Misty by V.C. Andrews

with Charles Allen to hishome, I brought him home with me after school so he could meet my mother and she could meet him. I had spoken about him a few times at dinner, and that was enough for her to start calling him my boyfriend.
    â€œ ‘I should meet your boyfriend,’ she insisted, putting on that official mother’s face she hated because it made her look older. ‘I should know what he’s like since you’re spending so much time with him and have even gone to his house and met his mother.’
    â€œShe whined the last part, sounding hurt that I had met his mother before he had met mine. Ever since the divorce, it was like my mother was on an Easter egg hunt for possible ways to make me feel guilty.
    â€œ ‘First, he’s not my boyfriend, Mother,’ I told her. ‘Second, I’m not spending all that much time with him. And, third, you never asked to meet any of my other friends and I’ve been to lots of their houses and met their parents, too.’
    â€œ ‘That was different,’ she replied. My mother always nods after she says something she wants you to agree with. It’s like she’s coaching your thoughts.
    â€œ ‘Why?’ I wanted to know. Of course she was disappointed I would question her. The corners of her mouth dropped.
    â€œ ‘Because your father was still living here. For God’s sake, Misty, surely you’re old enough to realize that all the responsibility is mine now,’ she moaned with a sigh to suggest the great weight that had been dumped on her fragile but perfect little shoulders.
    â€œOf course, I knew she was being overly dramatic just because she wanted to see what sort of boy I was with.Nevertheless, I brought Charles Allen home and introduced him to her.”
    I turned to the girls.
    â€œI should tell you that my mother is in the running for the title, World’s Biggest Flirt. As soon as she saw that Charles Allen wasn’t the son of Frankenstein, she went into her Scarlett O’Hara act. I nearly puked up lunch.
    â€œRight off, however, she made a gross mistake. She started calling him Charlie. He grimaced in pain every time she did it, but he was too polite to say anything to her.
    â€œSince I had told her Charles Allen’s family was very wealthy, she just had to give him the grand tour of our home, pointing out the expensive paintings, our Baldwin piano, her Lalique collection, even furniture and rugs that she called imported and very pricey. I know she thought she was impressing him, but one look at his face would tell you he couldn’t have been more bored.
    â€œThen she embarrassed me to the point of tears.
    â€œ ‘It’s so hard being the mother of a teenage girl when you, yourself, keep being mistaken for her older sister,’ she said with great flair, fluffing her hair and turning her shoulders. ‘I keep up with all the music and read many of the same magazines Misty reads. We like the same shows on television, too, don’t we, Misty?’
    â€œ ‘I don’t watch all that much television,’ I muttered and she giggled like a silly teenager.
    â€œ ‘Of course she does, Charlie.’
    â€œ ‘His name is Charles Allen, Mother, not Charlie,’ I corrected.
    â€œ ‘Oh, fiddlesticks,’ she cried, threading her armthrough his to lead him out to our patio. She was practically leaning on him. ‘That’s what his parents call him,’ she lectured. ‘You don’t like to be addressed so formally, do you, Charlie?’
    â€œ ‘Actually,’ Charles Allen said, ‘I’m used to it, Mrs. Foster.’
    â€œ ‘Oh pleeeeze,’ she cried, grimacing as if she had just seen a dead rat, ‘don’t call me Mrs. Foster. That makes me sound so old. Call me Gloria. All of Misty’s friends do,’ she added, which was another lie in bright neon lights.
    â€œHe glanced back to me for help and I