Takeoffs and Landings

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “I think you’ve said quite enough,” Mom said.

  “No, wait,” Lori pleaded. She thought about all the times on this trip that Mom had given her that appalled look. Until now, Lori knew she had deserved every single one of them. She deserved it on that first airplane trip, when Chuck threw up, and Lori was mean, and Mom sliced her into shreds with a single glance. Lori deserved the looks in Chicago, when she kept asking nasty questions, and Mom’s answers got icier and icier and icier, until Lori was sure she finally understood the meaning of “absolute zero.”

  But Lori hadn’t deserved Mom’s glares last night or the cruel way she’d snapped, “You stay out of Chuck’s suitcase. You hear?” And she didn’t deserve Mom’s anger now. Lori had been trying to help Chuck, showing Mom his drawings. She’d been, well, almost proud of him, wanting someone else to see what he could do. It wasn’t even like she’d been snooping in his suitcase to begin with. She’d just seen his drawing pad hidden under his bed back in Philadelphia, and she’d picked it up, thinking some other guest had left it behind.

  But had Mom given her a chance to explain that?

  And this morning, she was just trying to get Mom to understand what it was like for Chuck at school. And for Lori. It wasn’t Lori’s fault other kids were mean.

  Or was it?

  Lori thought about all the times she’d heard other kids call to Chuck, “Hey, Lardson,” all the times she’d heard them taunt, “Do you even have a brain?”

  Could she have stopped them?

  She thought about the postcard she’d almost sent from Atlanta, making fun of Chuck for sneaking out to art museums. Did that count as joining in?

  “Mom,” Lori pleaded again, but it was no use. She sounded guilty now. She was guilty.

  Chuck came out of the bathroom just then, and Mom and Lori sprang apart instantly, like they were doing something wrong. Like they had to hide the fact that they’d been talking about him. Chuck looked dazedly from Mom to Lori.

  Lori stared back at Chuck like he was some stranger she’d never seen before. Like he was an exhibit in a museum.

  He was fat. But he wasn’t really any fatter than lots of other kids back home—Robert Hayes, for example, who was some big star on the football team. Nobody teased Robert.

  Chuck had his mouth open slightly, and that made him look dumb. But he had to breathe through his mouth sometimes because he had bad allergies. It wasn’t his fault.

  Chuck was wearing stiff new blue jeans and a polo shirt Mom had gotten him, with vertical red-and-blue stripes. (Had Mom thought that would be slimming?) The shirt was a little too big on him, and maybe too grown-up. It looked like he’d borrowed it from some businessman at a conference Mom had spoken at—like one of them had said, I brought this because I thought I was going to have time to play golf, but I didn’t. Want it for your son? Chuck just didn’t look comfortable wearing that shirt.

  Did Chuck ever look comfortable?

  Chuck still had comb marks in his wet hair, and that made him look younger. For just a second, Lori saw past the fat and the dumb expression and the ill-fitting shirt. She saw the little boy who had been her best friend and constant companion. The one she would have walked barefoot across a field of burrs and thistles for. The one she worried about when he got carsick. (“Chuckie okay now? Chuckie okay now?” she used to ask, again and again, because her whole world depended on hearing the right answer.)

  The one she’d been mad at for the past eight years, without even knowing why.

  Lori waited for the familiar fury to hit her again, but it didn’t come right away.

  “Chuck,” she said weakly. “When we get home and you start taking art lessons, if anyone makes fun of you for it, I’ll make them stop.”

  At the same time, Mom was saying, “Chuck, we need to figure out how to deal with those kids who are making fun of you. Who are they? I bet I went to school with the parents of pretty much everyone in your class. If you tell me who’s teasing you, I could make some calls, talk to their parents—”

  Lori had wanted Mom to notice what Lori was saying. She turned on Mom.

  “Mom, that’s crazy. You can’t call people’s parents. That will just make everyone tease him more,” she said.

  “Well, we’ve got to do something. What those kids are doing—that’s harassment. No one should have to put up with that.” She glared at Lori. “Do you have any better ideas? Anything you could do that won’t hurt your image?”

