The Chance You Won't Return (19 page)

“Did you just fail a prep test or something?” Theresa asked.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, trying to laugh but it came out more choked. “No, I mean, I didn’t fail, but my parents thought I’d do better. So they’re all on me to practice and are signing me up for classes and whatever.”

“That sucks,” she said. “Let me know if you want to go over stuff. Sometimes Josh and I practice during study hall. We can all be miserable together.” She glanced at the car. “Hey, can I get a ride home? I walked here — my parents are happy for me to take the classes until it means they have to drive me to the test center. Awesome, huh?”

“We can’t.” My breathing was sharp and shallow. “Sorry. Dad’s got to get back to work.”

“I don’t mind if you drop him off first.”

“My mom probably wants to yell at me some more. It’s not a great time.”

Theresa didn’t seem entirely convinced but she said, “All right. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Sorry again.” Without saying good-bye, I raced to the car before Theresa could get a good look at my mom, who was sulking in the backseat. When I swung myself inside the car, I said, “Drive. Just drive.”

“You all ri — ?” Dad started to say.

“Fine, just go.”

We pulled away from the curb. I glanced at Mom in the visor mirror. She looked so pissed, I thought she might be herself again. I almost expected her to start lecturing me about how I should be preparing for the SATs like Theresa, but she snapped at Dad instead. “Why do you keep setting me up with these useless interviews? It’s a waste of everyone’s time.”

“Dr. McGlynn —”

“I don’t need a doctor.” Mom folded her arms over her chest. “George, I swear I don’t know what you’re after here.”

Dad braked at a stop sign and stayed there. “You’re tired and upset. She’s trying to help you feel better. Don’t you want that?”

Mom didn’t respond for a second. Another car drove up behind us and we had to pull forward, so I’m not sure Dad heard Mom say, “I’m fine. I’m fine, I am. I just have so much to do.” She stroked her arms as if she were cold.

“This is what you have to do: get better,” I insisted. “You don’t have any other plans.”

I was sure Mom’s face would tense, but I knew she wouldn’t listen anyway. In a minute, she’d be telling us about her first time in an airplane. It would be like she hadn’t heard me at all.

That night, Mom was back in the kitchen, making charts or fiddling with broken appliances or something. Around midnight I got out of bed and walked to the top of the stairs, where I stopped and listened to her as she worked on something Amelia-related. Instead of going downstairs to join her, I sat on the top stair and listened. At the top of the stairs I inhaled deeply, trying not to cry. If I only kind of listened to Mom downstairs, she could have been Mom again, muttering her frustration about the electric bill instead of weather patterns. I missed her so much that it felt like a real burning in my chest. It felt like smoke and ash filling my lungs, making it impossible to breathe. When I went back to bed a little while later, I had fitful dreams about burning and drowning at once.

Halloween was less than a week away. At lunch, Theresa and Josh and Maddie talked about what we were going to do. Josh was holding out for a horror-movie marathon and was slowly wearing Maddie down. Originally she’d claimed there was no way she’d watch some brainless movie about hot teens getting hacked up, but Josh promised to find something worthwhile. Soon she was making conditions about how much gore there could be, and I knew she’d cave.

“How about something old?” Josh suggested. “Like
Psycho
?”

Maddie cringed and dipped a fry in a pool of ketchup. “Thanks, but I’d like to shower sometime next week.”

Josh nudged me. “Any ideas?”

I shook my head. “Not my genre.” Earlier, I’d tried to avoid my friends’ table. Theresa was being kind of weird around me ever since I’d brushed her off at Dr. McGlynn’s office, and I still wasn’t thrilled with her since driver’s ed. Plus, I’d been hoping to catch Jim alone. At first I’d glanced around for him, but Maddie came up to me and practically dragged me to their table.

“You’re not going to ditch us for Jim Wiley, are you?” Theresa asked.

Suddenly everyone was looking at me. “What does Jim have to do with anything?” I asked, tearing a napkin into little pieces.

Theresa rolled her eyes. “Hello, it’s like a miracle you’re having lunch with us today. You’re always hanging out with him now. I mean, that’s fine, but just don’t be all distant now and disappear on us on Halloween, too.”

