"HEY, MY BOY." His father's face smiled at him from the other side of the screen. It was dark in Ryan's room, and his face was more pixelated than normal.

"Hey, dad." Darren forced himself to smile too. "What time is it there?" he asked, referring to the darkness. Seeing his father was almost impossible if it wasn't for his white teeth and the small light reflection in his eyes.

"Ten," his father said at the same time as Darren had managed to calculate the time in his mind. The time difference between Florida and Scotland was only five hours, but it felt like more. "I don't want to turn the light on because the girls are sleeping," he explained. "I'm afraid to wake them up, and I already feel bad for calling you without them here." He smiled as he took another good look at his son. "They miss you."

"Tell them I miss them too," Darren said. He almost choked on his words.

"I will," Ryan said. Darren could trust him on his word; his father always did what he promised. "How are you doing?" Ryan had noticed the tone in Darren's voice as well as the lack of happiness at the beginning of their Skype call. Instead, a veil of graveness seemed to cloud their conversation.

The simple question was all it took for Darren to break. "I think I messed up, dad." He buried his face in his hands. "Like, really messed up."

"Why do you figure?" Ryan asked. The sight of his son suddenly breaking upset him, but he tried not to be taken aback by it. He wanted to be the listening ear for his son – it was the only thing he could do with an entire ocean separating them – and he couldn't do that if he let himself be controlled by his emotions.

Darren uncovered his face. "This friend of mine..." He turned his head away, not able to look into his father's sincere eyes. "I hurt her."

"What did you do?" Ryan prompted.

Darren bit his lip in an attempt to get rid of the tears before the camera would catch sight of them. How could he explain what he'd done? He had been mulling over the conversation he'd had with Dakota, analyzing if he could've said something different or should've brought the news to her in a different way, but every time, he came to the conclusion he'd caused the problem long before that conversation.

"Darren?"

His name sounded so different in a Scottish accent, but it was just like how he was used to. It brought back happy memories from home that only seemed to conflict with the memories currently going through his mind.

"She and I..." Darren shook his head and started over again. "I think I've talked about her to you before. Her name's Dakota." It sounded more like a question than a fact, and Ryan answered positively.

"She's also the one you spent that Saturday morning with when we came to visit, right?"

Darren nodded. He remembered how that Saturday morning and the night before he and Dakota had had such a good time. It was the second-to-last party he'd been to, and it had been drastically different from his last one. "And you know... You know she's an orphan, right?"

Ryan nodded. "You told me."

"Well, she learned who her parents are."

Ryan's facial expression changed, displaying a mix of shock and surprise. "Oh."

"Yes, 'oh'." Darren tried to smile, but it looked like a sad attempt at it.

"That must not have gone over well," Ryan guessed from Darren's reaction and the last conversation they'd had about this topic. Darren had explained to him Dakota didn't want to meet them.

"She didn't actually meet them," Darren continued. "That's the issue." He sighed. "I told her she should, and when she didn't, I decided to reach out on her behalf to her mother." Darren looked at his father, awaiting his reaction, but it was unreadable. "She found out yesterday, and she was so mad." He rubbed his forehead and sighed. "Today, she wasn't at school, and we haven't talked since the fight."

"She might have had a reason not to go to school," his father suggested.

"To avoid me, probably."

"Don't make assumptions too fast." His father shook his head and leaned into the camera. "Maybe she was ill, or something happened. Don't worry yet."

"I tried texting her," Darren said. "She didn't reply."

"Again, she might have a reason." Ryan folded his arms and put them on his desk, leaning on them. "She might think it's better to talk whatever you guys have out in person."

Darren cast his head down. He had to admit, it was a plausible reason. His father made it sound like there was nothing to worry about at all.

"Just wait until the next time you see her," he continued. "You can talk it over, and everything will be all right. I'm sure you two can figure it out."

"And what should I do before I see her again?"

"You can still try to text her, but respect her decision if she decides not to reply. Believe me, all will be good between you again by next week."

The corners of Darren's mouth turned up. "Thanks, dad."

"And remember," Ryan said, a smile appearing, "my philosophy is if you worry..."

"...you suffer twice," Darren finished. "And that's not your philosophy, J.K. Rowling wrote that."

Ryan shrugged it off. "It can still be my philosophy, too." He laughed.

☆

When Darren walked into the kitchen on Monday morning, a smell of pancakes infiltrated his nostrils. He breathed in, and for a second, he believed today might actually be a good day.

"Good morning," Aimee said, stretching the "oo" in "good". She stood behind the stove and just put another pancake on a plate.

"You're making pancakes?" Darren asked with a hint of faux jealousy in his voice as he got a plate out of a cabinet for his own breakfast.

Aimee nodded, and her dark coily hair bounced. "You want some too?" She pointed at Darren with her spatula, and as she did that, Darren saw the similarities between her and Adelaide.

"Yes please." Darren slid his plate across the counter so it halted next to Aimee's plate.

"Take this one, I'll make a new batch." Aimee held up her plate to him, and just as he was about to protest, she explained she had to bake his pancakes anyway and didn't want her own to get cold. "Hot ones are the best. You can start eating yours already, there's some syrup in the cabinet on your left."

Darren grabbed the syrup and sat down at the dining table in a seat from which he could still see Aimee.

