected. "Where is the screen protector and case?"

Her smile dissolved as if I had spoiled everything and a mound of guilt sprung up inside me. "It's ok." I smiled. "This is great!" I wanted to run to my room and figure out everything there was to know about it, but she insisted I leave it to charge on the counter while we ate dinner together. The wait was agonizing and all I could do was think about what apps I wanted to download, and if I would be able to get a hold of Lan tonight or not. This opened so many opportunities. I could exchange numbers with Peyton when I saw him next. I ate as fast as I could and tried to leave the table to set up my phone in private, but she told me to sit down and wait until she finished. I sat impatiently, daydreaming about what it would be like to play with it. Courtney asked me something, but I hadn't been paying attention.

I pushed my food around on my plate and peeled my eyes away from my new cell phone. "Huh?"

She took a bite of the casserole I had made. "I got a phone call from your school saying you were absent for one or more classes the other day."

My blood turned cold. I carefully gauged her body language to see if she was about to climb over the table and whack me, but she sat there eating, calm and collected. Sometimes she was sneaky like that. She would probe with a question and see if the answer met her requirements before morphing into her unpredictable state of rage. "It's because... I went to see my counselor," I lied. "My teacher must have marked me absent." Hopefully she didn't call the school to verify how many classes I had missed.

"Oh." She ate a bite and swallowed. "Why did you need to see your counselor?"

This was my chance to bring up early graduation. "Because I wanted to check in with her about—you know—college and whether or not I could graduate early. Mrs. McMillan said I have all of the credits I need to graduate with the exception of two online English classes—one for each semester I would have taken my senior year. I have the paperwork in my backpack. Wouldn't that be great if I graduated at the end of this school year?"

She froze, and I wasn't sure why. It was like the mention of me graduating was a threat. She looked down at her plate and started breathing again. "You know, I don't think college is necessary to be successful. There are plenty of good jobs you can get without wasting four years of your life in college."

I was shocked by her words. There wasn't a parent I knew who would suggest not going to college. The conversation had never come up, but I had assumed she would expect me to get my degree. I became defensive. "You went to college."

Her voice became quiet. "That's right, but honey, wouldn't it be easier if you stayed here and went to work?" She raised her eyebrows and sipped from her glass.

I imagined being stuck under her roof, watching tv for the rest of my life, eating pizza, never having a boyfriend, never having a job that would bring meaning to my life. "No, I definitely want to be a part of a team of people that work toward making the world a better place, like what you're doing."

She laughed patronizingly. "When you have to work a full-time job, I guarantee you're not going to feel appreciated the way you imagine. Employees are disposable. It's more like a contract between you and your boss where you do repetitive tasks that blur together, and all you want to do is take your vacation time, but that vacation never comes because you're an essential employee, and there aren't enough employees to cover your shifts if you leave. Not to mention they threaten to get rid of you if you take sick days." She took a breath. "Why don't you learn a trade where you can provide a service. Customers can pay you cash and you don't have to pay taxes on the money?"

I lifted my palms up. "What, like mowing lawns or cleaning houses?"

"Those are a couple of ideas, but there are others. You could be an upholsterer, a nail technician, a massage therapist... there are all sorts of trades."

I didn't understand why she would limit my choices this way. It didn't sound like my idea of happiness and there was now another pressing question that burned me up inside. "Why did you push me to be an honor student if you don't want me to go to college?"

She hunched over her plate with her elbows on the table, rubbing her temples. My anger was causing her to close up. "I have a headache." She stood and turned away from me. "I'm going to lie down."

My agitation rose a notch at her dismissal of my feelings. My future was my choice. "Well, we need to talk about this later because I have a paper I need you to sign saying you release me to graduate early, and I need to sign up for online classes too."

"Deja, you don't need to graduate early,' she snapped. "You'll grow up too fast and you'll miss your senior year—the most important one. Goodnight." She stomped upstairs and slammed the door.

I didn't care at the moment. I would revisit this conversation later—or—I went to my backpack and pulled out the paper I needed her to sign. I read it thoroughly, then my pulse began to rise under the stress as I signed her name to it, and put it back in my backpack. She was not going to stand in my way.

I spent the rest of the evening figuring out everything there was to know about my cell phone. I was up until dawn, when I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore.

***

I was a child, feeble minded and ignorant, and I was trying to get out the front door of our house, but Courtney blocked me. I whimpered as she fastened the locks and turned her back to me. There was nothing I could do, until I remembered there was more than one way out. I stopped crying, and I turned and scampered out through the back door to the garage where I started walking like a runway model, mature and shrewd. Suddenly, I looked down at my feet and I realized I was no longer a child but a grown woman. My heart filled with courage and I walked far into the distance in a warm, blissful sunrise.

