The Chance You Won't Return Read online

  “Does that mean we won?” I asked.

  Jim kissed my neck. “I don’t think they know the difference.”

  I tried not to giggle and mostly failed. “Either way, best football game ever.”

  In a way, the whole day felt unreal. A couple of weeks ago, I’d barely spoken to Jim before, and now I knew that he smelled like peppermint shampoo and had sensitive ears. I didn’t feel awkward or inhibited with Jim at all; everything felt really right. All I had to think about was how kissing left me kind of dizzy and breathless and how he knew how good it felt to be touched on the small of the back. And he was just the right height so we could lie down next to each other and match almost perfectly. Overhead, stars were just becoming visible. Everything smelled like peppermint and grass and burning leaves. I wanted to stay there forever.

  “Why didn’t we do this sooner?” I asked.

  We kissed and didn’t break apart for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. “Because I had to win you over with my driving skills first.”

  “That’s exactly what won me over.”

  Suddenly the voices coming from the football game sounded closer. Jim and I broke apart just as a group of freshmen stumbled around the corner. “Oops,” one of them slurred, and they giggled but kept walking.

  We sat up, brushing grass off ourselves. Suddenly it felt a lot colder and I shivered a little. “What time is it, anyway?” I asked. Jim pulled out his cell to check. It was later than I’d expected. Way later than I should have been out. “I should get back,” I told Jim.

  “You sure?” he said. “Will McNamee texted me. People are going over to his place if you want to come.”

  I didn’t know if I wanted to share Jim with anyone yet. Instead of saying so, I claimed that my parents would probably be waiting up, since I hadn’t told anyone I was going out. “You should go, though. We’ll get together later.”

  Jim reached toward me and pulled a blade of grass from my hair. “Just so you don’t get in trouble,” he said, and kissed me again.

  By the time I got home, most of the lights in the house were off, including the one in Mom and Dad’s room. I wondered what Katy had told Dad.

  Jackson, who was at the door when I opened it, trotted back to his pillow bed in the living room. I padded slowly into the kitchen, my sneakers squeaking against the tile floor. Mom was at the kitchen sink, gazing out over the darkness of the backyard. For a moment, I hoped she had given up the Amelia Earhart stuff and was just Mom again, even if Mom would yell at me for being out late and not letting anyone know where I was. Then I noticed she had a dozen index cards in her hands and that she was whispering to herself. “. . . aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies the possible relationships of women with the creations of science . . .”

  When I hit a creaky spot on the floor, she glanced up. “Hello there,” she said, smiling. It wasn’t Mom. “Just going over my lecture notes.”

  “Hey,” I said. I backed away, thinking I’d leave her to whatever she thought she had to be doing, but my stomach rumbled. The hot cider had been a while ago. And Mom seemed pretty distracted anyway, so I looked in the refrigerator and found a slice of leftover pizza.

  “Did they order out?” I asked. Even though Dad had said we were supposed to remind her of real-life stuff, I wasn’t sure where that line blurred.

  “Oh, yes. They got Italian. Lovely country.”

  I didn’t bother heating up the pizza. At first I considered taking it to my room, but I knew Katy would object — she had a thing about crumbs — and I didn’t want to run into Dad in case he was still awake. Instead, I sat at the table. “Have you been there?” I said. I wasn’t supposed to ask these kinds of questions, but with the rest of the house dark and quiet, it felt like Mom and I were just talking, like we sometimes did when neither of us could sleep. Even if she wouldn’t talk to me like she was my mother, I thought it would be better than not talking to her at all.

  Her smile was beatific. “I’ve been all over Europe. After my solo flight.”

  “Did you like it there?” I took a bite of pizza.

  “Well, it was very exciting. Lots of talking to the press, that kind of thing. When I came back to New York, there was a ticker-tape parade. But mostly I just wanted to be flying. G.P. says that’s all a part of it, the media side, but it’s not quite the same, is it?”

