The Chance You Won't Return (32 page)

About a week after the accident, Theresa came up to me before homeroom. Since she’d accused me of ditching my friends for Jim, we hadn’t really spoken. Instead of switching off between lunch with them and lunch with Jim’s friends, now I sat with the seniors. So I was surprised when I heard her say, “I was at the dentist yesterday.”

I took a random book from my locker. “Okay?”

“Your mom works for Dr. Forrester, right?

“Um, right.” I paged through the book, like I was trying to find something specific. “Not every day, though.”

She leaned against someone’s locker. “Well, I asked if your mom was there, because I was your friend from school, and they said she’d taken some time off because she wasn’t feeling well.”

I tried to focus on page 320 of my calc book. Even though I didn’t look up, I knew Theresa’s eyes were on me.

“Alex,” she said, “what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Did you get this equation at all?”

She took the book from me. “Alex, you’ve been acting really weird all semester, and if it’s because of something with your mom, you can tell me. I mean, if she’s really sick, that’s serious and you should talk about it.”

It was the perfect intro. She sounded genuine, and maybe it would make her understand why I’d avoided her and everyone else for the last few months. I could have told her about how I wanted everyone — my friends, my family, Jim, his friends — in their own little bubbles, far apart so no one else could get hurt. We could have skipped homeroom and our first classes — English lit for her, calc for me — and gone to the bagel shop on Archer to talk about how messed up this year had been. She could have told me how much it sucked and how she knew somebody else whose mom was depressed or whose Dad had shot himself or whose sister had schizophrenia. I could have told her about the It Could Be Worse game. We could have laughed about something.

But I couldn’t make the words form in my mouth. If I said it, it would be real. It would be out there, and maybe Theresa would ask questions about it that I didn’t want to answer. Maybe she’d bring it up at lunch with Josh and Maddie, and then they’d know. And maybe everyone would find out. And even if they kept it a secret, maybe Theresa, Josh, and Maddie would want to come over, saying it wasn’t such a big deal, and what if they did something to upset Mom? What if it sped up her final flight plans?

“My mom, um, just gets these migraines,” I said. “Like, she stays in the dark and can’t have any noise. She’s trying different medications for it.”

When I looked up, Theresa was staring at me. “Really?”

I pulled my book out of her hands. “Really. I’ve had to take over some stuff at home. It’s not a huge thing.”

The bell rang before she could reply, and we filed into homeroom. Behind us was Nick Gillan. “Hey, Winchester,” he said, snickering, “I heard you demolished a mailbox. You must be the dumbest fucking driver ever.”

I cringed. We didn’t exactly live in a bustling metropolis, so if someone’s mailbox got plowed over in the middle of the night by a teenage girl and her mom, people knew about it.

“Hey, Gillan,” Theresa said, not even turning around. “I hear you’re the dumbest fucking person in our school.”

Our homeroom teacher, Mr. Pianci, looked up from his desk. “Language, people.”

“At least I can drive,” Nick muttered as we took our seats.

“Yeah,” Theresa said, “drunk.”

“Whatever. I’m a better drunk driver than she is sober.”

I kept my eyes on the blackboard, where Mr. Pianci had already written the date, with huge slashes in between the numbers.

“And look,” Nick said. “She knows it. She’s got to let
you
fight back.”

“Oh, it’s not that,” Theresa said. “I just love seeing your face scrunch up when I use words with more than two syllables.”

“Settle down, people,” Mr. Pianci said, and started to read the announcements for the day — there was a girls’ basketball game that afternoon, students were reminded not to park in the faculty parking lot, the drama club’s performance of
Oliver!
still needed people to help build sets, and so on. I wanted to thank Theresa for sticking up for me, but when the bell rang, she popped up from her seat and left before I had the chance.

That afternoon, Katy and I taught Teddy how to play BS (we refused to play any more Go Fish). He liked it once we convinced him that saying “BS” wasn’t swearing. Katy was thrashing both of us.

“Can you, like, see my cards?” I asked, picking up the pile and adding it to my hand. “Because that’s cheating.”