  Lori looked back at Chuck. His eyes were darting back and forth—toward Lori, toward Mom, toward Lori, toward Mom. He reminded Lori of a caged animal looking for an escape.

  Chuck had had a nightmare.

  It started out happy. He dreamed that he and Mom and Dad were having a conference with Miss Prentiss, his first-grade teacher, and she had said, “Oh, forget about reading and math. They don’t really matter, not when he’s so talented otherwise. Have you seen how Chuck can draw?”

  Daddy had clapped him on the back and said, “Way to go, son.” They’d gone out for ice cream to celebrate, not to make up for everything Chuck couldn’t do.

  But while Chuck was sitting there digging into mounds of Dairy Queen soft serve, Daddy had disappeared. Poof. Now you see him, now you don’t. Chuck got up from his little stone table and walked all around the Dairy Queen parking lot yelling, “Daddy! Daddy! Where are you?” And people were laughing at him. All the kids he knew were high school students, pointing and snickering and calling out, “Dummy! Fatso!” But Chuck was still a little boy who couldn’t see over the pick-up truck beds. The cars and trucks were parked like a maze, and Chuck couldn’t find his way out.

  Then he ran smack into Miss Prentiss, between a red Ford and a blue Chevy. She was shaking her head sadly.

  “Oh, Chuck,” she sighed. “You know why this happened.”

  She kept shaking her head, but she stopped being Miss Prentiss. She turned into Mrs. Swain, his second-grade teacher. Then she turned into Mom.

  Chuck woke up soaked in panicky sweat. His heart was racing, and he couldn’t catch his breath. He got up and stumbled into the bathroom, turned on the shower full blast. He climbed in shakily and stood there letting the stream of water beat against his skin. It cleared away the sweat but did nothing for the jumble in his mind.

  Had the dream Miss Prentiss/Mrs. Swain/Mom said, “You know why this happened,” or “You know what will happen now”?

  Chuck stayed in the shower long past the point that Pop would have been yelling, back home, “You gonna leave any water for the rest of us?” These fancy hotels always had lots of water pressure. He kept thinking the shower would wash away everything. But this was as useless as pressure-spraying the hog barn. Some things could never be washed away.

  The whole bathroom was filled with steam when he finally turned off the water and pulled back the curtain. Now it was silence that roared in his ears. No, not silence—he could still hear the words from his dream. They were definitely, “You know what will happen now.”

  A warning.

  Chuck stepped out and toweled off; his hands shook as he pulled on his clothes. He pushed open the door just to get away from the fog, but it trailed after him.

  Mom and Lori were sitting on the bed together. They both jumped when they saw him.

  “Chuck,” Lori said.

  “Chuck,” Mom said.

  They were both talking at once. Chuck didn’t catch a single word either of them said. Wait. Did Lori say, “art lessons”?

  Chuck had almost forgotten. He’d agreed to take art lessons. Art lessons meant he’d keep drawing once they got back to Pickford County.

  He couldn’t.

  He looked from Mom to Lori and back again. He was too stricken to make sense of what they were saying, but their voices pushed at him, picked at him, pressured him. Lori’s words still pounded in his ears. “Art lessons . . . Art lessons . . .”

  Panic sent Chuck halfway across the room.

  “Forget it!” he yelled. “I don�
��t want art lessons. Ever!”

  He jerked his artist’s notebook out of his suitcase. He threw back the cardboard covers and grasped the inside pages, everything he’d drawn. In one motion, he’d ripped all his drawings in half.

  “See?” he said, panting like a dog. “I hate art. I won’t be different anymore.”

  Mom and Lori stared back at him, their eyes huge. Maybe one of them said something. Chuck didn’t hear. He was noticing how much Mom and Lori looked alike, how they tilted their heads the same, raised their eyebrows the same. Why couldn’t they get along? They were so much alike—Lori was the queen of Pickford County, and Mom had the whole country applauding her every night. If he ever drew a picture of the two of them together like this, maybe they’d see—

  No. He’d already forgotten: He’d never draw another picture.

