The Chance You Won't Return (21 page)

“Maybe Mom’s already taken the funnel,” I said. “She could have decided to mix it up and be someone else for Halloween.”

Katy almost smiled. “The Tin Man wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Unless she tried to drag the rest of us on some road trip to Oz,” I said.

That was how the It Could Be Worse game started. We sat on Katy’s bed, tossing ideas back and forth about what would suck more than our current family situation: Mom could have decided to be Hitler; Mom could have had leprosy; Mom could have been a cannibal; Mom could have decided to be Joan Crawford; Mom could have grown a second head; Mom could have thought she was a beluga whale. By the time we got to the whale, we were bent over laughing.

Teddy banged on the door. “What’s so funny?”

Katy brushed the tears out of her eyes and tried to swallow her laughter. “Costume ideas,” she said.

Trick-or-treaters started coming before dinner, when the sun was still out. The first time the doorbell rang, Mom went to answer it, but Dad stopped her, claiming they were reporters and he would handle the situation. Teddy kept getting up from the table and trailing behind Dad to hand out candy. Teddy’s face got increasingly more worried every time it happened.

“We need to go now,” Teddy said. He was still in his astronaut costume, which was looking a little dented around the rocket pack. “There won’t be any candy left by the time we go.
Everybody’
s already out.”

“Of course there’ll be candy,” Dad said. “You’ll get so much, it’ll end up in the refrigerator until Easter.”

Dad had to take Katy over to Amy’s house, so I was in charge at home. In the living room, Mom was curled up on the couch with Jackson, trying to write a letter to her imaginary sister Grace Muriel Earhart, aka Pidge. She was on a new medication, and so far all it did was put her in a haze. Beside her, Jackson gnawed at a tennis ball. Teddy waited at the door as Dad’s car pulled out of the driveway, slowly because of the young trick-or-treaters on the street.

“We could go now,” Teddy said. “You take me, Alex. You don’t even have to dress up.”

“Sorry, Buzz Lightyear,” I said. “I’m on Mom watch. Dad’ll be back in, like, half an hour, tops.” I glanced into the living room. “You okay in there?”

Mom waved a hand at me. “Perfectly fine.” She sighed.

When I offered to play soccer or a computer game with Teddy instead, he refused. “Let’s just go,” he insisted. “Mom can come with us. We can all go.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “No way. Stop being a brat, already. Go play space invader until Dad gets home.”

He started stomping on the tiles of the kitchen floor and yelling, “Now, now, now, now!”

“Teddy, stop it.” I grasped him by the shoulders, and he struggled to pull away from me. In the other room, I could see Mom stir. “If you calm down, I’ll let you play the games on my cell phone.”

He quieted and sniffled. I never let him use my cell. “Maybe.”

Of course my phone was somewhere in the mess that was my side of my bedroom. I left Teddy in the kitchen, instructing him to hand out candy if any trick-or-treaters came to the door while I searched for the cell.

It wasn’t in my backpack, or in the pockets of the jacket I’d worn that day. I checked under the bed, where I’d stashed the Amelia Earhart book I’d stolen from the library. I’d replaced some of the pages I’d torn out, taping them back in their correct places. It looked like I’d dropped it off the roof a few times, but at least now it was whole again. This one was written by Amelia Earhart, too —
in her own words,
the cover said. I flipped it open to a random passage.

We were like that, telling Mom she was wrong while she insisted she was right.

I put the book back and shifted through papers on my desk. My cell was hidden under a stack of calc homework I’d set aside. I saw that Josh had texted me to ask if I wanted a ride to Maddie’s that night. I figured I’d reply after Teddy was done playing.

The doorbell rang again, and I darted downstairs in case Mom decided to answer the door and confront the “reporters” herself. When Teddy didn’t fling himself at the door with me, I was a little surprised. Behind the door were a couple of princesses and one ninja. I handed out the candy, complimenting their costumes, and watched as they ran down the driveway.

I glanced into the living room — no Mom, no Teddy. On the kitchen table, the maps had been left out, partially folded. Suddenly the house felt cavernous. My voice could have echoed when I called for them. “Mom . . . Amelia? Teddy! Come on, you can download a new game. And we’ll raid the candy bowl.”

