The Chance You Won't Return Read online

  I forced laugh. “Right, I mean, I have this paper about her and she’s kind of interesting. I don’t know if she’s a favorite, exactly.” I wished he’d forgotten about that. What had I been thinking, bringing her up in the first place? Now if he ever found out about my mom, he’d think that I was some nutcase, too. And what if that was the truth? That it was just waiting somewhere in the crevices of my brain?

  But I still wanted the books.

  “Well, I need to go,” I said. “Gotta pick up my little brother. Driving tomorrow night?”

  “Sure,” Jim said. “And if you’re not busy this weekend, there’s this haunted hayride thing people are going to. It sounds cheesy, but a bunch of us went last year and it ended up being kind of fun.”

  I imagined trying to make conversation with Jim’s friends, none of whom knew me that well. They’d have to ask about driver’s ed, and maybe they’d heard about my mom showing up at school. “Scary stuff isn’t really my thing.”

  “Trust me, it’s not that scary,” he said. “Last year we spent pretty much the whole time laughing.”

  “What if we did something else instead? Just us?” I suggested. I didn’t want to blow Jim off entirely, but I couldn’t handle being around a lot of other people.

  “We could do both,” he said. “The hayride thing one night and just us another? It’s not that scary, I promise, and my friends won’t be dicks about it.”

  “No, I’m sure,” I said, “but I’d rather do just us.” I suddenly realized I was pushing Jim into a real date, and why couldn’t I act normal for five seconds? Maybe he wasn’t into that just yet and I’d inadvertently ruined whatever we had going.

  But he studied me for a second, then nodded. “Just us works, too. We could see a movie, or there’s the bowling place —”

  “Let’s do bowling. Fair warning — I used to dominate the bowling birthday party games.”

  “I’ll make sure to bring my A-game. Or, you know, at least my B-game,” he said. At the library door, Mrs. Frasier appeared with chemistry book in hand. “That’s my cue. Enjoy Earhart.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, thanks.” I made a mental note to keep the Amelia references to myself from then on — especially when we went out this weekend. Even though I accidentally made it happen, I felt a sudden rush of excitement for my first non-driving-related date with Jim. “Good luck with the chemistry and all.”

  When he went back to his table to meet Mrs. Frasier, I stuffed the books in my bag. I took a breath and strode to the door, hoping Jim wasn’t watching me, because if he was, he would have seen me leave without checking anything out.

  How did she know it all? After going through the books, I would try to get Mom to slip up. I’d ask her about specifics from Amelia Earhart’s life — the name of the town where she was born, how long she’d been at Columbia and what classes she took. Maybe if I found something she didn’t know about, I would get a glimpse of Mom again without her Amelia mask. But Mom always knew the answers. And she was always so happy to tell me.

  “Women need practical clothing,” she insisted. She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed, half her wardrobe spread across the room and a large sketchbook in her lap. At first I thought she was actively trying to give me more laundry to do (it was piling up in the basement), but she looked so proud of herself. “It’ll be a whole fashion line — my designs and my name.”

  I almost laughed. She had to be making this up. “So like, what, goggles and bomber jackets?”

  “Dresses, blouses, hats. Clothing any woman could wear.” She passed me her sketchbook. I flipped through pages of poorly drawn models in boxy outfits.

  I handed the notebook back. “Who’s going to sell it?”

  “Macy’s in New York and Marshall Field’s in Chicago. We’re hoping to have the line in stores within the next year.”

  “Which would be . . .”

  “Oh, 1934 or so.”

  I wondered how the span of her life matched the span of Amelia’s life. Was a day for Mom the same as a day for Amelia Earhart? Did it matter if today was a Thursday or a day in October? Or could Mom decide she wanted to live a certain part of Amelia’s life and it became real, even if it didn’t match up with Amelia’s real timeline?

  “You must be busy,” I said.

  She nodded and began scribbling in her sketchbook. “Which is why I can’t waste a moment.” I returned a skirt to her closet when she wasn’t looking; I’d have to do the rest when she moved on to another activity.