Katy smirked. “I know what you look like when you lie. Maybe you shouldn’t do it so often.”

I grabbed a pillow from the couch and whacked her with it. Teddy tried to do the same, but Katy was too fast for him and snatched it away. They were struggling with the pillow when I heard Mom in the kitchen: “Hello? Is Fred there?”

At first I thought Mom was off in her delusions, but after a short pause she said, “No, I need to talk to Fred. Noonan. It’s important.”

I told Katy and Teddy to play the next hand without me and went to find Mom. Standing over the kitchen table with maps spread out in front of her, she was punching digits into the phone. Then she pressed it to her ear and said, “Fred? Fred, I have to talk to you. . . . You know what it’s about.”

Fred Noonan was Amelia Earhart’s navigator for her final flight and disappeared with her. I grabbed the phone away from Mom.

“Hello? Who is this?” a man was saying into the phone. I didn’t know who it was. “There’s no Fred here.” Instead of replying, I clicked off the phone. I hoped whoever that was didn’t call back.

Mom was beside me, hands on her hips and eyes narrowed. “What in the world did you do that for? I need to talk to Fred Noonan about our flight. It’s absolutely essential.”

“That wasn’t Fred,” I told her. “That wasn’t anyone. You can’t call strangers and pretend they’re whoever you want them to be.”

She grabbed a handful of papers and held them up for me. “How else is this going to get done? Look at how much work we have left!”

“There’s no rush —”

“Yes, there is!” she insisted, then slumped into one of the kitchen chairs, touching her fingertips to her forehead. “I can’t manage it alone. I need Fred on board for this one. We’ve already had a false start, and I can’t risk that again.”

I sat down beside her. “When is it going to happen? When are you leaving?”

She pawed through maps. “We have to finalize the route and supply lists, make sure the Electra is in shape, get the finances —”

I took her hand in both of mine and stared into her eyes, hoping that a little part of Mom was listening. “Whenever it happens, you have to let me know. Before you leave. I don’t care if it’s in the middle of the night, but I need to know. I get that you want to keep it all secret, and I promise I won’t tell the reporters or whoever. I just want to make sure things are okay. You trust me, right?”

For a moment, she didn’t react at all. Then, slowly, she nodded. “You’re an excellent pilot.”

“And you’ll tell me before you go?”

She paused again. “I’ll tell you.”

“Good.” I stood. “Just try to handle things without Fred for now, all right?” I took the phone with me. Maybe if Fred Noonan wasn’t available, she’d stay with us a little longer.

I was sitting down with Katy and Teddy again when the doorbell rang. “Got it!” I shouted, in case Mom thought it was Fred coming over to work on the Electra. Assuming it would be Mrs. Ellis, I swung open the door. It wasn’t.

It was Jim.

“Hey,” he said, smiling.

I stepped onto the front steps and shut the door behind me. “What are you doing here?”

He took a small step back. “Thought I’d stop by and see you.”

“I’m grounded,” I said. “You know that.”

“Yeah, that’s why I came over here instead of asking you to go somewhere.” He craned his neck to look behind me. “Is your Dad at home or something?”

At the window, Katy and Teddy were spying from behind a curtain. I didn’t see Mom anywhere. Why wasn’t one of them watching her so she wouldn’t open the front door? “Yeah,” I said, “that’s it. Dad’s gonna be really pissed if he catches you here, so you should probably go.”

Another backward step. “Okay, I’ll go. See you at school, I guess.”

“See you.” Immediately I was mad at myself for being so short with him, but I also didn’t want to say anything else that might make him stick around. I turned to let myself back in the house, but the door was locked. “Dammit. Katy, open up!”

I heard footsteps approach, then a voice: “Is Fred here?”

“Katy!” I banged on the door. My sister opened it a second later, with Mom close behind.

“Take forever, why don’t you?” I pushed past her.

“Don’t you want to talk to him? I thought Jim was your boyfriend?” Katy asked, peering outside. Jim was standing at the end of the driveway, watching us. I tried to smile at him and waved, and he waved back without smiling.