No one answered. I dashed upstairs, checking Mom’s and Teddy’s rooms. Empty. No one in the bathrooms.

I even checked the basement, dark and full of random stuff we’d forgotten about. No one.

My heart started to race. Where would my mother have gone with Teddy in tow? She usually thought of him as Pidge’s son, her nephew, David, so it wouldn’t have seemed unusual to her to take him someplace. Immediately I thought of her car and ran outside, sure that it would be missing from the driveway, but it was still there. Since Dad and Katy had left, it had gotten dark out and the streetlights were just coming on. In the street, parents followed groups of children dressed as superheroes and black cats.

Dammit, Teddy,
I thought.
I am going to kill you.

Either way I looked, there were tiny witches or cowboys or
Sesame Street
characters. No astronauts. No moms dressed as Amelia Earhart.

If Dad came home and found out that Mom had left with Teddy, he’d flip out. And what could I tell him? That I had been upstairs, reading about Amelia Earhart and ignoring Mom downstairs? Dad would give me that look — his eyes squinty and his jaw tightening up underneath his beard — and say something like, “All I asked you to do was look after things for a few minutes.” Plus, I wasn’t sure what Mom would do. It’s not like she would hurt Teddy, but she might not think about him. She could get distracted and leave him somewhere, or not notice if he got hit by a car. And even if Teddy was fine, people would see her and come up to her and say hello, as if she were the same woman they’d seen in the grocery store or at youth soccer games when I was a kid. They’d stare at her when she talked about how she was so tired these days, after the lecture circuit she’d been on and that Pacific flight. They’d talk about it with their spouses and children at home that night. Or worse, she could try to take herself somewhere — the airport, Hawaii, wherever. She could disappear forever.

I ran.

Considering they were on foot and probably not rushing anywhere, I thought I’d find them right away. But our neighborhood connected with others in a small maze, so there were dozens of directions in which they could have headed. Plus, there were dozens of parents with kids on the street that night; even with Teddy’s astronaut costume, it would be hard to spot them.

I rushed down the street and back, eyeing every house to see if Teddy was ringing any doorbells. Nothing. No astronauts or aviatrixes anywhere.

Waves of anxiety washed over me. My head felt cloudy, as if it weren’t part of my body anymore — like it was floating thousands of feet above the ground. I felt like my body was going to fall apart, piece by piece, until I was a jumble of limbs in the street.

Someone else needed to be there, to help me stay in one piece. Someone who knew about pieces.

I ran all the way to Jim’s house. By the time I got there, I was out of breath and shaking. His mom answered the door, a bowl of candy in her arms. Her smile didn’t fade, but her eyes were shaded with confusion when she saw me.

“Can I help you?” she said.

“Is Jim home?”

She turned her head to shout for her son, but he was already in the hallway. “Alex?” He stuck his head past his mom, out the door frame. “Were we supposed to drive tonight? I thought —”

“No, you’re right,” I said. “We didn’t have plans —”

“You want to come — ?”

“No, not now.” I was so on edge. I probably looked like a freak in front of his mom, who was still at the door like a nice, normal mom, holding the candy and glancing at Jim to gauge his reaction. “Can you give me a ride?”

I calmed down enough to get out a few details — that my brother and mother left and I needed to find them, that Teddy was dressed as an astronaut and my mom was in baggy khakis with the ankles pegged and a long linen scarf wrapped around her neck. We took Jim’s mom’s car, a minivan, and drove off, stalking the streets and not going very fast because of all the trick-or-treaters.

“Oh, my God, it’s like preschool rush hour out here,” I said, straining against the seat belt to see out the window.

Jim turned onto another street. “So are they, like, trick-or-treating? Your mom and little brother?”

I didn’t look at him. “No, Teddy was supposed to go with my dad later, after he got home. But I guess Teddy just couldn’t wait.”

“But if he’s with your mom, isn’t that okay?”

“My mom’s not really feeling well.”

“So maybe we should call your dad or something.”

“No,” I snapped. “We just need to find them, all right? That’s why I got you. So let’s just find them.”