I thought of that word,
disappear.
If the most famous female pilot in the world could go missing over the Pacific, could I go missing in the middle of school, with my friends around? And if I could, who would send out the search planes?

“Jim and I are not even a thing,” I said sharply. “I just don’t have any opinions on horror movies. Pick out what you want and I’ll be there.”

Theresa and Josh exchanged a skeptical glance. Maddie half smiled at me. “You and I can hide during the scary parts.”

At the end of classes, I went to the library. By then, I’d gone over the torn pages so many times, I’d almost memorized them. Mom kept talking about her plans for her next flight, but which one was that? I was afraid it was the final one, the around-the-world one. If I was going to figure out what was going on with Mom, I’d need the complete history. And this was the most discrete way to find it.

By that time, there weren’t too many students in the library, just a few kids doing homework or on Facebook while they waited for rides home. I walked straight back to the biography section and pulled the Earhart books off the shelf.

Just check them out like a normal person,
I told myself.
You should have done that to begin with.

But checking the books out would make it all real. It would be like getting a book about mental illnesses or bookmarking a site about delusional disorders, which maybe Dad was already doing. I wanted to keep everything hidden in some small way. Plus, if I tried to check them out now, the librarian would notice that someone had torn out pages. She’d probably apologize and say she’d order another copy, and then I’d have to argue with her that it didn’t matter to me, that I wanted them anyway. And then maybe she’d be suspicious of me.

“Hey,” a voice said through the stacks. Jim strode around the shelves, hands shoved in his pockets.

Shit. I clutched the biographies to my chest. “Hey, what are you doing here?”

“I get tutored in chemistry, remember? Just waiting for Mrs. Frasier to get here. She had to give a makeup test or something.” He nodded to my arms — more precisely, to the books. “What about you?”

“Not much,” I said. “Just, you know, history project.”

He tilted his head, trying to read the spines. “Earhart? Isn’t she one of your favorites?”

I forced laugh. “Right, I mean, I have this paper about her and she’s kind of interesting. I don’t know if she’s a favorite, exactly.” I wished he’d forgotten about that. What had I been thinking, bringing her up in the first place? Now if he ever found out about my mom, he’d think that I was some nutcase, too. And what if that was the truth? That it was just waiting somewhere in the crevices of my brain?

But I still wanted the books.

“Well, I need to go,” I said. “Gotta pick up my little brother. Driving tomorrow night?”

“Sure,” Jim said. “And if you’re not busy this weekend, there’s this haunted hayride thing people are going to. It sounds cheesy, but a bunch of us went last year and it ended up being kind of fun.”

I imagined trying to make conversation with Jim’s friends, none of whom knew me that well. They’d have to ask about driver’s ed, and maybe they’d heard about my mom showing up at school. “Scary stuff isn’t really my thing.”

“Trust me, it’s not that scary,” he said. “Last year we spent pretty much the whole time laughing.”

“What if we did something else instead? Just us?” I suggested. I didn’t want to blow Jim off entirely, but I couldn’t handle being around a lot of other people.

“We could do both,” he said. “The hayride thing one night and just us another? It’s not that scary, I promise, and my friends won’t be dicks about it.”

“No, I’m sure,” I said, “but I’d rather do just us.” I suddenly realized I was pushing Jim into a real date, and why couldn’t I act normal for five seconds? Maybe he wasn’t into that just yet and I’d inadvertently ruined whatever we had going.

But he studied me for a second, then nodded. “Just us works, too. We could see a movie, or there’s the bowling place —”

“Let’s do bowling. Fair warning — I used to dominate the bowling birthday party games.”

“I’ll make sure to bring my A-game. Or, you know, at least my B-game,” he said. At the library door, Mrs. Frasier appeared with chemistry book in hand. “That’s my cue. Enjoy Earhart.”

I nodded. “Yeah, thanks.” I made a mental note to keep the Amelia references to myself from then on — especially when we went out this weekend. Even though I accidentally made it happen, I felt a sudden rush of excitement for my first non-driving-related date with Jim. “Good luck with the chemistry and all.”

When he went back to his table to meet Mrs. Frasier, I stuffed the books in my bag. I took a breath and strode to the door, hoping Jim wasn’t watching me, because if he was, he would have seen me leave without checking anything out.