  Los Angeles.

  This was the only place on the whole itinerary Lori had wanted to go. Before the trip, she’d lain in bed imagining talking about it afterward: Oh, yes, when I was in Los Angeles . . . On the first day of school, maybe. Kids would turn around in the hall and shoot her looks of amazement and envy.

  It would be obnoxious, she knew. She’d have to be careful not to drop “Los Angeles” into too many conversations, or people would hate her for it. But Los Angeles was the pinnacle of cool, the home of hip, the seat of scandal—it stood for everything that Pickford County wasn’t. Lori just wanted a little bit of that reflected glory to rub off on her. Sometimes she worried that the guys back home thought she was too staid, as if she came with her own apron attached, a housewife already. Sometimes she felt like their own mothers, when she was leading 4-H meetings: “And the next item of business is—Jason, would you please get your feet off that table? You’re getting mud everywhere.” No wonder she’d never had a serious boyfriend, the way all of her friends had.

  She’d thought that if she’d been to L.A., maybe the guys would see her through an aura of starlet glamour. Sexiness by association.

  But now, watching out the window as their plane prepared to land, she couldn’t summon up so much as a shred of eagerness, even when she thought she glimpsed the huge HOLLYWOOD sign through the clouds. This whole trip had been such a disaster, all she wanted was to go home. Even if it meant being seen as staid forever, she just wanted Mom to deposit her and Chuck back safely with Gram and Pop. Gram and Pop didn’t blame Lori for Chuck’s problems.

  Gram and Pop can’t see through me like Mom does. Gram and Pop think I’m a good kid. I can fool them.

  Lori pushed such thoughts aside. She was a good kid. She’d just forget everything that happened in Phoenix, and everything else Mom had said. Lori didn’t owe Chuck anything. As far as Lori was concerned, once she was home again, she didn’t care what happened to Chuck. Or Mom. It’d be just fine with Lori if Mom went back out on the road forever, flipping and flapping from coast to coast, traveling as much as that guy they’d read about in English. The Ancient Mariner. Did he ever go home?

  Home, Lori thought longingly. Oh, if only the plane were taking off, instead of landing.

  And then, strangely, just as she thought that, the plane jerked up, its nose pointed back toward the sky.

  Chuck was not wearing his airsickness bracelets.

  Were you trying to make me look different? he wanted to ask Mom. Normal guys didn’t wear bracelets. They didn’t have to.

  I hate my life, Chuck thought. I hate myself.

  His braceletless wrist twitched against the airplane seat, and he realized he’d begun to trace a design on the weave of the fabric.

  Stop that, he commanded himself. He wasn’t allowed to draw, ever again.

  Suddenly the plane practically hopped in the air, turning strangely.

  Maybe it’s going to crash, Chuck thought, almost hopefully. He hoped Lori and Mom got out safely. And the other people. He didn’t want anyone to die.

  Except himself.

  The plane’s P.A. system crackled.

  “The control tower has informed us we need to circle the airport another time before landing,” the pilot said. “Due to the weather system coming in, they’ve closed a runway and the jets are stacking up.”

  The clouds outside the window were ominous and gray. Lori had flown—what? five times now?—and she’d never thought before about any of her planes crashing. Why not? Had she thought no plane would dare crash with Lori Lawson on board?

  Lori groaned silently. She was worried now. It was just too weird, the way the plane was jerking around. Like the plane was fighting the wind, and losing.

  “We’ll likely be experiencing some turbulence during the landing,” the pilot continued. “Please obey the ‘fasten seat belts’ sign.”

  Lori looked over at Mom.

  “Is this safe?” she asked.

  “They wouldn’t land if it weren’t,” Mom said. “Don’t worry. I’ve landed in lots worse weather. Think of it as, I don’t know, a wild roller coaster ride.”

  But roller-coaster cars were on wheels, strapped to rails, held up by crisscrosses of solid steel bars hammered into the ground. This plane was in the middle of the sky. Nothing was holding it up.

