I open up my drawer that contains my bag of tricks and pause. For years I’ve gone out of my way to hide my diabetes from others, hide while I tested because Mom has had a hard time dealing with the reality of my condition. I took a huge step forward this week, and I’m done acting as if this is something to be ashamed of, as if this is something to ignore.

I grab my bag of stuff, enter the kitchen, then drop into a seat at the table. The seat next to Mom. Mom quits breathing as I prick my finger and then test to confirm I’m running low. I leave everything on the table, my needles in plain sight, and open the fridge.

“How was baling hay?” Dad asks.

“Tough.” I choose the container full of spaghetti and meatballs and pop the entire thing in the microwave.

Mom’s face is pale and she keeps her eyes locked on the needles. “Spaghetti has a ton of carbs.”

“I can afford to eat a few.” She’s still staring at the needles. “Mom.”

“Yes?” Not paying attention to me.

“Mom—look at me.”

She does and I decide to not play her games anymore. I love her, just like Dad did and still does, but I understand why he couldn’t live with her anymore. Mom flies off like a nervous hummingbird and calls it finding herself when things get too serious.

But I understand why Mom couldn’t be with Dad anymore, either. His need for consistent and constant smothered her, just like it often smothers me.

“I have diabetes.”

Dad relaxes back in his seat, folding his arms over his stomach. He slightly nods his approval, almost like he’s been waiting years for me to have this conversation.

Mom’s face contorts. “I know.”

“It’s not going away.”

Her expression falls and bleak isn’t an emotion Mom wears well. “I know.”

“I’m not going to hide anymore to make you comfortable. The testing, the shots. If I’m around and you’re around and I have to do these things, I am.”

The chair jerks beneath Mom as my words hit her hard. “I have never asked you to hide.”

“Your reactions do.”

Mom immediately turns to Dad for confirmation or consolation, but neither happens. The microwave dings and I pull out the steaming Tupperware container. I drop it onto the table before it burns off my fingerprints, find a fork, sit and dig in.

“You should test after,” says Dad. “I know your number was low, but—”

“Stop.” I point the fork at Dad. “You don’t get to know my numbers anymore. Going to admit, you were right on a lot of things. I wasn’t always taking the best care of myself, but that’s done.”

I pop a meatball in whole and breathe out when it’s too hot, but chew because the need to devour this whole damn kitchen is rocking me. A few chews and my face pinches. That’s some bad meat. “I told the guys about the diabetes.”

“You told them?” asks Dad.

“Told them.” Chew. “About the diabetes.” Swallow and I come close to closing my eyes on how good hot food in my stomach feels. “I’m not hiding it anymore. People want to treat me like I’m weak because of it—screw them.”

Dad leans forward now, not missing the chance for this conversation. “How did they take it?”

I shrug while twirling a hunk of noodles onto my fork. “Mad for the secret, concerned, confused. Then Ryan and I raced up a tree and everyone got over it.”

“You what?” That damn exasperation is there in his voice.

“Raced up a tree. Back to my numbers—I know how to take care of my diabetes. I know when to test, I know how and when to give my shots, I know when I’ve got problems. I’ve got one more year left until I graduate. You need to start worrying less about me and more about you.”

“Logan,” Dad starts, but I cut him off again.

“And what you said at the hospital, you’re right. I don’t have any idea what I want to do with my future, but you were wrong. That doesn’t mean I don’t know who I am. You may not like who I am, but I do. I do crazy shit. Why? Because I like to. Did I not test and take care of myself to hide the diabetes? Yeah, but that’s done, but I’m not going to change the rest of me. If I die doing something stupid like racing up a tree, then you can know I died being who I am. Not liking who I’ve become and telling me I don’t know who I am are two different things. You can’t control my diabetes, and you can’t change me.”

When I glance up from the spaghetti, it’s hard to meet Dad’s eyes. He looks like I struck him. He presses his lips together and when his mouth opens like he might say something, he pushes back his chair with enough force that it squeaks against the tiles and he leaves.