  “No, I guess not.” I’d never been in a plane before. When we went to Florida for vacation a few years ago, we drove the whole way. Maybe it would be exciting — the sudden lift and push backward into your seat, seeing the ground disappear below, rising through the clouds and into the sky.

  “So I kissed this guy tonight,” I told her. “He’s teaching me how to drive.”

  Mom’s face fell a little. She leaned forward, resting her hand on top of mine. “Now, I know attention can be nice, but don’t let romance stand in the way of your career. I told George about that before I agreed to marry him — he’d have to let me go if I wasn’t happy after a year.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I know. And Jim and I aren’t getting married or anything. I don’t even know what we’re doing. It was just nice.” I couldn’t help smiling. “Really nice.”

  She gave my hand a squeeze. “You’ll make the right decision. And look how it’s worked out for George and me so far.”

  I thought about Dad, upstairs, probably already asleep because he’d be working tomorrow and because he was exhausted. “You love him, though, right? Even though you said that he’d have to let you go if you asked him to. That was just in case. You’re not still thinking about leaving him?”

  Sighing, she drummed her fingernails against the back of my hand. “He pushes me — it’s just so much sometimes. The tours, the lectures, everything. It’s good for me, I know. But it’s quieter in the air.” She laughed. “Not with the engines, but a different kind of quiet. I suppose that’s alone enough for now.”

  One of my favorite phobias is that girls, especially those whose tastes aren’t routine, often don’t get a fair break. . . . It has come down through the generations, an inheritance of age-old customs which produced the corollary that women are bred to timidity.

  — Amelia Earhart

  On Monday, it was my job to get Katy and Teddy ready for school. Katy was all right on her own; I had to practically drag Teddy out of bed and toss him into the bathroom. He kept collapsing against me like he’d lost all muscle control. “I don’t feel well,” he said. “I’m too tired.” I told him that I didn’t care, and he could go puke in the nurse’s office at school if it came to that. After I took off Friday night, Dad wouldn’t let me out for the rest of the weekend, which meant I hadn’t seen Jim since the football game. It was the first time in a while that I was actually looking forward to school.

  “Teddy!” I shouted from the kitchen as Katy and I made lunches. “Get your butt down here or I’ll kick it down.”

  He clomped down the stairs and slumped against the kitchen table. “Hey there, sunshine,” I said.

  “Hi,” he mumbled, starting to pick at the bagel Katy had set out for him. “What’re you making?” When I told him ham and cheese, he groaned and held his head in his hands as if it weighed a thousand pounds. “I don’t want that.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Make it yourself. I’m just doing this to be nice.”

  “I don’t want to make it myself. Just make me something else.”

  I shoved the sandwich in a paper bag, along with a mini box of raisins and some baby carrots. “Oh, my God, Teddy, whine me a river.”

  He began to swing his legs, kicking the underside of the table. “Mom would make something else for me. Make me something else. Make Mom make lunch.” When I turned, Teddy’s face was red and scrunched, like he was about to cry.

  “She’s . . . sleeping,” Katy said.

  I knew Dad had talked to him about Mom, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what Dad had told him. How was he supposed to explain a mental breakdown to a seven-year-old?
At least when Mom was curled up, we could say she felt sick and achy, and he seemed to buy it. But now Mom was there but she wasn’t Mom, not even in some quiet, distant way. She would pretend that Teddy was someone else — a nephew, the son of her sister, from what I could tell. So Dad was just trying to keep Teddy away from Mom as much as possible, and he asked us to do the same.

  “We have peanut butter,” I said. “And I think chicken. Do you want that?”

  Teddy slid from his seat to the floor, disappearing under the table. “I’m not going to school today,” he said. “You didn’t have to go Friday, and I don’t have to go today.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Teddy, get up. We were helping Mom. It wasn’t a real day off.”

  His sneakers slapped the tile floor. Nearby, Jackson squeaked and moved into the living room. “Mom’s pretending to be someone else and doesn’t have to go to work. I can pretend to be someone else, too, and I won’t have to go to school.”

  Katy and I looked at each other. “Teddy,” I said. “Teddy, stop being stupid. You’re fine.”

