The Chance You Won't Return Read online

  But he didn’t ask me any of that. Instead he said, “Should I stay with you guys until your dad gets home? If your mom’s not okay.”

  I shook my head. “No, we’re fine. You can go.” He probably thought Mom was an alcoholic, and that’s why she’d been so out of it. I couldn’t explain how the truth was much stranger. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He stared at me for a second and shrugged. “See you.”

  I watched the van pull out of the driveway and turn onto the street. For a moment, I waited on the lawn, hugging my arms to my chest. If the young skeletons and fairies noticed me, they probably thought I was just cold and waiting for someone.

  That night, Dad lectured at Teddy about leaving without telling anyone — and Mom didn’t count as “anyone.” It was the first time Teddy had gotten in major trouble, and afterward I heard him smashing his Halloween costume to bits.

  I tapped on his door and entered without waiting for permission. Teddy stood in the middle of torn cardboard and smashed plastic, cheeks flushed with fury, guilt, and sadness.

  “It’s gonna be hard to get to Jupiter now,” I said.

  Teddy thumped onto his carpet. “Dad was really mad at me. I didn’t mean to.”

  I sat beside him and he curled up against me, warm like a puppy. “I know. It’s okay.” Sniffling beside me, he seemed much younger than seven. I thought of Katy, dressed as the Tin Man and out with her friends, pretending everything was fine. She and Teddy shouldn’t have had to deal with this. But I was glad to have them around, as selfish as that was. They were the only two people who actually could relate to what I was going through.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered to Teddy, and wanted it to be true. I let him play on my cell phone and quietly threw away the pieces of his costume while he wasn’t looking.

  Over a mapped territory the pilot without much trouble can clock his speed with the landmarks he can recognize. When landmarks aren’t available, different types of indicators are used to make the calculation.

  — Amelia Earhart

  The Monday after Halloween was the first day I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Jim at school. It was my fault, of course — I’d given him a glimpse into the craziness at home and now I wished I could erase it all. I wanted to keep going like we had been, with driving lessons and laughing during lunch and furious kissing. Anything else would just complicate things.

  I was intentionally late to homeroom so he couldn’t find me beforehand, but it was impossible to avoid him during gym. Maddie had started talking with a couple of girls from her English class, so I was alone when class began. Jim stood beside me as Mrs. Harriott was breaking up the class into flag football teams.

  “Hey, you okay?” he whispered. “I didn’t see you this morning, so I thought —”

  “Oh, I’m fine. We’re all fine. Thanks for helping me out last night.”

  “It’s cool,” he said, taking a red flag football belt from the bag and handing it to me. “If you ever need a chauffeur, I’m your guy.”

  For a second, I thought that maybe I could tell him. He looked at me so solidly. Every other part of my life felt unsteady, but around Jim I was centered. When everyone else had thought I was a loser who couldn’t drive, Jim had stood up for me. If I could tell anyone about Mom, it was Jim. But if he did get freaked out, I’d lose the one good thing I had right now. It was too much to risk.

  I took the belt from him and forced a smile. “Just when you thought they couldn’t make gym uniforms any more repulsive.”

  Jim shrugged. “I think you look good.”

  Now my smile wasn’t forced. Mrs. Harriott yelled at us to line up — perfect timing, of course. As she went over the rules, I decided I wouldn’t tell Jim about my mom. It was definitely too much to risk.

  November was raw — cold and wet, but never snowing. The trees lost all their leaves, so the world looked brown and gray for days on end. I counted the sunny days we’d had since Halloween — about four, in a span of more than two weeks. On the morning news, meteorologists always mentioned that temperatures were below average for this time of year. They claimed it was going to be a long, hard winter.

  Even after several weeks, it was still weird seeing Mrs. Ellis at our house. Usually she would be doing something productive — paying bills or knitting or starting her Christmas card list — while Mom rhapsodized about her first transatlantic solo flight. Sometimes they walked around the neighborhood, which usually put my mother in a good mood. Most of the time, Mom called Mrs. Ellis “Pidge.” Mrs. Ellis’s expression was always placid.

