Dear diary, Dad made a compromise.

I wasn’t surprised to see Mum actively ignoring me this morning. No happy birthday, no second glance, nothing. Danny offered me a smile whenever they saw me looking, but otherwise their eyes were downcast. Apparently they didn’t get grounded too, though they came close. Mum was more hurt than anything about realising how bad things were between her and Danny. She’s been trying to fix it, but Danny’s not interested. Danny doesn’t think Mum’s attempts are genuine yet and is pretty annoyed that she couldn’t figure it out for herself.

“Are you sure you want to keep this up?” I asked Danny after Mum left the room.

“I wish I could just accept that everything is fine, but the second that I do, I know that the Mum we know all too well will come back,” they pointed out. “Is it so bad that I want to drag this out for as long as I can?”

“I’m sure if you just talked to her, then she’d understand.”

Danny scoffed. “Like you did? You told her the truth and you got grounded. Why would this be any different? I’m not going to put on some fake face in front of her and act like everything is fine. She’s never even tried to accept change. At least now she’s forced to admit that she’s done something wrong. I wonder how long it’ll take her to figure out what.”

Dad walked in and slowly sat down. “I think it’s time for us three to have a little talk,” he said.

“I’m not apologising to her,” Danny said, crossing their arms.

“That’s fine, but it’s about time that you two stop treating your own mother like she can do nothing right. She happens to care about all of us more than anything else. I know that sometimes that can be hard to believe.”

“Just a little,” Danny muttered.

“But it’s the truth,” Dad continued. “I’ve spoken with her about the terms of Emma’s grounding and we’ve agreed that Penelope will still be allowed to come here, though I’ll have to be present throughout the entirety of the tutoring each time. Your mother and I do see how much she helps the two of you on both an academic level and with your school issues. That’s not to say that we can’t help you with those things too, if you just came to us about them.” Dad looked directly at me. “But I- we get that sometimes talking to your parents about these things is harder than a friend.”

“How’d you convince Mum?” I asked.

He sighed. “I’ve agreed with her that Emma will be grounded for at least a month. That means no time on electronics that doesn’t directly contribute to schoolwork, no recreational reading and,” he paused, “no joining any school clubs.”

“But I just handed in my form!”

“You can do dance club next year,” he said.

I looked to Danny. They shrugged.

“He never said anything about no dancing,” they whispered. “Guess we’ll have to ask Penelope if she has any textbooks on that.”

I couldn’t help the smile, even if it quickly fell. It’s always next year. Or the next school. I know I shouldn’t have yelled at Mum, but I’ve never been allowed to join a club. First it was because of my asthma, and now this. It’s like they keep finding reasons to stop me from being normal.