The Chance You Won't Return (28 page)

Jess sat next to me on one of the old couches. She was small and used to have long hair, but had recently cropped it. When we were on the soccer team together, she had been pretty cool — really focused on the field, and sometimes made playlists to pump us up before games.

“You were so right to not try out this season,” she told me. “The new coach, Ms. Bryan, knows
nothing
about soccer. Plus, a bunch of girls got hurt, so we lost basically every game. Suckiest season ever.”

I’d heard about that. But I also remembered running down the field on a clear, crisp day, being part of a group united in this single, simple purpose, and I missed it.

“And it was so annoying that it was our last year. Great way to go out, right?” She cocked her head. “But you’re a junior, right? You should try next year.”

Will passed Jess a cup. She took a sip and wrinkled her nose. “This much vodka is seriously going to soak into me. You are going to be able to light my hair on fire.”

Jim held the bottle of vodka and looked up at me.

“A little,” I said. “Not hair-fire amounts.”

He handed me a cup, and he started to fill his with Diet Coke and vodka as well. Remembering his epilepsy medication, my stomach dropped a little. “Is that okay?” I asked.

He stopped mid pour. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“But what about — ?”

“Seriously, it’s cool.”

Will slid onto the couch beside Jess. “Of course it’s cool, dude. You don’t even have to drive home this time.” He laughed, and Jim avoided making eye contact with me.

After setting up speakers on Jim’s iPod, Everett suggested Never Have I Ever. I was kind of relieved — it meant I wouldn’t have to make small talk with Jim’s friends. Jim and Will pulled over a couple more chairs to form a kind of circle.

Cameron started. She was really skinny; I wondered how long she’d last in the game before getting absolutely wasted. “Never have I ever . . . smoked up in the guys’ locker room.” Her eyes rested on Will.

He took a sip. “Oh, fine, that’s how you want to play? Never have —”

Jess whacked him. “Not your turn. Never have I ever . . . hooked up on school property.”

Jim and I glanced at each other and sipped. At first I wasn’t sure if anyone had noticed, but Everett laughed. “What’d you do, sneak out during gym class?”

“Behind the library,” Jim said.

“Classy.”

Giggling, Jess nudged me, like I was part of their group. Now it was my turn. I didn’t know anybody well enough to call them out on anything, so I kept things general. “Never have I ever . . . stolen anything.”

Everyone except Cameron drank, including me. Everett rolled his eyes at Cameron. “Oh, come on, you’re such a liar.”

She shook her head. “Unless I stole a pack of gum when I was like three, no. I’m paranoid about being caught.”

Jim looked at me. “What about you?”

“Oh,” I said. “In middle school, Maddie Richards and I would go to the pharmacy and sometimes we’d dare each other to take lip glosses or nail polish or whatever. Maddie was always really good at it. I got caught once and they threatened to call my mom, but I cried, so they didn’t. We kind of stopped after that.”

“Maddie Richards?” Will said. “Is she the one who always draws on her hands?”

He made it sound like Maddie was kind of stupid. Even though I wasn’t really talking to Maddie these days, I bristled. “Yeah. I’ve known her forever.”

“My turn,” Everett said. “Never have I ever . . . started a fight. An actual brawl, not just people being bitchy to each other.”

The game went on for a while.
Never have I ever been on a plane; never have I ever cheated on a test; never have I ever been cheated on; never have I ever been arrested; never have I ever . . .
on and on and on. Even though I was sipping my drink, I started to feel loose and heavy, like a wilting flower. Beside me, Jess kept giggling. At one point, she turned to me and said, almost shouting, “Now you’re going to know all our secrets!”

“Hey, keep it down,” Jim said. “My parents are right upstairs.”

“And I’m not exactly on their good list,” Will said.

Jess leaned against me. “What about you? You’ve met Jim’s parents, right? Are you on their good list?”

“More than Will,” Jim said. “And they still let him come over.”