  “I’m not Teddy.”

  I didn’t even want to ask who he’d be — some superhero, probably. For a second, I thought about saying I didn’t care if he went to school or not, but then I imagined him standing at his window, thinking he was Spider-Man and could web himself to the next house. I knelt on the floor and grabbed his arm. “Yeah, you are. Now, get up.” I pulled, and he screamed.

  By the time I heard the knocking, it was more like banging. “Door,” Katy said.

  I’d wrestled Teddy from under the table and handed him to Katy. “Calm him down or something,” I said, and rushed to the door.

  It was Mrs. Ellis, here for her first shift. “Is everything all right?” she asked, trying to glimpse behind me.

  “Yeah,” I said, “it’s just my stupid brother. Come on in.”

  She followed me into the kitchen. When Teddy saw her, he stopped struggling in Katy’s arms, embarrassed. He started to wipe his nose on Katy’s sleeve, and she yanked her arm away. “Ew, Teddy!”

  Mrs. Ellis smiled with her lips pressed together. “Well,” she said, “it looks like you’ve been having quite a morning.”

  Suddenly I felt like we were such a mess. The counter was covered in stuff for lunch, and boxes of cereal had been left out. In the corner, the trash can was overflowing. No one had bothered to vacuum in a while, so stray bits of leaves and dog hair gathered in the corners. Since I’d been doing a lot of the laundry, all of our clothes were wrinkled. I wasn’t sure if Teddy had had a bath that weekend. We’d never been an obsessively neat family — even when Mom had all her mental capacities, she hated cleaning — but now everything felt out of order and dirty. I tugged at the ends of my hair. Even though I’d showered that morning, it felt gross and uncombed. In crisp khakis and a fisherman’s sweater, Mrs. Ellis looked fresh, but then, she always did. She was around Mom’s age, and probably Mom’s closest friend in the neighborhood. She was nice enough, and she would do stuff like lead her daughter’s Girl Scout troop and organize an egg hunt every year for Easter. Her kids — a boy and a girl, older than us — were off at college, or maybe they had even graduated by now. I wondered if they knew that their mom would be sitting with our crazy mom during the day.

  “Mom’s still asleep,” I told her. “She stays up late.”

  “That’s all right. It’s better for her to get some rest. You kids better hurry or you’ll be late for school.” She kept smiling without her teeth. It was like Mr. Kane and how he got nice. Not that Mrs. Ellis ever hated me, but I didn’t want her smiling like that, all patient and unblinking. I didn’t want her waving good-bye like she was our mom.

  I grabbed a bagel and pressed it into Teddy’s hand. “You can eat this on the bus,” I said. He didn’t argue and kept holding my hand as we marched to the bus stop.

  When I got off the bus, my insides were wringing themselves in anxiety. I wanted to see Jim — and I didn’t want to see him. What if he thought us making out was a total joke? What if I saw him pressed up against a locker with some short-skirted freshman? What if he thought I was a loser, just like everybody else? But he was also the only person I felt calm around these days. In phys ed, Mrs. Harriott matched everyone up with a partner to practice backhands, and, of course, I got paired with Amanda Baxter, tennis champion, so I never got the chance to really talk to him.

  A couple of hours later, when I was in line to get an iced tea at the cafeteria, Theresa and Maddie were talking about how their moms sucked, and I didn’t even want to hear it. Jim was just paying for his lunch when I caught his eye.

  “Hey,” he said. “I was gonna eat outside. You want to come?”

  I said yes without even looking at my friends or explaining to them what had happened.

  We found an empty spot outside the gymnasium. It was sunny, and probably one of the last nice days we’d get to have lunch outside before the cold weather set in. Nearby, kids with sixth-period phys ed jogged around the edge of the soccer field. At the tennis courts, Mrs. Harriott blew her whistle, and the kids ran over to her, cutting down the white center line. Jim told me about Will’s party — “A lot of random sophomores showed up; you didn’t miss much”— and I told him about crashing senior parties when I was a freshman and on JV soccer.

