The Chance You Won't Return (34 page)

I wanted to wake up and find everything better. Mom would be down the hall, shouting to us that the bus would be here any minute so we needed to get ourselves out of bed right now. Instead, when our alarm went off, my head ached, and Katy, who’d slept soundly, sprang out of bed. I made sure everyone had breakfast and got out the door in time for the bus. Mom was still asleep when we left. Mrs. Ellis was coming over as usual. I kept wondering if last night had happened at all.

At school, Jim was leaning against my locker, so I knew it hadn’t been a dream. But I didn’t rush over to him. Maybe texting him for help in the middle of the night was fine, but the next morning it would be too much. I wished I could erase it all from his memory and briefly considered running into a random classroom to avoid him altogether. But he’d also been my navigator last night. That had to count for something.

“Hey,” I said, leaning against the locker beside mine. “Did you make it back in okay?”

“Oh, yeah. My parents asked me how I slept.” He grinned. “I should sneak out more often.”

“Less trespassing next time.”

“Depends on what we want to do.” He lowered his voice. “I’m glad you told me, though. That was a lot to deal with.”

I thought he meant that it was a lot for him to deal with and he was glad because now he knew that he should book it, because I had too much baggage. Girlfriends were fun girls who weren’t surprised about getting carnations. They invited their boyfriends over and weren’t afraid of ending up like their moms. I turned my head farther away from Jim because I thought I might start crying, and I was sick of crying. But then I felt one arm reach around my shoulders and another cross my collarbone, so I was half pulled into his sweatery arms.

I probably should have cried, just let myself have this huge release. But instead I took deep breaths and felt Jim’s warmth.

“Thanks” seemed like such a small word. Instead, I said, “Sorry I got you almost arrested.”

He laughed. “That’s okay. Next time I can get us arrested.”

Next time,
I thought. Even with all the craziness going on at home and how I’d hidden it, he was still thinking of a next time. I kissed him until the bell rang and Mr. Hunter yelled at us to break it up.

That afternoon, Mom and Dad went to see Dr. McGlynn. It wasn’t their usual appointment. I knew it was because of Mom trying to leave the night before, but part of me had hoped that Mom didn’t need to see doctors anymore. That wasn’t the case.

Dr. McGlynn seemed to think that Mom had a good break last night. Mom was relying less on the Amelia persona, she explained, which meant she was getting ready to work through her issues. But it wasn’t like an on /off switch, and Dr. McGlynn was worried that Mom would be overwhelmed by the emotions she’d been hiding and try to hurt herself. So Dr. McGlynn suggested that Mom spend some time at the Saint Giles Behavioral Health Center. “Somewhere she can get the help she needs in a safe environment” was how Dad explained it.

Dad signed papers and made phone calls. Mom would get group therapy, individual therapy, grief counseling, and more, in a series of squat brick buildings all clustered together. Mom was quieter than usual and told Dad that it all sounded fine.

While I packed for Mom, I thought about what it would be like: not to hear her in the middle of the night; not to have her around to talk to about Theresa or Jim or driver’s ed; not to see the maps and the scarf; not to hope that one day I’d wake up and things wouldn’t be like they were before — they would be better, because Mom would be Mom again but we wouldn’t fight as much.

It was a long drive to Saint Giles, so Mom and Dad were going to leave early the next morning, before any of us were awake. I didn’t know how to say good-bye, so instead I wrote a note and tucked it inside my mother’s suitcase.

You have to come back,
I wrote.
I don’t care what really happened. Screw history. You have to come back.

I didn’t know if she would read it, but that night I slept without dreaming and didn’t wake until morning.

It was still my job to get everybody ready for school, but now we left an empty house. Even though I slept through the night, I felt like kind of a wreck. Katy and Teddy were both sluggish, too. Since it took Teddy forever to get out of bed, I didn’t have time to shower. I felt like everybody could see the grime all around me and know the reason. I hid in a baggy sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with the hem all frayed in the back because they were too long.

In Spanish, Señor Oria asked me to translate a sentence on the board, and I stood with a piece of chalk in my hand for about five minutes without managing a single word.

“
Abejorro,
is that . . . is that ‘butterfly’?”