  It was like she’d been studying for a test and felt so pleased at knowing all the answers. I almost didn’t want to stumble across an answer she didn’t know.

  If I had my license, I would have told Jim I’d meet him at the bowling alley. As it was, he had to pick me up at home, which meant I kept vigil by the living-room window and waited to see his car turn onto our street.

  “So is this like a date?” Katy asked, perching on the arm of a nearby chair.

  “Kind of,” I said.

  “When you go driving, is that a date?”

  “No, that’s just driving.”

  “So is Jim your boyfriend or your driving instructor?”

  I frowned at her. “Don’t you have homework to do or Jackson to walk?”

  Katy opened her mouth to ask what was sure to be another obnoxious question when something crashed in the next room. “Everything under control!” Mom called, but I rushed into the kitchen anyway.

  She was on her knees, half in one of the cabinets, pushing aside pots and pans. “Trying to find the right equipment,” she said.

  “Well, it’s not in there,” I told her. “Just, please, don’t make so much noise at least. Jim’ll be here any minute and —”

  Dad rushed downstairs. “Alex, I got it,” he said, bending down to where Mom was still rifling through the cabinet. “These are all pans, cooking equipment.”

  “Gip, I think I know what I’m doing,” she snapped.

  “Alex!” Katy called from the living room. “He’s here.”

  Shit. “I’ll be back later,” I shouted to Dad as I ran for the front door. He tried to ask if I had money, but Mom was still trying to argue with him and I didn’t stay to hear what else he had to say.

  I met Jim halfway to the driveway, slightly out of breath. “Hey,” I said, passing him on the way to his car. “Let’s go.”

  He stopped and turned sharply to me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m great. Just really excited about bowling.”

  “You sure?” He glanced back at the house.

  “Yes, let’s just go.”

  He took a couple steps forward, then stopped. “Are your parents not okay with us going out or something?”

  “No,” I said, a little louder than I meant to. “They’re fine. Seriously. It’s nothing, I promise.”

  He didn’t seem convinced, but he didn’t argue anymore. In the car, Arcade Fire filled in the space that would have otherwise been an awkward silence. I cursed myself for not handling things better and potentially ruining our maybe-first-date before it started.

  “You look really nice,” Jim said suddenly.

  “Thanks,” I said. I’d changed a few times before settling on skinny jeans and a cute top, which Katy assured me looked cute but would still let me bowl well. Jim was wearing a plaid shirt that made his eyes glow even bluer than usual. “So do you.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I figure my excellent fashion skills might distract you from bowling and maybe give me a chance to win.”

  I smiled. “Not a prayer.”

  I hadn’t been to the bowling alley in years, but it looked just like I remembered it. The fluorescent sign above the door was supposed to say LEWIS AND CLARK LANES but only illuminated LEW AND LARK LANE. Inside, they had the same spiral-patterned carpet and the air smelled like French fries and shoe disinfectant.

  We rented shoes and took a spot at our assigned lane. “This looks like a good one,” I said. “Lucky lane s
even.”

  “I called ahead,” Jim said, and nudged me a little. We were both bent forward to slip on our rental shoes, heads almost touching. I smelled his peppermint shampoo and felt a little dizzy remembering how we’d kissed behind the library.

  “I’m really glad we’re doing this,” I told him.

  “Me too,” he said. We leaned a little closer to kiss; it was brief but I felt it down to my rental shoes.

  “Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m going to take it easy on you,” I said.

  I was up first and threw a gutter ball. Behind me, I heard Jim laugh. “Where’s all that big talk now?” he asked.

  “I’m lulling you into a false sense of security.” I picked up my second ball and took a breath, trying to remember how to step and swing my arm with the right speed and force and timing. The ball rolled steadily down the lane and knocked over nine pins.

  “All right, I’m sufficiently nervous again,” Jim said. “Any tips?”