How did she know it all? After going through the books, I would try to get Mom to slip up. I’d ask her about specifics from Amelia Earhart’s life — the name of the town where she was born, how long she’d been at Columbia and what classes she took. Maybe if I found something she didn’t know about, I would get a glimpse of Mom again without her Amelia mask. But Mom always knew the answers. And she was always so happy to tell me.

“Women need practical clothing,” she insisted. She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed, half her wardrobe spread across the room and a large sketchbook in her lap. At first I thought she was actively trying to give me more laundry to do (it was piling up in the basement), but she looked so proud of herself. “It’ll be a whole fashion line — my designs and my name.”

I almost laughed. She had to be making this up. “So like, what, goggles and bomber jackets?”

“Dresses, blouses, hats. Clothing any woman could wear.” She passed me her sketchbook. I flipped through pages of poorly drawn models in boxy outfits.

I handed the notebook back. “Who’s going to sell it?”

“Macy’s in New York and Marshall Field’s in Chicago. We’re hoping to have the line in stores within the next year.”

“Which would be . . .”

“Oh, 1934 or so.”

I wondered how the span of her life matched the span of Amelia’s life. Was a day for Mom the same as a day for Amelia Earhart? Did it matter if today was a Thursday or a day in October? Or could Mom decide she wanted to live a certain part of Amelia’s life and it became real, even if it didn’t match up with Amelia’s real timeline?

“You must be busy,” I said.

She nodded and began scribbling in her sketchbook. “Which is why I can’t waste a moment.” I returned a skirt to her closet when she wasn’t looking; I’d have to do the rest when she moved on to another activity.

It was like she’d been studying for a test and felt so pleased at knowing all the answers. I almost didn’t want to stumble across an answer she didn’t know.

If I had my license, I would have told Jim I’d meet him at the bowling alley. As it was, he had to pick me up at home, which meant I kept vigil by the living-room window and waited to see his car turn onto our street.

“So is this like a date?” Katy asked, perching on the arm of a nearby chair.

“Kind of,” I said.

“When you go driving, is that a date?”

“No, that’s just driving.”

“So is Jim your boyfriend or your driving instructor?”

I frowned at her. “Don’t you have homework to do or Jackson to walk?”

Katy opened her mouth to ask what was sure to be another obnoxious question when something crashed in the next room. “Everything under control!” Mom called, but I rushed into the kitchen anyway.

She was on her knees, half in one of the cabinets, pushing aside pots and pans. “Trying to find the right equipment,” she said.

“Well, it’s not in there,” I told her. “Just, please, don’t make so much noise at least. Jim’ll be here any minute and —”

Dad rushed downstairs. “Alex, I got it,” he said, bending down to where Mom was still rifling through the cabinet. “These are all pans, cooking equipment.”

“Gip, I think I know what I’m doing,” she snapped.

“Alex!” Katy called from the living room. “He’s here.”

Shit. “I’ll be back later,” I shouted to Dad as I ran for the front door. He tried to ask if I had money, but Mom was still trying to argue with him and I didn’t stay to hear what else he had to say.

I met Jim halfway to the driveway, slightly out of breath. “Hey,” I said, passing him on the way to his car. “Let’s go.”

He stopped and turned sharply to me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m great. Just really excited about bowling.”

“You sure?” He glanced back at the house.

“Yes, let’s just go.”

He took a couple steps forward, then stopped. “Are your parents not okay with us going out or something?”

“No,” I said, a little louder than I meant to. “They’re fine. Seriously. It’s nothing, I promise.”

He didn’t seem convinced, but he didn’t argue anymore. In the car, Arcade Fire filled in the space that would have otherwise been an awkward silence. I cursed myself for not handling things better and potentially ruining our maybe-first-date before it started.

“You look really nice,” Jim said suddenly.

“Thanks,” I said. I’d changed a few times before settling on skinny jeans and a cute top, which Katy assured me looked cute but would still let me bowl well. Jim was wearing a plaid shirt that made his eyes glow even bluer than usual. “So do you.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I figure my excellent fashion skills might distract you from bowling and maybe give me a chance to win.”