Jim tightened his grip on the wheel and didn’t ask any more questions. Even though he’d told me about crashing the car and having epilepsy, I didn’t know what to tell him about my mom, or even where to start. With that day at school — with the reason Mom’s car was in the parking lot and why Jim first taught me how to drive? With the missing wedding picture? With the baby who died? And here I was, acting crazed myself. If I could just keep all the pieces of my life in place, not crashing into one another, I thought things might be all right.

The sight of a milk-carton rocket pack on someone’s front porch caught my eye. “Stop, stop,” I told Jim.

The minivan’s wheels screeched. I was out the door before we came to a full stop and rushed toward Mom and Teddy, who were thanking a bemused man for his candy. When my brother saw me, his smile vanished. He clutched his jack-o’-lantern bucket — half full of candy now — and tried to hide behind Mom.

“Why, hello there!” Mom greeted me, her eyes clouded. “Were we meeting you here?”

Behind her, Teddy squeaked, “It’s not me.”

“What the hell were you thinking?” I hissed, almost swearing worse but remembering at the last second that there were families around. Once I saw that Teddy was fine, all relief vanished, and I was furious now. Reaching behind Mom, I gripped Teddy’s arm and started pulling him toward the van. “Dad is going to be so mad at you, taking off like that. What the hell, Teddy? You could have gotten hurt.”

“What seems to be the problem?” Mom said, following us.

“We’re going home.”

Teddy struggled against my grip. “It’s not me. Blast off!”

On the sidewalk, a group of vampires and their pirate dad watched us. So did Jim, still in the driver’s seat. I wanted to disappear.

“I’m an astronaut,” Teddy said. “Astronauts can go anywhere. Teddy didn’t do anything. I’m going to Jupiter.”

I grabbed his shoulders. “Stop it. Just stop it, all right?” Teddy’s face was red and he started to sniffle; I was surprised to feel my own throat tighten. “It was really selfish of you to use Mom like that. Like she’d know that you’re not supposed to go trick-or-treating until Dad got home. You took her out here, where people could see her or where she could wander off. You’re such a brat, Teddy, I swear.”

He grabbed for my hand. I almost couldn’t hear him when he said, “Amelia Earhart would. . . . She’d like astronauts.”

I took a breath and gripped his hand back. “We all like astronauts. But astronauts have to be safe, too, or they get in big trouble. You just can’t do stuff like this, Teddy.”

The minivan’s sliding door opened; Jim had gotten out of the car and joined us on the lawn. “Everybody in?” he asked.

It would have been great to have superpowers at that moment — to become invisible, to teleport my family back home. But as it was, I either had to walk Teddy and Mom home, and risk running into more people, or get a ride from Jim.

Mom and Teddy climbed in the backseat.

Silently, I pleaded with Mom:
Don’t talk. Don’t say anything about flying or meeting the president or the Ninety-Nines.
Just let us get home with minimal damage.

Jim slid into the driver’s seat again and started the car. Pulling away from the curb, he waved to the backseat. “I’m Jim,” he said.

Teddy wiped his nose with his sleeve. “You drove through your house.”

“
Into
his house,” I said. “Not
through.
”

“That’s terrible,” Mom said, her words a little slurred. “But you know, sometimes you have to crash before you can fully learn something. Part of the training, really. Are you taking lessons?”

Jim glanced at me. “I’m actually the one helping Alex learn how to drive.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d need lessons by now,” Mom said to me.

“No, no, I still kind of suck,” I said, then glanced at Jim. “Well, not as much. I don’t crash into things as much anymore.” Mom opened her mouth again, but I cut her off, talking about how Jim and I went out a couple of nights a week, which had made a huge difference in my skills. And not only that, he didn’t get upset with me like Mr. Kane used to. I kept talking, bringing up anything — how I’d taken a left-hand turn the other day, how I’d remembered to use my blinker, how I turned on the headlights when it got dark out. As long as I was speaking, Mom couldn’t. Or at the very least, Jim wouldn’t be able to hear her if she got bored with what I was saying and started talking to herself. Jim didn’t try to interrupt, either, just focused on the road as he guided the van back to my house.

By the time I got Mom and Teddy inside, I felt exhausted, like all my veins had been sapped dry. I’d texted Theresa to let her know that I couldn’t make it to Maddie’s and didn’t look when I heard the ping of her response.