  “It was like we were these stupid little magpies, going after whatever was shiniest,” I said. “We just stayed in a huge clump and giggled a lot.”

  “But you don’t play anymore, right? Soccer, I mean.”

  I shook my head. “I decided not to this year.”

  “Why not?”

  I rubbed my thumb against the label on my bottle of iced tea until the edge came unglued. “I was just sick of it. I mean, I really liked playing, but it was, like, a lot of pressure.” I could almost hear my mom, telling me that I could do better.

  “Like how?”

  “It just was.” My tone was harsher than I intended, and Jim blinked in surprise.

  “Sorry,” he said stiffly. “I just think if you like something, you shouldn’t let stuff like that stop you.”

  I peeled the label off my bottle and took a breath. “So if you could be anyone, who would you be?”

  Jim bit into an apple. “That sounds like the essay question on a college application.” He grinned. “Are you trying to steal my answer? Because I’m definitely getting into Harvard with that one.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think I’ll have a better chance if I apply as you. Seriously, it’s just a fun question.”

  “Anyone?” he asked.

  I sipped my iced tea. “Anyone. Living, dead, imaginary, whoever. If you could just become them.”

  He leaned back against the brick wall of the gym. “I don’t know. Let me think for a second — I have to remember everyone who’s ever existed in the universe.”

  “Not everyone,” I said. “Just the good ones. That cuts out, what, like fifty gazillion people? That’s so easy.”

  He laughed; I loved that I could make Jim Wiley laugh.

  “Time’s up,” I said. “Who would you pick?”

  “Oh, thanks. Only the huge question of my future identity and you give me about a minute and a half.” He exhaled sharply. “I don’t know. Maybe Banksy.”

  “Banksy?”

  “He’s this street artist from England,” Jim explained. “Graffiti artist, you know. But it’s not just tags or whatever. He does these really cool stencil paintings and prints, with all these subversive messages. And of course his work is on regular building walls. You could walk down the street and see his work. In fact . . .” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, scanned through it for a second, and then handed it to me. I flipped through the images — a bird with a gasoline nozzle for a head, two kissing policemen, a wall labeled DESIGNATED PICNIC AREA.

  I handed Jim back his phone. “That last one is stenciled writing. Does that count as art?”

  “Why not? That’s what I like about it. Plus, not many people know who
Banksy actually is. You don’t have to be some famous guy hanging art in famous galleries to be an artist. I think that’s pretty cool.”

  I just stared at Jim for a second. Even though I’d seen him try to do graffiti art on the boulder, I didn’t peg him as someone who would have thought much about what it meant to be an artist. “Is that like what you were doing at the rock?”

  He laughed. “Trying to do. The rock’s a good place to practice because people don’t notice if it sucks.”

  “I think you’d make a good Banksy.”

  Jim’s face reddened a little, and he nudged me with his knee. “Maybe he’ll go crazy and cut his ear off, Van Gogh — style, and I’ll have to pick someone else to be.”

  I stiffened at the word “crazy” but tried to smile. “You have nice ears. Don’t get rid of them.”

  “Thanks. I kind of like them myself. Anyway, he’s the first one I thought of,” Jim said. “There’s probably somebody better, but for now I’ll say Banksy.” He tapped my knee with his apple. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Come on, it’s your question,” he said. “You have to know.”

  It seemed dangerous to even think about. “What about Amelia Earhart?”

  Jim nodded. “She was pretty cool. Except for that whole thing where she died young. You lose points for that.”

  “Disappeared,” I said. “No one actually knows what happened to her.”

  “I dunno, some people have some convincing theories. Like, I’m pretty sure aliens got her.” He laughed and nudged my leg with his.

  I wished aliens had abducted Amelia Earhart. Then Mom probably wouldn’t have wanted to be her. “Yeah, she was just the first person who popped into my head anyway. I’d probably choose someone else.” I tugged a blade of grass from the ground and began tearing it into tiny pieces. “Maybe Jane Eyre.”