Dangerous Play

3 » crime and punishment

Every curse word in his vocabulary flew through his mind as his dad glared at him. The pizza lay all but forgotten on the table in front of him as he floundered. "I, uh..." he stuttered.

"Abby, honey, did you know about this?" Their mom asked, a dangerous edge in her normally sweet voice.

Finn glanced at his twin and the two of them had a quick telepathic exchange. It went something along the lines of:

FUCK!

SAY SOMETHING!

THEY'LL KILL ME!

YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD!

AHHHH!

HURRY UP BEFORE IT GETS WORSE!

WORSE?!???!!

Dad coughed. "An answer sometime today would be nice."

Abby stuffed the next slice of pizza in her mouth, effectively excusing herself from answering. He couldn't really blame her.

"I, well, I—" Finn cleared his throat, quailing under the combined stares of both parents. "I hung out with some of my teammates last night."

"That still doesn't explain where the hickey came from. Unless there's something else you want to tell us?" Dad raised an eyebrow. "Last I checked, you were into girls."

Abby swallowed and stood up. "This has been lovely, but I think I'm going to just—"

"Sit down!" Dad snapped. She sat.

Mom shook her head. "I'm sure we can guess the rest of the story. And to think, we were going to un-ground you today." Abby slouched in her seat when she turned her steely gaze in her direction. "Clearly you knew about this, since you tried to help him cover it up."

"I... yeah." She winced. "Sorry."

"You'll be sorry," Dad growled. He crossed his arms. "Both of you are grounded for two weeks."

Abby gave Finn an accusatory look.

"And," he continued, "we're putting tracking apps on your phones. Both of your phones."

Abby's jaw dropped. "What? I wasn't even the one who snuck out of the house!"

"This isn't meant to be a punishment," Mom started, but she had already stood up angrily.

"Forget it," she said. "Look, you can ground me for as long as you want, but I'm not letting you guys stalk me 24/7."

"It's not stalking, it's for your safety," their father countered.

"Safety, my ass!"

"Watch your language!"

Both Abby's and their father's faces were steadily darkening in color, the tips of their ears flaming red.

"This is unreasonable," she continued emphatically. "Look, I understand you guys wanting to keep tabs on Finn—" he shot her a dirty look, which she ignored "—but I didn't even do anything to warrant this."

Mom's face was uncharacteristically serious. "Your father and I have been talking about this for a while, and we were planning to bring it up sometime later this week. It's not that we don't trust you, we just want to make sure we know where you are in case something happens. That's the only time we will track you guys, okay?"

Finn scoffed. "Yeah, right."

They bickered back and forth for the rest of dinner, with the twins on one side of the argument and their parents on the other, but the outcome had been decided long in advance. The result was Abby storming furiously upstairs, their mom heaving a deep sigh, their dad frowning at the leftover pizza, and Finn glaring mutinously at the table.