  “Hi there, Alex,” Mrs. Ellis said before she even saw me, having heard the front door open. I shuffled into the kitchen, where Mom and Mrs. Ellis were sitting at the table. No maps today.

  “Come in, come in,” Mom said. “I was just telling Pidge about the Pacific flight I’ve got planned. I’d like to hear your thoughts on the route.”

  I tossed my backpack aside and got a glass of water. “Right, the Pacific flight. Exciting.”

  Mrs. Ellis gathered her knitting — a lopsided sweater with snowflakes around the neckline — and smiled at me. “Not a bad day today,” she told me. “I think the new medication she’s on is helping. She doesn’t get as upset if I remind her I’m not Pidge.”

  “Just kind of ignores you, right?”

  She cleared her throat. “Well, yes. But it’s better than when she used to get mad and refuse to talk for an hour. I think it’s progress.”

  Mom had been going to therapy for about a month now. I hadn’t been since the first time, but Dad went with her every week. I didn’t ask what they talked about, but I could get the gist from Dad’s attitude when they got back. Sometimes he’d be quiet and continually reach for his beard, stroking it thoughtfully. Other times he’d put on Patsy Cline as he made dinner, chopping vegetables in time with the bass. Mom had been on a few different medications at this point; one shelf in Mom and Dad’s bathroom was lined with tiny orange bottles, all with scientific-sounding names. Even so, I didn’t see a lot of progress. Mom still thought she was Amelia Earhart; she still thought Katy and I were in the Ninety-Nines and that Teddy was her nephew; we still lived with her maps, notebooks of lecture notes, and linen scarf.

  But I didn’t say that to Mrs. Ellis. “Great. That’s awesome.”

  She got her coat from the closet. Pulling it on, she asked, “How was your day?”

  “Fine.” I gulped my water.

  “Any big tests coming up? Julia and Ryan were always stressing out this time of the year, just counting the days until winter break.”

  “Nothing too bad.”

  “Your dad mentioned you were studying for a driving test. That must be exiting.” She pulled mittens out of her coat pockets and tugged them on. “Julia couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel.”

  I set my glass on the counter. “Well, the test is because I’m the worst one in my class, and my teacher’s just being nice and giving me this test so I don’t totally fail.”

  From the table, Mom said, “Don’t be so modest. There’s no way you’re the worst one. In fact, I’d love your advice about the wind patterns.” She stood and rubbed her hands together as if she were cold. “Let me get my notes.”

  Mrs. Ellis and I watched Mom rush up the stairs. For a second, we listened to her footsteps above us, in her bedroom. Mrs. Ellis sighed softly. “In any case, good luck with the test. Driving isn’t as hard as it looks.”

  She left without saying good-bye. I felt a twinge of guilt when I heard the door close. I’d been a bitch, and Mrs. Ellis had been a big help to us. But I didn’t like her asking about my day, as if she felt bad for me because my own mom wouldn’t do that. And she was so hopeful about everything, even something little like the fact that Mom just decided to ignore her when she wouldn’t play along with Mom’s delusions. I didn’t care about little shifts. Only something huge would impress me.

  Mom came back with an armful of maps and notebooks. I kept noticing n
ew ones, with images of Europe, Africa, or Australia. Ones that she couldn’t have picked up around the house. She unfolded them on the table. “I think for the starting position —”

  “How about later?” I said, grabbing my backpack. “Lots of homework.”

  Her face fell a little. “All right. I’ll make some notes for you.”

  Listening to the scratch of her pencil as I walked away, I wondered about all the details she knew. So far, they seemed to line up with what I’d read in my stolen book and ripped pages.

  I stepped carefully into Mom and Dad’s room, even though there wasn’t a huge reason to be cautious with Mom occupied downstairs. The bed had been made that morning, albeit messily. I wondered if that was Mom’s or Dad’s work. Everything else seemed ordinary — a pair of Dad’s pants cast over a chair, a watch sitting on a nightstand. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, exactly. Something that explained how Mom knew so much about Amelia Earhart. It wasn’t like she’d come up a lot before October.

