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Nell took the headphones off her head and set them back beneath the sampler. "Is it just me, or is music getting shittier all the time," she asked. "Mom says I'm too young to think that, but..." She dropped the CD case back into its spot. Stone Temple whatever, that's what it was.

Of course, Carson was off in the 80s hair metal section, or something. Nell sauntered over to him, three separate albums (all fancy for-show vinyls) tucked under her arm. "Whatcha lookin' at?"

"Fancy new releases," said Nell, rolling her eyes. "I'm not, like, a hipster or anything." She headed up to the checkout, her wedges clicking on the impersonal tile flooring. "Besides, everything before the mid-nineties is a crock. I brought all the musical talent with me when I was born."

She put her albums up on the register and fished out her card. "Anyway, Mom wants to know if you booked your flight to California? She says to fly through SFO, since that's where they'll be." Nell hated hotel holidays, but they did tend to happen around re-election years.

Nell frowned. "Mom said that you're coming this time, because she hasn't seen you in years and she wants to make sure you're really you and not a pod person body-snatcher stealing her son's name. And anyway, it's not like you can't play hooky if you want to."

She thanked the cashier and led the way out of the store, shoulders rigid. "But no! Sure, Mom's just fine with you never wanting to see her. It's not like you live in the actual, literal crime capital of the country or anything, a place where people wind up in weird comas by the dozens every night, I mean, <********>" Why was he so okay with leaving Nell to the wolves? They'd talked about this. If it was just her, then... Nell tucked her chin into the collar of her winter coat and shoved her hands in her pockets. "S'not like there's whole task forces dedicated to crazy cosplaying gangsters. Why do you hate our parents so much, anyway? You said you'd tell me and then you never did."

"Aw, no sleepovers," said Nell, but it was a half-hearted ribbing rather than anything actually funny. She slanted a glance at Carson, alarm in her blue-eyed gaze, before she shrugged. "Okay. You want a cab, or?..."

They walked it, which was fine by Nell, except the silence was so tense. She worried her lower lip with her teeth until it started to hurt, and then she was just... quiet.

Once they were safely ensconced in Carson's teensy-tiny efficiency apartment, Nell shucked her coat and her boots and flopped onto his bed. "Okay," she said. "Now dish." It couldn't possibly be as serious as he was making it out to be.

Nell frowned. She was taking it seriously, just... if she went into this all solemn like her entire life hung in the balance, she'd just get depressed. It would be like getting hyped up for a role before she knew she had it--that pain was all too familiar--and Nell didn't truck with that sort of nonsense. She rolled onto her stomach and pillowed her chin in both hands. "Okay, serious mode on," she said. Which was also a joke. s**t, she sucked at this.

The thing with her friend was old news, wasn't it? It had happened, like, a year ago. Why was Carson bringing it up? Why was he...

Nell blinked, slowly, and then she crossed her arms beneath her, looked away because what. What? What? She opened her mouth to say something, anything, because what good were all of those comportment classes if she couldn't make it work for her now, but nothing came to mind and nothing came out. She shut her mouth and dug her nails into the soft meat of her biceps. "He... with you?"

It couldn't be. Carson had to be lying, didn't he? Her dad was a skeeze, but he wasn't like that. He wouldn't hurt a child. Nell couldn't believe that, she wouldn't believe that. Luke Rodham was an a*****e, a terrible person with the politics of sewer mold, but he wasn't a child molester.

But Carson had never lied to her, and Nell had seen her dad's type with her own eyes.

"Does Mom know," she asked, staring over at her boots like they could take her someplace else.

Here was something to be pissed about. "She would have killed him," said Nell. "Why wouldn't you tell her? You'd tell Marcus, who didn't even do anything, and probably never would, but not Mom?" If there was anyone who would step up to bat for any of her adopted children, it would be their mom. Jenn knew people, and she knew people who knew people, there was hardly even a better person to tell, not in the whole world.

Why tell Marcus and Nell? They were probably the two worst choices in the world, weren't they? Marcus stiff upper lipped it through everything, and Nell... Nell was just a kid! A seventeen-year-old kid who no one would believe and no one really cared to listen to!

"You have to tell Mom. She'd get him put away for life and then you'd never have to see him again!" She balled up her fists in his comforter. "And then it'd be over!"

Nell saw. She saw all too clearly. "I'm telling Mom," she said, flatly. "I know that's, like, not how I'm supposed to do things, and I'm supposed to let you like, do things in your own time? But Dad's not stopping and," She hiccuped, tried to catch her breath. "Mom never would've sent you away. Mom loves you. Mom would--and my friends! I brought them into a house where he was and, and I can't. I won't."

She put her face in Carson's comforter, fingers laced together over her head.

Nell calmed a little bit when Carson patted her back. At least he didn't seem like he was going to be pissed at her forever. "Even if you don't want to do anything legally, she'd divorce him," she said, muffled by the duvet. "She'd make him sorry it ever happened. And you wouldn't have to be involved at all. She wouldn't make you do it. There's pictures. But Mom's gotta know, Carson, she's gotta."

She lifted her head and dropped it back into the Tide-scented comforter, the I'm-laying-down equivalent of a trying-to-be-disaffected teen shrug. "So you tell her or I do. Okay? That's gotta be okay. 'Cause I'm not going to not do it."