The Chance You Won't Return (9 page)

Katy was in our room, doing math homework on her bed. She glanced up when I came in but immediately turned back to long division. Katy’s fingers ticked as she counted out her answers. She sighed and erased something in her notebook. I grabbed a pillow from my bed and threw it at her, hitting her in the side of the head.

“Hey!” Katy hurled the pillow back at me, but I caught it. “What’s your problem?”

“Nothing.” I sat on the edge of my bed, tapping my sneakers against the floor. Katy was trying to figure out her math homework again. “I drove tonight,” I told her, tossing my pillow from hand to hand. “Jim Wiley taught me.”

“Congrats.”

“He’s the one who drove into his house.”

Katy looked up. “What’d he get you to do, take down the school gym?”

I grinned. “Not yet.”

“So you’re giving up driver’s ed at school to take lessons from Jim or something?” she asked. “I don’t think you’ll get your license that way.”

“I don’t know yet.” Katy knew that Mom and Dad were supposed to meet with Mr. Kane that afternoon. And presumably, she knew that something was wrong with Mom. Even though Katy had justified the maps to herself, I wondered what she thought about Mom being in the hospital.

“So Mom’s sick,” I said.

“I know,” she said, flipping through her textbook. “Dad said they were running some tests. Do you know how to make a fraction into a percent?”

“She probably won’t be back for a few days,” I said.

Now Katy was comparing two different pages. “I think it has something to do with decimals. You did this, like, four years ago and you can’t remember?”

I threw the pillow at her again, this time hitting her book. “Ask someone on the bus tomorrow.”

I didn’t expect to see Katy’s face so distorted with anger. Her eyebrows were furrowed and her lips were twisted as she shouted, “Stop throwing things at me,” and hurled the pillow back, catching me in the head.

“I’m trying to talk to you,” I said. “You always get all upset when I ignore you, and now you’re just ignoring me.”

“You’re not talking about anything,” Katy said. She closed the book, but her finger marked her place. “Dad already told me all of that, and I really need to get my homework done already.”

“What if Dad didn’t tell you everything?” I didn’t want to be the only one who knew. I promised myself that if Katy outright asked, I’d tell her. That was fair enough.

Katy opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked at me hard. “Like what?”

“Like how Mom freaked out at the meeting with my driver’s ed teacher today.” Katy’s face furrowed as she thought about whether or not she wanted to know more. I felt bad but I couldn’t stop myself. If Dad wasn’t going to talk about it, maybe Katy would. “Like how she’s having some kind of mental breakdown.”

“Like how —” She stopped herself and stood, like a marionette being jerked up. Grabbing her backpack, she pulled out everything — books, notebooks, a few broken pencils — and chucked it onto her bedspread. “You know what? No. I’m busy. I’ve got work to do. Dad told us that he brought her to the hospital because she’s not feeling well, so that’s what happened. If she had a breakdown like before, we’d know.”

“What about the maps — ?”

“I don’t care!” She sat in the middle of the mess on her bed. “Stop talking to me.”

I was about to throw the pillow again, but as Katy opened her history book and tried to focus on a page, I saw that her face was red and her eyes were glossy with tears. Which was probably what Dad had been expecting when he asked me not to talk about Mom’s mental health with my younger brother and sister. Even though Katy and I had our share of fights, I felt bad seeing her curled up in a pile of textbooks and handouts.

“Sorry,” I said, collapsing onto my bed and staring at the ceiling.

“Sure,” I heard Katy sniffle.

I counted the glow-in-the-dark stars Katy and I had stuck there when I was in middle school. “I didn’t mean anything,” I said. “It’ll be fine.” Saying that, I reminded myself of Dad.

The next morning, I found Teddy pouring Cheerios into our largest mixing bowl. “What are you doing? I said. “That’s like half the box.”

“I know. I’m hungry.”

Dad had already left for work, which wasn’t a surprise. Last night he intercepted me on my way to brush my teeth, whispering so Katy and Teddy wouldn’t overhear. He told me he felt bad but he couldn’t take another day off now, when there really wasn’t anything he could do. He’d given the hospital his cell number and the number at the post office, so they could contact him in case anything happened during the day. And he’d be back a little later than usual tonight, since he was going to stop by the hospital to see how Mom was doing. Otherwise, I was in charge of things at home — to see that everyone got off to school all right, that we had lunches, and that Katy and Teddy did their homework when they got home from school. “Don’t go mad with power, all right?” Dad told me, messing up my hair. He was even going to add a cell phone to his plan and give it to me. “For emergencies,” he said.