"So, how're you on this new day?" Aimee asked with cheer evident in her voice.

Darren took a bite to give him some time to think over his answer. Today was a day he'd started to dread more with every passing minute of the weekend, and the dread had now reached its peak. "I don't know," he said eventually. He'd definitely see Dakota today, and he didn't know what to think or expect.

Aimee laughed. "You don't know how you're doin'?"

That got a chuckle out of Darren too. "No, I don't."

She put some pancake batter into a pan and turned around to Darren, leaning on the counter by her hands. "Tell me."

Darren stared at his plate. Damp air originating from the pancakes reached his eyes. "I got into a fight with Dakota." It had been all he'd thought about, and even drawing wouldn't help distract him from reality. Instead, he'd drawn Dakota in her Cinderella costume – a Halloween costume so fancy it might as well have been her prom outfit.

"How bad was it?"

"She told me not to talk to her again."

Aimee made a face. "Ouch, that's bad."

"I know." Darren took a bite of his pancake. It felt like comfort food in this context. His father's words had managed to comfort him Friday evening, but the effect had quickly worn off when Darren had written another dozen texts to Dakota she'd read but hadn't answered. Now, pancakes were supposed to make him feel better.

"When did it happen?" Aimee asked. Her voice was laced with sympathy, and it was only then that Darren remembered Aimee knew Dakota personally. He hadn't wanted to put her in the middle of this, but it seemed too late for that now.

"On that Halloween party." If it was as iconic as Dakota and Liam had claimed it was, Aimee would know what he was talking about.

"Right, on Thursday."

Darren sighed. "I just don't know what to do about it..." He looked up at Aimee. "I mean, what do I do when I see her today? Should I talk to her or not?"

Aimee frowned. "Didn't you see her on Friday already?"

"She wasn't at school on Friday."

Aimee nodded with a smirk. "Right, many people weren't. All of them sick." She faked a cough. "Hangover." Another fake-cough.

Darren didn't smile, thinking back to the last time he'd thought Dakota was skipping class. It had turned out she was picking up extra shifts, something he'd seen her do many more times since. That might also be what she'd done last Friday.

"What happened between you two?" Aimee asked. She tilted her head to the side. That Darren hadn't responded at all to her joke concerned her.

There was that question again, Darren thought. How much could he tell Aimee? He'd told Liam the truth, just like he had to his father, but if he'd learned anything from Thursday night, it was that Dakota didn't want anyone to know who she was. Darren's father wouldn't be able to tell anyone, and Liam had promised not to tell anyone, but the situation was different with Aimee. Aimee knew Dakota, so if she didn't know already that Dakota was an orphan, she'd ask Dakota about it. Dakota would know Darren had told Aimee, which only made the situation worse.

He settled on, "I did something she asked me not to do."

"Was it a big thing?"

Writing to Dakota's mother she had never met and had explicitly told him she didn't want to meet? "Yes."

Aimee's mouth formed in inaudible 'o'. "Then you really fucked up."

Darren sighed. "Thanks." His heart felt heavy in his chest when he heard Aimee's words.

"I mean, her boyfriend Bennett has fucked up a couple of times, but she never told him to never talk to 'er again."

He looked at his pancakes, but had lost his appetite. "This isn't helping."

"Oh, you were asking for my help." Aimee smirked. "You coulda just told me so." They exchanged glances, his desperate and hers joking. "Alright then." She took a dining table seat, pulled it towards her, and sat down.

"I have English today, third period," Darren said. "It's the one class we share, and we always sit next to each other. But today? I don't know if she'll sit next to me."

"Only one way to find out," his host sister said.

"Aimee..." He put his fork down and sent begging looks her way. "I've been nervous all weekend. I can't just wait and see what happens. I want to do something so we will sit next to each other during English again."

"Well, did you text her since Thursday?"

"Every day." He pulled his phone out and showed her his text messages to Dakota, each one unanswered.

Aimee seemed impressed as she scrolled through the texts. "That's a good start."

He raised one eyebrow. "Really?" To him, the fact they went unanswered seemed like bad news.

"Yes. Did you see she's read every one of these texts?" She turned the screen towards Darren, but he didn't see anything he hadn't already seen before. The blue check marks only made him feel worse. "She don't hate you. If she did, she'd have blocked you."

"Why doesn't she reply, then?"

Aimee spoke in a simple tone that said it should make sense already. "She wants to make a point. You didn't listen to her, for whatever reason – and you must have had a good one – so she's making clear what she wants."

"She wanted to never talk to me again."

"That was her being dramatic. She just wants you to know she doesn't appreciate it if you cross her."

That did help, Darren had to admit. He started to feel slightly better about today. "So, when will she talk to me again?"

Aimee shrugged. "When she's done making her point."

With his facial expression, he asked her when that would be.

"I don't know. It's a mystery."

Of course it was. Dakota loved being mysterious.

"What should I do now, then?" he asked.

"Keep texting her and reaching out to her. Ask her how she's doing, tell her you're sorry and explain your side of things. Let her know you want her forgiveness, and she'll give it to you eventually."

Darren jabbed at his pancake. "How do you know it will work?"

In a tone with which you would say puh-lease, Aimee said, "I'm a girl." Like that should explain everything.

Am I the only one who loves Aimee? I can't be the only one, right?