Señor Oria crossed his arms over his chest.
“En español, Alejandra!”

“
Es ese
. . . something. I don’t know the word for butterfly, so I can’t ask about it.”

“No es una mariposa.”

I looked at the class to see if I was the only one who wasn’t getting it. The other ones who didn’t understand weren’t paying attention, and the kids who did understand stared at me like I must have had help dressing myself that morning.

Finally Señor Oria let me sit down and basically ignored me for the rest of class. After the bell rang, I seriously considered skipping the rest of the day and was halfway to the door when Jim saw me.

“Hey,” he said. “I missed you before homeroom. You coming to lunch?”

I didn’t want to sit with Jim’s friends, who had no idea what was going on with my mom and would think I was just an unshowered mess. I was about to make up some excuse when Jim asked if I was okay.

“Yeah. I look okay, right?” I’d told Jim that my mom was going to a treatment center, but I hadn’t mentioned when and I didn’t want to rehash yesterday in the middle of the hall. Instead, I took a breath. “Sorry, it’s just not a great day. Let’s go.”

I followed Jim into the cafeteria, which was thick with loud voices and the smell of grease. At one end of the room, Jim’s friends had already claimed a table. Theresa, Maddie, and Josh were at the other. It looked like Maddie was cramming for a U.S. history test, while Theresa and Josh were hunched over Josh’s phone. Then Josh said something and they all laughed. I used to be a part of that.

Even as Amelia Earhart, Mom had Mrs. Ellis to sit with her. Who would stay with me if I couldn’t be myself anymore?

“I’ll be right back,” I told Jim. I took a step forward, then another and another until I was at my friends’ table.

They all looked over at me like I was Caroline Lavale asking them to go to the football game. It was hard to remember that a few months ago, I was right there with them.

“Hey,” I said.

Maddie and Josh mumbled hello. Theresa spun a fork between her fingers. “Hey.”

I eyed an empty seat. “Can I sit for a second?”

“You can sit anywhere you want.”

I perched on the edge of the chair, back straight. Everything I’d planned on saying evaporated in my head. “I was . . .” I said. “It’s . . .” It must have been like this for Mom — the longer you go without talking about something, the harder it is to start, until eventually you don’t know how to.

Theresa munched on a French fry. “Thanks for stopping by.”

“Will you stop being a bitch?” I snapped. “I’m trying to apologize.”

I expected Theresa to tell me
I
had been the bitch, but she didn’t. She stared, face stolid.

“I’m sorry I disappeared,” I said. “It sucks when your friends go off and forget you.” I didn’t say anything about Mom, even though Theresa had asked about her. It wasn’t something I was ready to talk about with everybody yet, especially when I didn’t know what was going on or what was going to happen. For now I looked each of them in the eye, trying to appear as genuine as possible.

Theresa scowled. “What did you do, break up with Jim or something?”

“No, we’re still together. I just wanted to say that.” I pushed the seat back. “So I guess —”

“Oh, sit down,” Theresa said. She tried to hide a smile. “There are like ten people in this school who don’t suck, so we might as well keep you around.”

I smirked. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Yeah, well, it was either you or Caroline Lavale, and she tried to get us to join the color guard. Josh was really into the color guard thing, but fortunately we got to him before he performed in public.”

Josh rolled his eyes. “That’s friendship for you.”

Maddie and Josh looked over my shoulder. Theresa and I turned to find Jim standing there. “Hey,” he said, “can I sit here?”

My stomach gripped. What if Jim brought up my mom, assuming I’d told my friends about her? What if they were still upset with him because I’d been ditching them for the last few months? But I nodded for Jim to take a seat beside me. Maddie and Theresa raised their eyebrows at each other.

“Jim, right?” Theresa said, like she didn’t know. “We’re Alex’s friends. She likes to save us for a special occasion.”

“And what’s more special than shepherd’s pie day in the cafeteria?” Josh said, frowning at his plate.

“Man,” Jim said. “If I’d known that, I would’ve put on my tux. The lunch ladies expect that level of class from me.”