Now Teddy was rummaging through the refrigerator. While he was distracted, I put some cereal back in the box.

Teddy placed a carton of milk and a bottle of Hershey’s syrup next to his giant bowl of cereal. I thought he was going to make chocolate milk to go with it, but instead he started to drizzle chocolate on the Cheerios.

“What are you doing?”

“Making breakfast,” he said. “Mom doesn’t let us get the good cereal with marshmallows and chocolate, so I wanted to make it myself.”

I gazed into the bowl. “Inventive.” It wasn’t much worse than letting him have chocolate milk. I searched for something less sugary for myself.

“I’m a pretty good cook,” Teddy said as he stirred his mixture together. “I can make it for you, too.” I thanked him and said I felt like yogurt. He munched on cereal as he told me about playing soccer at recess with the other second-graders. “I did that thing you taught me, that thing where you hit the ball with the side of your foot instead of your toe.”

“Good job.” I smiled. “Did it help?”

He nodded solemnly. “It helped a lot.”

When Katy came downstairs, she grabbed an apple and a bowl of cereal and joined us at the table without saying anything. Even Teddy didn’t talk much. It was strange to be together in the morning, minus our mother. Usually she would be quizzing Katy on the categories of biological classifications or signing a permission slip for Teddy or telling me where I could find the shirt I wanted to wear. This morning felt like one of those dual images in the comics section of the paper — two pictures that were almost identical, except for small differences, like an empty cup of coffee instead of a full one, or a flower missing a petal. Everything else was the same except for one thing.

“What are we having for lunch?” Teddy asked.

Dad didn’t leave me any money, so we’d all have to make something. “I don’t know,” I said, getting up from the table. I didn’t even know what we had. Had Mom gone grocery shopping that week? “We can make peanut-butter sandwiches.”

Katy wrinkled her nose. “I’m sick of peanut butter.”

“Fine,” I said, closing the refrigerator. “Make your own. You’re old enough.”

“Who said I wasn’t?” She brushed past me and began rifling through cupboards. Since I’d tried to tell her about Mom, she’d barely talked to me.

“No crusts,” Teddy shouted to me.

I considered not even going to school at all. Who would know except for the school? Dad would be too distracted to find out. I shouldn’t have even had to go. My mom was in the hospital. How could I focus on physics or Spanish with that on my mind? Last year, a freshman girl’s dad had had cancer, and she was always out of school, since she went with him to treatments and doctor appointments. In the hall, teachers would ask how she was doing, not yell at her for having missed a few classes. This wasn’t really any different, I told myself. I could stay behind while Teddy and Katy caught the bus, claiming I’d walk. Who’d know the difference?

But then I remembered Jim was at school. It would be worth suffering through classes to see him again. Not that I knew how things were between us. He’d stood up for me and helped me learn the very basics of driving, but that didn’t necessarily mean we were going to have lunch together. Even so, the possibility of something happening was better than the idea of staying home.

“Come on,” I said, handing Teddy his lunch. “We’re going to be late.”

Walking through the front doors at school, I hoped no one would remember that my mom had freaked out at school. Hopefully there had been a bigger scandal that morning, like some freshman got pregnant or busted for selling pot out of her locker.

“Hey, Winchester!” Nick Gillan was standing with a few members of the football team. “Can I get a ride after school? I’m feeling kind of suicidal.”

They laughed and I muttered, “Screw you.” When I tried to push past them, it seemed like the hall was suddenly full of jerseys.

“Hey, Winchester,” Nick said, “can your
mom
give me a ride?”

I froze, fists clenched. Until I’d messed up the football field, no one had bothered me at school. When I was on the soccer team, I’d been almost popular. Now all people did was bother me and I was sick of it. But before I could say anything, someone else called my name.

“Alex?” Mr. Kane was standing nearby, arms folded over his chest. “A minute?”

“Sure,” I said. The football players were still chuckling to themselves but had turned back to their lockers. I didn’t feel a rush of gratitude toward Mr. Kane. After all, he was the one who had brought my mom to school. If he hadn’t insisted on meeting with her, she would never have been here for people to see in the first place.