  Kneeling, I checked under the bed — nothing. Nothing under the mattress, either. I opened the drawers of her nightstand: a random collection of forgotten paperback novels, hairpins, and travel packages of Kleenex.

  Geez, I thought. What if she’s possessed by the ghost of Amelia Earhart?

  I opened the closet door and peeked in. Nothing looked unusual among the blouses and khakis. On the floor, shoes overflowed shoe boxes.

  Then I saw it, under a pair of brown boots — Amelia’s face.

  I opened the shoe box and found two biographies hidden there. There were eight other boxes. In each one, I found the same thing — biographies, autobiographies, biographies written for children, books about the various disappearance theories, books about aviation, a Lindbergh biography, a DVD of a PBS special about Earhart, several printouts from various websites, even a few novels featuring Earhart as a main character. More maps and charts. Receipts from orders from an aeronautical map website. A couple of other linen scarves, although not as nice as the one she usually wore.

  Mom’s stockpile spread on the floor around me, I felt breathless. How long had she been squirreling it away? It must have been months; the oldest receipt I could find was from last summer. How hadn’t any of us noticed? Did she even need to look at these anymore, or did she refer back to them a lot to make sure she had gotten all her facts straight? Did she take out a book when the rest of us were in bed, reading until she had nearly every detail memorized? I shivered, imagining Mom sitting at the kitchen table at three a.m. with Amelia Earhart, until she couldn’t tell the difference between Amelia and herself.

  It was like seeing a virus under a microscope, one that had caused a serious illness. Sitting among the Earhart paraphernalia, I worried that I could be infected, too.

  Stuck in one of the biographies, like a bookmark, was a folded piece of paper that I expected to be another map or more aeronautical information, but at the top it read HISTOPATHOLOGY REPORT and listed Mom’s name as the patient. I scanned through sections like GROSS DESCRIPTION and MICROSCOPIC DESCRIPTION without understanding much of it until I found the word I was waiting for: benign.

  “What . . .? What . . .?”

  I hadn’t heard Mom’s footsteps on the stairs. Now she was standing in the doorway, gaping at me like a goldfish and unable to make a full sentence. I shoved the pathology report back into its book.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to shove books back into their shoe boxes.

  Her face crumpled. “What are you doing?” She pressed her fingertips to her temples as though afraid her brain might explode in her skull.

  “I’m putting it back,” I said. “I didn’t mean —”

  She practically fell on the floor beside me and snatched a biography out of my hands. “You’re not doing it right!” Her voice was choked, and she was on the verge of shouting. It reminded me of that horrible day with Mr. Kane, when I had been in the car with her and she didn’t remember how the car worked. “Stop it!”

  I backed off. “All right, you do it.” A couple of tears rolled down her flushed cheeks, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away as she replaced everything in the closet.

  “You had no right,” she said, staring into her closet as if it were a great void. “I’m trying very hard. I do everything I can, and these are my things. Mine. No one is supposed to see them or talk about them.” When she looked at me, her face was drawn and empty. Suddenly I felt very cold. “I can’t have you around me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, but her face didn’t change. I was used to Mom being frustrated or disappointed with me, but this was something different. I’d been trying to help, and now she thought I’d messed up everything.

  “I was trying to help,” I said, but my voice cracked on the last word. My face burned and throbbed as I struggled not to cry — not while she was staring at me so coldly, not like when we used to argue. It’s not her, I tried to remind myself, but a small part of me wanted her to wrap her arms around me so I could finally cry.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, I rushed out of the room, thinking maybe she’d at least ask me to stay and look over maps, but she didn’t seem to notice that I’d gone. In the hall, I could hear her voice get calm and steady. I was sure she wasn’t talking to me.