  “Try to time your steps with your arms, like this.” I demonstrated the action I meant. “And don’t try to twist your body or arm around.”

  “Try to move like I know what I’m doing. Got it.” Jim knocked over four pins on his first try. “You’re good at this sports thing,” he said. “It’s like your body naturally knows how to do it. In gym, you seem to get things, too.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not hard to look that capable in Mrs. Harriott’s class.”

  He threw another ball and hit two more pins. “No, you’re good. Trust me, I know — I ’m always flailing around after some stupid ball, and you never flail.”

  I wondered how long Jim had been noticing me in class and hid a smile. “I flail sometimes. But I guess it’s just something I like doing. You don’t need to stop and think about every little thing — you just go. And when you’re on a team and the other people know what they’re doing, too, it’s like you’re all part of this one motion. You get each other without having to talk about it. For a little while, at least.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  I stood and picked up another ball, balancing it in my hand. “Sometimes. It’s, like, the first season I haven’t played since I was six, and it already feels like it was part of some different life.” The ball hurdled down the lane and smacked directly into middle pins, sending all the others flying. I did a mini victory dance on my way back to the bench. Jim laughed and the sound made me feel effervescent.

  “Okay, if you win,” Jim said, “I’m blaming it on the unfair advantage of you having athletic talent.”

  We played three games, and I won all of them. By the last game, Jim caught up so that he just missed winning by two points. “That was really close,” I said. “I almost got worried.” When he raised an eyebrow at me, I laughed. “Almost.”

  “Next time, I think we should combine forces and get people to put money on a game,” he said. “Will McNamee would totally take that bet.”

  I stiffened a little at the mention of Jim’s friends. “Maybe.”

  “They’re pretty cool — Will and everybody,” Jim said, his voice a little sharper than I’d expected. “No pressure or anything, but I think you guys would get along.”

  “I know.” I untied my shoes slower than necessary. Jim’s friends seemed fine, but I was worried about being around them and having to keep track of the lies I’d have to tell. It was hard enough with just Jim. “It’s just that I don’t get a lot of free nights, with having to babysit my brother, and I’d rather it be us than a big group of people.” It wasn’t the exact truth, but it was the closest I could get. “And besides, we’ve got to practice a lot if we’re going to destroy everyone else at bowling.”

  “You can show me all your secrets,” Jim said.

  I half smiled. “One or two.”

  An individual’s life on the ground or in the air may depend on a split second.

  — Amelia Earhart

  “What’s the legal parking distance from a traffic light?” Jim was flipping through a copy of the DMV driving manual, which Mr. Kane had lent me. “I don’t even remember that, which shows that you just need to know all of this for one test.”

  “All right, give me a minute,” I said. We were sprawled in the backseat of my mom’s car, leaning against opposite doors with our legs crowding the middle of the seat. We’d been practicing actual driving for an hour — again around the back roads. (This time, however, Jim had me drive most of the way there. It was the first time I saw an oncoming car. When I saw the headlights, I hit the brake even though the other car was safely in its lane.) After doing the road practice, I suggested we go over the manual, which meant we made out in the backseat for a while. It was like that first time behind the library — just Jim, me, and the stars, everything exactly right. Finally we agreed we should do at least a little studying before I had to be home. Even with our shirts back on, it was kind of hard to concentrate on laws about distances and speeds. I kept remembering the pressure of his lips against mine and how good he looked without a shirt. “Ten feet?”

  “Close. Thirty.”

  “Oh, come on, that’s way too much. Who needs all that room to turn?”

  Jim raised an eyebrow. “Have you seen your turns?”

  “Really funny.” I kicked his shin a little. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m an awesome driver. I take those hairpin turns like a pro.”

  “Sure, once you pass driver’s ed you’ll be ready for the Indy 500.” He grinned. “Maybe in class you should practice going from 0 to 120 in under four seconds. Mr. Kane would love that.”

  I laughed. “I don’t think the driver’s ed Volvo could take it.”