Mr. Kane led me to the door of the teachers’ lounge. Inside, my math teacher was stirring creamer into her coffee. I could hear the copier spitting out pages, one by one.

“I just wanted to see if everything was all right. With your mom, I mean,” Mr. Kane said. Usually he looked at me like I was sent from a special hell, specifically to frustrate him, but now his face and eyes were soft. I bristled. I didn’t want his pity.

“Yeah, my mom wasn’t really feeling well,” I said. “Lyme disease or something. My dad had to take her to the hospital.”

He nodded. “So she’s doing better?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Yeah, a lot.”

Mr. Kane looked at me unblinkingly for a moment, and I wasn’t sure if he believed me. I wasn’t even sure if I believed me. I stared back.

“Great,” he finally said. “I hope she’s a hundred percent soon. Until then, maybe your dad can come in for that talk?”

“Right. Absolutely.” I wasn’t sure how Dad would be able to take time off from work for a parent-teacher conference, much less for anything else.

He smiled. “Until then, how about you observe in class but don’t participate? Best I can do.”

“Really fair,” I said. “Can’t wait.” Mr. Kane smiled again, and I had to stop myself from glaring at him as he retreated into the teachers’ lounge. Granted, being restricted from driver’s ed was the best news I’d had since Jim told me I didn’t suck too much at driving. But I hated that Mr. Kane now felt sorry for me because my mom had gotten so upset in his office. Out of all the people in the world, he was one of the top five I didn’t want to have seen that. And to make everything worse, he was being nice about it. He probably thought we had this secret bond now — children bearing the burden of their ill parents. I didn’t want to be a member of that club. Mr. Kane wasn’t going to make me one.

I didn’t see Jim until our only class together: physical education — fantastic. ’Cause everyone looks so much better in mesh jerseys from the eighties. Since the weather was still good, we were outside for tennis, which I actually didn’t mind. I was pretty good at sports, and now PE was the closest I got to playing anything. At least it came with less pressure. Mom said I’d get into a better college with an athletic scholarship, but I didn’t think her lectures and so-called helpful suggestions after every game were worth it when I decided to quit last year. Sometimes I wondered if I’d made the right choice.

We had more students than courts, and anyone who didn’t have basic tennis skills had to line up and take turns serving. Jim rushed in late with a couple of senior guys and stood at the back of the line. I glanced around, pretending I hadn’t seen him, until I turned and he was looking right at me. We smiled; he nodded a hello, and I waved before I realized how lame my wave was.

Maddie nudged me. “You and Jim?”

I thought about telling her what had happened last night. But that would also mean talking about my mom and why I was even at school to get her car in the first place. “Not really. I mean, I’ve talked to him a couple times, but that’s really it.”

“He’s totally into you,” she said.

“All right, everyone,” our PE teacher, Mrs. Harriott, called out. “Look at Amanda’s serve. It’s a nice, fluid motion.”

Amanda Baxter tossed a tennis ball into the air and swung her racket, sending the ball neatly across the net and into her would-be opponent’s court. When she smiled, it was kind of smug.

“She’s on the tennis
team,
” Maddie said.

“I think she’s team captain,” I said.

“That’s like cheating.” She leaned against the chain-link fence. “Is it too late to say I’ve got cramps?”

Ponytail swinging, Amanda Baxter ran over to the next court to play a real match with another tennis-team girl. “Alex,” Mrs. Harriott said, “you’re up.”

I shuffled over to her. Although I was okay with playing tennis, I didn’t exactly want to go after star-player Amanda Baxter. Mrs. Harriott handed me a racket and a ball, telling me to toss it straight into the air. “Remember, one fluid motion.” The racket made contact with a satisfying twang, but instead of sailing into the other half of the court, like Amanda’s ball had, mine slapped the net.

“Not bad,” Mrs. Harriott said. “But you’re hitting it down. Try again.”

The ball had just left my hand when I remembered something I’d read in elementary school: Amelia Earhart was sporty. That’s one thing I liked about her when we learned about famous women in fourth grade. She had been a tomboy growing up, and she had made her own makeshift roller coaster. I couldn’t remember much else, aside from the mysterious death. The ball came down again without me even swinging at it.