The tux got Maddie talking about prom, and how she thought it wouldn’t suck too much to go. Theresa couldn’t believe it, and they argued about that while Jim and I grabbed food. At the table, Jim didn’t say a whole lot, but every so often he would cast me a half smile.

After lunch Jim left to find Will, and Theresa linked arms with me, as though she thought I’d run off, too.

“So what do you think?” I said.

“About Jim?” she said, and paused for a second. “Not bad, Winchester. He can keep up, which is good. Just don’t go MIA on us again.”

I meant to smile. “I’ll try.”

Even after a couple of weeks, everything was too quiet at home. I kept expecting to find Mom at the table, maps scattered all over the kitchen table, but every time I unlocked the front door, the house was quiet. If Dad wasn’t at work, he went to visit Mom, so even he wasn’t home a lot. I felt like I should have been doing stupid things just because I wouldn’t get caught. Of course, if I did try anything — hooking up with Jim, breaking into the liquor cabinet, starting an illegal gambling ring — Teddy would be only too thrilled to tell Dad about it.

So instead I tried to make as much noise as possible, to fill up the space and the silence. With music blasting, maybe Mom really was in the next room and I just couldn’t hear her.

Teddy didn’t mind the noise because I let him pick out songs every so often. “Nothing Disney-ish,” I told him. “This is, like, your musical education.”

Teddy and I bounced around to the Fratellis in the living room. When Katy came home from gymnastics one afternoon, her eyes were wide. “Oh, my God,” Katy shouted. “I could hear you all the way down the street.”

“What?” I said. “Sorry, can’t hear you.”

“People are going to call the cops,” Katy said.

I rolled my eyes. “If they do, we’ll turn it down.”

She pulled a pack of vocab cards out of her backpack. “I’ve got homework!”

“Oh, right, because you’re not already weeks ahead in everything.” One song faded away and another started. I snatched the cards away from her and tossed them into the air so they rained over us. For a second, she stood very still and then started to smile. I grabbed Katy’s hand, pulling her farther into the living room. Teddy leaped off the couch and started to dance around her.

Soon Katy was bopping along with us. We went through the whole album, and then Vampire Weekend, until we were all sweating and starving and exhausted, prostrate on the living-room floor. Teddy and Katy were still singing the refrain of the last song, both off-key. Their cheeks were red, and they laughed when Katy jumped up again to mimic Teddy’s dance moves.

It could have been any day. We could have been waiting for Mom and Dad to get home from work. I hadn’t thought about Mom the whole time, and I hoped they hadn’t, either.

My road test was scheduled for the day after our junior year ended, so Jim and I decided we needed to practice a lot before then. In exchange for babysitting Teddy most days, Dad let me drive with Jim every night. We did spend time going over three-point turns and reversing next to a curb, but we also drove out in the country, with the windows down to catch the new spring air, and parked beside the reservoir. I didn’t freak out anymore; instead, I was amazed to find that driving could be fun.

One night it was so warm and clear that we lay on top of the hood of the car and invented new constellations.

“That’s the circus elephant,” I said, pointing. “See, there’s the trunk.”

“Pretty small trunk.”

“You’re looking at it backward. Maybe after we finish with driving lessons I can give you astronomy lessons.”

“You’re a way better tutor than Mrs. Frasier.” We turned sideways to kiss. “We’re gonna have to think of a new excuse to get away from our houses after you pass the road test.”

“
If
I pass.”

“
When
you pass.”

I smiled. “We’re going to have to schedule some extra driving lessons, since Mr. Kane’s going to be out for the next week or something.” That afternoon in driver’s ed, Señor Oria appeared instead of Mr. Kane and made us watch a video about train safety that I’d seen the previous semester. The rumor was that after years of barely hanging on, Mr. Kane’s mom had died. I wondered how it had happened — if Mr. Kane was home at the time; if he woke up in the morning and realized that she wasn’t brushing her teeth or making coffee; if he got a chance to say something nice to her before she died. I wondered if he had anyone helping him plan the funeral.

“I really want to pass,” I told Jim. “Mr. Kane is going to come back and find me a parallel-parking master.”

Jim sat up a little. “Whenever I bring up parallel parking, you always look like I’m talking about shooting puppies.”