The front door slams shut and the glasses on the counter shake. I’ve lost my appetite, but I keep forcing down the food. If I don’t eat, my blood sugar will continue to tank.

“You want to leave, too, don’t you?” I say to Mom, and when I glance up her worn-out expression tells me everything I need to know.

“Yes,” Mom admits. “But I feel like I should stay.”

I finish what’s in my mouth and I study her. Mom looks older tonight. More her age. A few of her curly blond strands have broken away from her ponytail and cover her face. She smooths them back.

“Why are you here? Why wasn’t Dad at work?”

“We didn’t like how things were left at the hospital and knew you were coming home tonight. We just wanted to spend time with you. Logan, you’ve been so...distant lately. With your friends graduating and the change in schools and this girl we didn’t know about being shot and...we feel out of touch.”

My mind spins as I catch up too fast, too late. Spaghetti. Dad doesn’t cook spaghetti. Too many carbs. “That wasn’t a meatball, was it?”

“It’s a meatball...without meat.”

It was a meal made by my mother for me and I was too caught up in my problems with Abby to notice the obvious. With a blink of my eye, I finally see what I was blind to before. The dinner table set. Cut-up strawberries on the counter. Dressing for a salad.

Damn. I came barreling in, my problems on my mind. Pointing out their flaws and I never once considered their emotions, their concerns, and how they feel about me.

I exhale and push the container of spaghetti away. “I’m sorry.”

Mom places her hand over mine. “What’s going on with you?”

“I’m in love with Abby.”

Mom smiles and when she notices I’m not smiling with her, she edges her chair closer to me. “Did she break up with you?”

“She sells pot and in order to get out of dealing she’s leaving town. So, yeah, in a way, she is. And before you ask, I don’t do drugs. I’ve never been around her when she’s sold and yes, the dealing is why she was shot and why she’s getting out.”

Mom goes perfectly still and after a few beats of silence, I continue. “But she’s more than a dealer. She’s crazy and funny and beautiful and smart.” I glance over at Mom. “She’s brilliant. Can keep up with me like no one else. She makes me think differently about things, about who I am and who I want to be and she’s leaving.”

Emotion chokes me up and I just shake my head as if that can tell Mom the rest of what I can’t speak.

“No one prepares you for any of this—being a parent,” Mom says. “There’s a ton of classes to take on having a newborn, but after that, they shove you out to be on your own.

“Nobody could have prepared me for the fear I had when you were sick or the endless pit of panic that consumed me when they told me you were diabetic. No one told me how to take away your pain when you cried or were hurt or were frustrated. And as you got older, I had no idea how to get you to open up about the feelings trapped inside. And no one could have ever prepared me for you falling in love with a girl who deals drugs.”

“Really?” Both me and Mom’s heads snap up to find Dad standing in the doorway that leads outside. “I fell in love with you and you’re shocked your son fell in love with a girl who sells pot?”

Mom’s face twists as she tries to hide it, but the laugh escapes regardless and I can’t help but smile. Dad rejoins us at the table and touches the top of my head, messing my hair like I was a kid, before sitting down.

“How long were you there?” I ask.

“Walked out front and then came straight back here. Right around the time you figured out you ate something meatless.”

“Could have said something,” I say.

“Could have.” He leaves out that I was too busy busting in and calling him and Mom out.

I pick up the container with the spaghetti and meatless balls and put some on Mom’s plate and then a generous helping onto Dad’s. He scowls at the number of meatballs.

“Sorry for screwing up dinner,” I say.

“But we’re having it now.” Mom brightens and eats like it’s good.

“I divorced your Mom over the cooking. Putting that on my plate means premeditation.”

“You divorced me because I left and I couldn’t come back,” Mom says and both Dad and I go quiet. Mom’s never said that before and it’s an awkward kick in the gut. “I loved both of you, but being here every day just didn’t work for me. Sometimes I wish I was different than what I am, but I’m not.”