My alarm went off for school, almost giving me a heart attack like it did every morning. I sat up, shrugging off the vivid dream, and I remembered I was now the proud owner of a cellular device. I found it underneath me, then picked it up and kissed it. Today was going to be the first day of the rest of our lives together. I started thinking about my cell phone like it was a person. It was better than a boyfriend. For one thing, it didn't judge you or talk back. It accepted you the way you were, sort of like a dog.

I got ready in a hurry and before I left the house Courtney came down the stairs. Her hair was like a brown haystack with straw sticking out in every direction. "You're up already?"

"Yep." I smiled.

I could hardly wait to go to school. I kissed her cheek and she seemed stunned as I pulled away. "Bye." It was too early for the bus, but my eyes traced the snow slicked pavement toward Davianté's. If I was lucky I might hijack another ride to school. Now that I had a cell phone he could text me a secret code when he was leaving, I could walk to the end of the block where he would pick me up, and Courtney would never know.

I waited in the cold morning air by the end of the block for what seemed like ages, and finally I saw his car. He rolled to a stop as the window rolled down. "Hey."

I bounded up to the passenger's side with a grin. "Can I have a ride?"

He didn't smile back. "Hop in."

I flopped onto his seat and put my seatbelt on, holding my cellphone out. "I finally got a ceeeell phoooone," I sang.

He flicked his eyes to my hand. "Oh. That's great." His voice wasn't enthusiastic. "I was worried about you, Deja."

My smile faded. "Why?" Then I remembered the burn on my arm. "Oh—my arm is fine. I have a bandage on it." The problem Saturday night seemed like a million miles away.

He gave me a hard stare and then looked back to the street as we pulled onto the main road. "I got this bad feeling. When you looked back at me as you left my house. I swore I saw—" He glanced over at me, but I pretended not to know what he was talking about. "I guess—never mind. You want my number?"

"Yes." I was already ready to punch the numbers in and save them. He rattled them off and then I started typing in his name, but then I remembered Courtney might request to see my phone. Seeing Davianté's name in my contacts would probably make her hostile. I deleted his name and replaced it with Donna—a girl's name so she wouldn't be suspicious. "Hey, thanks for the other day. The hair cut—the donuts—everything."

A pink hue brightened under his mahogany cheeks. "Don't mention it. So, are you going to make a habit of hitching rides?" he joked.

"If I can get away with it." I eyed him with a smirk.

He gave me the side eye, then cracked a smile.

"I'm thinking about dropping by the movie theater after school today." I casually mentioned this hoping he would volunteer to take me.

"Oh really?"

"Yeah."

He took in a deep breath but didn't answer right away—not until he turned onto another street. "My dad told me a little bit about why it shut down."

I squinted at him. "Oh? Why?"

"There was a murder there—one of the employees."

I scrunched my nose. "Really?"

"Yeah. A cold case." He itched his neck. "A lot of businesses don't recover after something like that."

"What do you mean?"

"Take for example the shooting at the Century 16 theater in Aurora. At one time that theater was packed with customers, but after the mass shooting nobody wanted to go there anymore. People worried about copy cats—or they don't want to sit in the same theater where twelve people lost their lives. I guess with an unknown killer on the loose, nobody wanted to go back to the Dollar Cinema in our neighborhood. It closed its doors six months later."

I got a chill from his words. It was creepy thinking about a former employee being murdered there. "Copy catting is worrisome, but it was so long ago that most people probably don't remember."

"Well, people in our age group might not know because it happened before we were old enough to understand, but people older—people who have lived here since before we were born, haven't forgotten."

I rested my elbow on the black interior door and skimmed my nails through my hair. "My mom's never mentioned it."

He shrugged. "No, she probably didn't want to scare you—what—with it being right across the street and all."

It explained a lot about Courtney's behavior. All the locks on the doors, not wanting me outside unsupervised when I was younger, and Lan's accusations of Courtney being paranoid. Lan's family hadn't moved into our neighborhood until we were in sixth grade so they weren't worried and probably didn't know about it. "So how long have you known this?"

"I didn't know about it until my dad mentioned it this weekend. Yeah, he said with the owner moving back and opening the doors again they want to reopen the case—ask more questions. After the owner left town, they couldn't find her." He pulled into the school parking lot going less than ten miles an hour with a caravan of cars in front of us.

My eyes popped wide open. "That blows my mind."

"Yeah, I don't think you want to work there with all that going on."

"Oh, I never said I don't want to work there. I still do. I just said that it blows my mind."

Davianté pulled into a parking spot in the middle of our pothole infested lot.

"We should have gone for coffee first." He killed the engine. "We've got a good half an hour until the bell rings."

"Let's do it tomorrow." Why not? I had money now.

We grabbed our backpacks and slung them over our shoulders as we headed into the swarm of students. Being early was perfect for me. It gave me time to turn in my early graduation permission slip to Mrs. McMillian, who barely glanced at it before filing it away. I still had plenty of time to gather phone numbers. When I took the bus, I didn't arrive until it was time to go straight to class. I could get used to this.