  Although I considered calling Dad at the post office, I waited until he got home to tell him about the stuff in Mom’s closet. After Halloween, it seemed like Dad was just waiting for me to mess up with Mom again. He had to leave me in charge when he wasn’t home, but afterward he would ask how things went, like he expected to find the house burned down or Mom having escaped in a prop plane. So I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to tell him about Mom’s stuff. But I figured he would probably have to know that kind of thing for therapy. (“Where did your wife learn about Earhart?” “Beats me, probably picked it up on the street.”) I waited until after dinner, when he had settled into his chair in the living room with the newspaper in his hand and Jackson at his feet.

  He didn’t say anything at first, just stared at a spot on the carpet. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me until he said, “Do you think that was all of it?”

  “I didn’t exactly get a chance to look around. She was really mad at me.” Mad seemed like the wrong word, but I didn’t know how else to describe how panicked and lost she’d been.

  Jackson stretched and yawned, and Dad reached down to rub his ears. “I guess we know now,” he said.

  “I guess.” I wanted him to thank me or say that it had been a helpful find, but he didn’t. “There was something else there, too. It was, like, test results.”

  Dad looked at me and I knew I didn’t have to explain. “Your mom had some tests done a few months ago,” he said. “She’s fine. It was just something her doctor wanted to check on.”

  “They thought she had cancer.”

  He took a breath. “They wanted to make sure that she didn’t have cancer. Your grandma died of ovarian cancer, so they were just being cautious. Seriously. We didn’t want to worry you guys for no reason.”

  I wondered how long Mom had to wait for the results. I didn’t even know what day she went in for testing. Maybe we’d fought that morning. Maybe she pretended to listen to Teddy repeat some joke he’d heard on TV while thinking about how something dangerous might have been growing inside her. But instead of asking Dad when it happened, I said, “What are you going to do? About the books and stuff.”

  He jostled the paper. “Ask Dr. McGlynn about it.”

  “But that’s not until the end of the week. Should we get rid of them? Or just leave them there? Do you think she looks at them a lot?”

  “Alex, I don’t know. It can’t do any more harm to leave them there for a few more days, so that’s what I’m going to do. I think it’ll be worse if we try to move them — she’s probably worried about that, now that she knows that you know about them.”

  The idea made me want to see if the stash was still in her closet. “But what if it just ma
kes things worse?”

  “I told you: I don’t know,” he said sharply. “I’m trying here, Alex, I really am, but I don’t have any of the answers hidden away. I’m trying as hard as I can to make the right calls. You’re just gonna have to trust me on this.”

  I stood. “Fine.”

  “Hey.” Dad set his newspaper aside. “You want to go over stuff for Mr. Kane’s test? That’s coming up.”

  I paused at the door. “That’s all right. I got it.” When I was little, Dad would go over multiplication tables or spelling lists with me. And I really needed to ace this test. But now it seemed like he and I were fighting all the time, instead of Mom and me — a kind of trade. Trudging up the stairs to my room, I felt a thick emptiness in my stomach, like homesickness. Like I missed them both.

  In gym class, we started the volleyball unit — the one sport that I couldn’t do. Whenever I hit the ball, it went in the opposite direction I’d meant for it to go. Since I was tall, Mrs. Harriott thought I’d be a star, even though I’d had the same problem for the past two years. After a few days of “Come on, Winchester, focus!” I wanted to send the ball at her head. Too bad I lacked control.

  Maddie shared my frustration. She’d tried to get out of it on the first day, with a fake doctor’s note saying she had weak wrists and shouldn’t use them to hit anything. Too bad Mrs. Harriott recognized that Maddie’s “doctor” had the same signature as her “mom,” who wrote to excuse Maddie when she had her period.

  “I think Edward Baker’s going bald,” Maddie told me as we lined up on the volleyball court. “Yesterday I was following him down the staircase from the English hall, and you could totally see it — bald spot. What is he, like, sixteen?”

  I smirked. “By graduation he’ll have a comb-over.”

  Maddie gagged. “Oh, God, at least we’ll have those funny hats to wear. He can cover it up so the rest of us don’t vomit.”