“What about her parents?” Jess wanted to know. “Do they like you? Do they know you almost destroyed your house? I bet they loved that.”

Jim rubbed the back of his head. “The first time we were going driving, Alex’s dad asked me about it and gave me the whole intense-dad look.” He paused. “I only met Alex’s mom once, really quick.” For a second, I thought he was going to tell everyone about Halloween and I held my breath. Then he continued, “So maybe Alex’s dad came back with bad news and now they’re getting the shotguns ready.”

I laughed a little too loud. “Yeah, that’s it. My mom’s got all these maps and she’s planning an attack. Watch out.” Before I could say anything else, I took another sip. That was one secret I didn’t feel like expounding on. At least until someone said,
Never have I ever had a parent go crazy.
My cheeks were red.

“Uh-oh,” Will said. “Looks like you’re going to have to do a parent intro soon, Wiley.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said.

Just for a second, Jim blinked at me. His face didn’t really change, but I suddenly felt like all my organs were rotting. Mr. Wiley had called Jim my boyfriend. Boyfriends were supposed to come over and put on a movie as a pretense for making out and deal with meeting the parents. So far I’d met Jim’s parents and friends, seen his secret art room, gone through his old photo albums, and learned about his epilepsy medication. He’d only seen my kitchen.

But I didn’t know what I could talk about: How my mom was crazy? How it was hard talking to my dad nowadays? How my friends weren’t really talking to me anymore? That’d be super attractive.

“Kids?” Mrs. Wiley was at the top of the stairs. Everett shoved the bottle of vodka under an armchair. “We’re all taking a picture in front of the tree.”

Cameron handed out mints, each of us taking four. The chalky tablets burned my mouth as they melted. We trotted up the stairs, where the chatter had grown noisier. Empty cups and plates were strewn around the kitchen. In the other room, Jim’s uncle Allen was dressed up as Santa and laughing heartily. I felt a little dizzy and disoriented by the commotion as people gathered in front of the tree. I wanted to make things up to Jim but didn’t know how. When I tried to reach for his hand, Mrs. Wiley told me to stand by Cameron and Jess instead. Jim didn’t object.

The camera was set up on a tripod. Mr. Wiley squinted through the lens. “All right, everybody, squeeze together. Got to get the ends in.”

On either side, Jess and Cameron pressed against me. We all smiled, trying not to breathe.

“Looks good.” Mr. Wiley pressed the timer and dashed to a spot by his wife. We held our smiles as the camera’s red light blinked at us — once, twice, three times, then five quick pulses and a bright flash.

In the back row, someone said, “I think I blinked!”

Mr. Wiley jogged back to the camera. “All right, one more time, just to be sure. Eyes open this time, Bill!” We huddled together tighter and kept smiling, eyes getting blurry. As the red light blinked, I wondered if I would be in next year’s Christmas party picture or if I would be another face in a photo album, shoved away in a basement. I couldn’t turn to Jim to see if he was thinking the same thing. The red light pulsed and then the camera flashed and we were all captured forever.

I started watching Mom more closely, trying to follow her personal timeline. If I could figure out exactly when Amelia Earhart’s final flight would be, maybe I could stop anything bad from happening to Mom.

One afternoon in January, I was helping Teddy make a poster board about Saturn when I heard the faint, crinkling sound of static. For a second, I thought it might be Katy watching television, but then I remembered that she was at Amy White’s that afternoon. I tried to ignore it, but it got progressively louder. I wondered where Mom was.

“What’s the buzzing?” Teddy asked. He stopped cutting construction-paper stars and looked around.

“I probably left something on in my room,” I said. “Keep cutting, okay?”

“Hurry up,” he said. “We need a
ton
of stars.”

I followed the static upstairs and into Mom and Dad’s room, expecting to find Mom in there, but the room was empty. The door to their bathroom was closed. For a second, I remembered when Mom went into labor and there was all that blood on the bathroom floor. My knees felt weak. Pressing my ear against the door, I could barely hear her voice above the static. “Twelve thousand feet and climbing. Weather fair.”