  Nothing. Not steel, not wheels, not God. Just—what was it that kept planes up, anyway? Air?

  “Flight attendants, prepare for landing,” the pilot said tensely.

  Lori had to have something solid to hang on to. She clutched the armrests.

  “Would they tell us?” she asked Mom. “If the plane was going to crash, would they let us know?”

  Mom’s eyes were on the telephone built into the seat in front of her.

  “No,” she admitted. “Probably not. But we’re not going to crash.”

  Lori wanted to ask if Mom was just considering calling the convention organizers, to let them know that her flight was delayed. Or did she want to call home to talk to Gram and the other kids one last time?

  If the plane was going to crash, Lori wondered, would Mom tell us?

  No. Probably not.

  The plane began to shake violently. The noise was terrible. Lori thought about tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons. The plane dived into darker clouds. Rain lashed against the window.

  Oh, no . . . , Lori thought, and it was like something that Mom said in just about all her speeches. Mom hid it with jokes and wordplay, but really all she ever talked about was dying—dying without thinking, Oh no, I always meant to . . .

  God? Lori whispered silently. I have way too many “Oh no”s to die now.

  Probably everyone on the plane felt that way.

  Probably Daddy had felt that way, too, eight years ago. He probably wanted to live long enough to see Emma born. He probably wanted to see all his kids grow up. He probably wanted to farm for another fifty years. He probably wanted to be able to retire someday and travel around the country with Mom.

  And Mom—

  Lori turned toward her mother. If the plane was going to crash, the very least she could do was say something to Mom. Something real. Something she meant, not something hidden in sarcasm or nastiness or fake charm. And then probably she should apologize to Chuck. Lori had about eight years’ worth of apologies to make to both of them, Mom and Chuck, before the plane hit the ground.

  Lori had her mouth open, the words gathering in her mind, before she saw what Mom and Chuck were doing.

  Chuck was throwing up into his airsickness bag. And Mom was patting his back, practically cooing, “It’s all right. You’re okay.”

  Didn’t Mom have any regrets? Wasn’t there even one Oh no pealing in her mind?

  Didn’t she have anything she wanted to say to Lori?

  This was all he deserved: the queasy stomach, the instant gag reflex, the plane shivering around him.

  Then they were on the ground, gliding toward the gate. They weren’t going to crash.

  Was Chuck disappointed or relieved?

  Mom still had her hand on his back. Just that light touch made it impossible for him to decide.

  Around t
hem, people were reaching for their carry-on bags, taking off their seat belts, grumbling about the rough landing. They were like statues brought to life. Lori and Chuck and Mom were the only ones not moving.

  “We all oughta sue,” someone griped behind Chuck.

  “Aw, that was nothing,” someone else countered. “I used to fly military jets. Our motto was, ‘Any landing you survive is a good one.’”

  Did I survive? Chuck wondered. “Survive” was such a funny word. He’d been listed in the newspaper all those years ago as Daddy’s survivor. Chuck could remember Gram explaining it to him: “That just means you lived longer than your daddy did.” Chuck hadn’t been able to understand—his father had been twenty-eight, Chuck was only seven. Twenty-eight was a bigger number than seven. No, Daddy outsurvived me, Chuck had wanted to tell Gram and all those other grown-ups.

  But there were things you couldn’t tell grown-ups. Couldn’t ask them, either, because then they looked at you with crinkly worry lines around their eyes.

  Chuck hadn’t survived. Chuck wasn’t surviving.

  Mom removed her hand from his back.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Chuck couldn’t answer.

  Another speech.

  Lori didn’t know how Mom stood it, just about every night, sitting through boring before-dinner introductions, stupid chitchat over rubbery chicken and undercooked broccoli, unfunny jokes about people she didn’t even know. And then she had to give the speech itself. Lori wasn’t sure what the speech was tonight, but if she had to hear Mom say, “Oh no, I was going to spend more time with my family!” one more time, Lori was going to need an airsickness bag, too.