“Have you thought about leaving?” Tyler asked.
“And go where?”
“School,” he said.
I brightened. “I’m going to enroll in high school in September,” I said.
“Dad won’t like it, but I’m gonna go.” I thought Tyler would be pleased;
instead, he grimaced.
“You’ve said that before.”
“I’m going to.”
“Maybe,” Tyler said. “But as long as you live under Dad’s roof, it’s hard to
go when he asks you not to, easy to delay just one more year, until there
aren’t any years left. If you start as a sophomore, can you even graduate?”
We both knew I couldn’t.
“It’s time to go, Tara,” Tyler said. “The longer you stay, the less likely you
will ever leave.”
“You think I need to leave?”
Tyler didn’t blink, didn’t hesitate. “I think this is the worst possible place
for you.” He’d spoken softly, but it felt as though he’d shouted the words.
“Where could I go?”
“Go where I went,” Tyler said. “Go to college.”
I snorted.
“BYU takes homeschoolers,” he said.
“Is that what we are?” I said. “Homeschoolers?” I tried to remember the
last time I’d read a textbook.
“The admissions board won’t know anything except what we tell them,”
Tyler said. “If we say you were homeschooled, they’ll believe it.”
“I won’t get in.”
“You will,” he said. “Just pass the ACT. One lousy test.”
Tyler stood to go. “There’s a world out there, Tara,” he said. “And it will
look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your
ear.”
The next day I drove to the hardware store in town and bought a slide-bolt
lock for my bedroom door. I dropped it on my bed, then fetched a drill from
the shop and started fitting screws. I thought Shawn was out—his truck
wasn’t in the driveway—but when I turned around with the drill, he was
standing in my doorframe.
“What are you doing?” he said.