I knocked on the door. “Are you okay?”

The static got louder.

“Can you hear me?” I tried the knob but the door was locked. “What are you doing in there?”

More static.

I banged against the door and twisted the knob. “Open the door! I’m going to break it down and call Dad if you don’t open it right now.”

There was a pause, then the static almost disappeared. Footsteps padded to the door and I heard the lock click, then the footsteps retreated again. When I opened the door, I half expected to find Mom sitting in a pool of blood. Instead, she was sitting fully dressed — scarf, goggles, a tattered leather jacket, all the Amelia gear — in the empty bathtub. On her lap was a metal serving platter, probably something she got as a wedding present years ago. Taped or glued to it were bits of wire, pieces of broken stereo equipment, digital-watch faces, tiny mirrors from compacts, batteries, Dad’s old cell phone, a compass, a thermometer, and one of the controls from Teddy’s video game system. On the floor beside her was a cup of hot cocoa. The curtains were drawn, but the windows were open. I shivered in a gust of cold wind. On the edge of the tub was an old clock-radio barely emitting a tinny static.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She didn’t look at me. The goggles were pulled down on her face. “One forty-five a.m.,” she said. “Radio frequency failing. Weather continues fair.”

“What is that?” I reached for the platter on her lap, but she jerked away from me. “Did you make that?”

She still didn’t look over. “So many stars.”

I leaned against the sink. A cockpit, I realized. She’d made herself a cockpit out of old electronics and whatever she could find around the house. It looked so pathetic, those bits of nothing pieced together. How could she think it was real? How could a few cogs and wires be more real than me? I wanted to snatch it from her and smash it on the bathroom floor, but I was afraid of what her response would be.

Instead, I asked, “Where are you going?”

She inhaled and exhaled loudly. Then she picked up the cell phone and spoke into it as if it were a two-way radio. “Oakland, do you copy? Oakland?”

“The Pacific?” I said. In Mom’s mind, I was interrupting Amelia Earhart’s solo flight from Honolulu to California, the first time anyone had ever flown that distance alone. Mom would be so happy afterward. But it was just another big step to the final flight, and I wasn’t sure how Mom would manage that and if she’d come back at all. I didn’t care what Dad or Mrs. Ellis said. Mom was getting worse, not better, and we could lose her if we weren’t careful.

“Fog rolling in,” she said into the dead cell phone.

I took my own cell phone out of my pocket and, without dialing anyone, pressed it to my ear. “You need to be careful,” I said.

“Everything fine. Four hundred gallons of fuel left.”

“No,” I said. “Listen to me. Don’t try any more long flights. Just land and make this the last one.”

She leaned over and turned up the volume on the radio.

“Please,” I said. “We need you.”

In the tub, she was motionless, staring straight ahead as if into a perfect sky of stars. I waited for a minute to see if she’d react to me at all, but she didn’t. Instead, I heard Teddy calling for me from downstairs. I didn’t want him to see Mom like this. Putting my phone back in my pocket, I yelled to Teddy that I’d be down in a second.

As I was leaving the bathroom, I heard Mom say, “I am getting tired of this fog.” And she was off again, trying to make contact with flying experts who died decades ago. I could hear her going on about how the stars were so bright, how it felt to be all alone, so high above the ocean, and how everyone else in the world was just voices in the distance. I wondered if we were that to her now — a bunch of voices trying to bring her back to earth.

Now at lunch, Jim and I sat with his friends. It felt different from the night of the Christmas party, when all I had to know were answers to Never Have I Ever. They were nice enough and every so often asked me a question, but I didn’t feel like a real part of their group yet. I was usually quiet as they talked about people I didn’t really know and classes I wasn’t taking. Most of them had applied to college and were waiting to hear back. In six months, all of Jim’s friends would probably be gone, or at least not at school anymore, and he’d still be here.