“Kind of,” I said, and shut the door.

I texted Jim later to say I was sorry for brushing him off like that, but he didn’t respond. I started typing out a lie about my mom and I having been in a fight and that it was bad timing, but I erased it. It would be too complicated to start making stuff up about what was going on at home. Instead, I decided to just pretend like nothing happened. Jim hadn’t asked a lot of questions about my family before, so I didn’t think he would now.

The next morning, I found him in one of the stairwells, sitting with a few of the seniors. They were all crowded around Will’s cell, watching a video. I walked up to them as they started laughing.

“Oh, my God, his face.” Cameron giggled.

“I’ve watched it like nine times this morning,” Will said. “I lose it every time.”

Jim had been laughing, but when he looked up at me, his smile faded. “Hey,” he said.

“Alex, you need to see this,” Jess said, and nudged Will. “Hit play again.”

Even though the video was only about a minute long, I didn’t really pay attention and only laughed when everyone else did. I noticed that Jim didn’t laugh this time, either. We weren’t the kind of couple that clung to each other like barnacles, but when I moved next to him, he didn’t kiss me or try to hold my hand.

Mr. Hunter entered the stairwell and frowned at us. “Fire hazard, people,” he said. “Move along. First bell is —” As if on cue, the bell rang, and Mr. Hunter smirked as he continued up the stairs.

“Mr. Hunter has evil powers,” Cameron said as we all grabbed our bags. I followed Jim even though we didn’t have homeroom together.

“Hey,” I said, “did you get my text?”

He nodded. “Yeah, last night.”

I dodged a group of freshmen trying to share homework. “Well, I’m really sorry about being so weird. My parents are just so mad at me right now.”

Jim stopped at his locker and turned the knob back and forth. “Sure. Fine.”

“So we’re okay?”

He shifted through books but didn’t take anything. After a second, he turned to me; the lines in his face seemed sharper. “Actually, we’re not. At least you don’t seem to be that okay with me.”

A couple of junior girls slowed as they walked by, so I kept my voice low. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been to my house tons of times,” Jim said. “You’ve seen my art; you came to my family’s Christmas party; we always end up there. And for some reason, I haven’t been inside your house since that first time we went driving. So if you’re, like, embarrassed to bring me over, just say it. Is it that I’m repeating my junior year? Or the crashing-into-my-house thing?”

I was so stunned, I could barely get my mouth to work. “That’s not it at all.”

“Then what is it?” When I couldn’t answer, Jim slammed his locker shut and darted into homeroom.

The hall was almost empty now. For a second, I couldn’t do anything but stare at the space Jim had just occupied, hating myself for not telling him what was going on and potentially ruining the one good thing I had going. But I still didn’t know how to explain everything.

The second bell rang. I ran to homeroom, where Mr. Pianci snapped at me for being late and I had to take deep breaths so I wouldn’t cry in front of everyone.

Even though I hadn’t sat up with Mom since the car accident, I wanted to tell her about Jim. She wouldn’t understand what had happened and would probably try to relate it to flying, but I had to talk to someone. With my friends mad at me and my still not being close to any of Jim’s friends, I went almost the entire school day without saying a word to anyone. All day I felt like I was underwater. I could practically feel the weight on my lungs.

Things still felt off when I went downstairs that night to see Mom. I heard papers shuffling and her talking low. She was telling herself to be calm, that it would all be fine.

“Hey,” I said, and she jumped a little.

“I didn’t think anyone was up.” Behind her, the kitchen table was bare and there were no maps taped to the wall. She was wearing her battered leather jacket and best linen scarf. Goggles hung around her neck. A small canvas bag stuffed with papers sat on a nearby chair.

I took a step toward her. “What are you doing?”

She sighed. “We were trying to keep it secret.”

My heart started beating faster. It was the same feeling I’d had all day, but worse — like the room was filling with water and I couldn’t breathe. “What secret?”

“A flight around the world,” she said. When she tried to smile at me, her lips looked strained, as if they might crack. “It’s going to be most important thing I’ll ever do.”