  “It’ll go out in a blaze of glory.” He flipped through the manual. “All right, how about this one: What does a single broken line on the road mean?”

  “You can pass cars, if there’s no traffic coming from the opposite lane.” In the backseat, on the side of the road, it felt like our own little world. I leaned against the door and the cool glass of the window. “Give me another one,” I said.

  Jim paged through the manual. “You know this pretty well.”

  “I already took the permit exam. You had to pass that to get into driver’s ed.”

  “I failed it my first time — the permit exam. By three points.”

  I tugged at a loose thread on my shirt. “How about that time you drove into a house?”

  Jim reached back and rubbed his head. “Yeah, how about that?” He paused, and I wasn’t sure if I had gone too far. I was about to tell him never mind, but he said, “So Will McNamee and I’ve been friends since first grade — even our parents are friends. Barbecues in the summer, trips to D.C., that kind of thing. He’s the one who always knows who’s having a party, so I’d go out a lot with him, to people’s houses or to some random field if somebody’s brother could get a keg. Or we’d smoke up in his basement. It wasn’t a problem, but I wasn’t exactly doing a lot else with my time. And one night we raided his parents’ liquor cabinet, which wasn’t anything new, and then I drove home. I wasn’t even crazy drunk, just a little buzzed.” He drummed his fingertips on the front of the driving manual. “Plus, I’m kind of on epilepsy medication —”

  “You’re epileptic?” I said.

  “Yeah, sort of. I get petit mal seizures — not the big stuff, jerking around on the floor. I kind of zone out for maybe half a minute. And that night I didn’t take my medication because I wanted to drink with Will. I didn’t want to have to deal with it, you know? Which was really dumb of me because that’s actually what did it. I had a seizure, and by the time I came to I was face-first in an air bag.”

  “Did you get hurt?”

  “A broken arm from how the hood crunched in, and some cuts and bruises. Otherwise I was fine. I had the seat belt on.” He laughed grimly. “Safety first, right? And it was, like, all of a sudden, my parents were right there — my mom crying and yelling at me, and my dad not saying anything, which was worse, because usually he’s the first pe
rson to yell at me.”

  I remembered seeing Jim’s home that cold morning, with the neighbors crowding the driveway, the tow truck pulling the car out of the Wileys’ yard, and the chunk of brick and plaster missing, exposing part of the Wileys’ house. I remembered Jim’s dad reaching out to touch the broken pieces.

  “He was so pissed at me,” Jim said. “My dad. He didn’t talk to me for days. Then when he did, he said, ‘You could have killed us.’ Which was true. So I wasn’t too upset when they sent me to my grandparents.”

  I wasn’t sure Mom would notice if I drove a car into the house. Or maybe she would, but she would make an excuse for it, call it a malfunctioning plane. Blame faulty equipment. “Is your dad still mad at you?”

  Jim shrugged. “Not as much as before. But sometimes he just looks at me and it’s like he can still see the house all smashed up.”

  “My mom never lets anything drop,” I said. It wasn’t exactly true anymore, but saying it made me feel like it was real. “If I do one thing even a little wrong she’s all over it.”

  “And we’re supposed to mess up, right? It makes us learn from our mistakes so we’re better and stronger for it.”

  “Obviously we’re going to be really strong people.” I reached across the seat and brushed his hand. “So do you still get seizures?”

  He paged through the driver’s manual. “Sometimes. Not that often. I got new medication and I’m better about taking it. That was, like, the third time I’ve had a seizure that even did anything. The first time anyone noticed was when I was in second grade and I was playing Little League. I was awful anyway, like, could not hit a ball, and in the middle of the game I’m at bat and not hitting anything and I collapse on home plate. Little League was too stressful for me, apparently.”

  “That’s so scary.”

  “I was passed out, so I don’t remember much. My parents were freaking out. The next year was a lot of testing to make sure my brain was okay, which it is. As far as I know.”

  “Good,” I said. “I like your brain. I like all your parts.”