by Susan Vaught
Mom lifted her arm so I could see her wrist. Her arm and hand shook rhythmically, back and forth. “No piano,” she said, and tried to smile again.
“So that probably was just your sickness talking?” I asked, because I hadn’t been able to figure out anything the piano might have meant or stood for.
“Probably just the crazy,” Mom agreed.
“Don’t call yourself crazy,” I told her.
She nodded but didn’t say anything, and looked totally exhausted.
The sick sensation inside me threatened to turn into actual nausea. How could I ask Mom the questions I needed to ask? She wasn’t even all the way Mom again. What if I made her sicker and she had to stay longer? What if she got upset and just fell over and busted her head or something?
I went over to one of the chairs and pulled it around until I was facing Mom. When I sat, our knees almost touched. There. At least I could catch her if I had to. Why didn’t that make me feel any better?
Mom’s shaky hand patted my leg. “So, how’s it going, honey?”
“I miss you,” I whispered, then got mad at myself, because I wanted to cry.
“I miss you, too.” A tear dribbled out of Mom’s eye, and I really wanted to cry then, but I couldn’t. Me starting to sob would bring Dad and the nurse running. I made fists and dug my fingertips into my palms.
The almost-pain kept me steady enough to say, “We’re having some trouble, Dad and me. He didn’t speak to me the whole way here. We listened to the radio instead.”
Mom’s eyebrows pulled together, and her saggy smile turned into a frown. “That’s not like him.”
Deep breath. In, out. In, out. I could do this. I had to do this. “Dad’s mad because I tried to tell him about what I remembered from the night of the fire.”
Mom twitched like I’d hit her with lightning. “We don’t need to talk about that, honey.”
Her eyes glazed, and she went away. “Did you feed the mice, baby?”
“Yeah, sure.” I knew better than to argue with her about stuff I didn’t have to. Even with me humoring her, it took a full ten seconds for her to come back into the room with me.
Once I could tell she was back again, I tried a different direction. “Why did you make me a counseling appointment with Dr. Zephram’s office?”
“I—I’m not sure.” She didn’t twitch this time, but she was lying. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, and her face screwed up like she had gas.
I could see part of the fading green bruise on her shoulder, from when she shot the snake. Maybe if I didn’t watch her face when I hurt her, I could keep going. “Did you think I might have problems because of what I saw? You were right. It was bad, and really gross.”
Another twitch.
“I’m sorry, Footer,” she whispered, then lost focus.
I shrugged, trying to play it as no big deal.
When Mom touched my leg again, I let my eyes trace her fingers, trying to ignore the tremors from her medication. “I know Cissy shot Mr. Abrams, and I know why. Did you set the fire?”
Mom’s fingers gripped my knee hard enough to make me wince. “Doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “The snake is dead. Let him stay dead, okay?”
The room’s cold seeped into my skin, my muscles, my bones, until I froze solid, sitting there in front of Mom. I even imagined her hand frosted to my leg. When I met her gaze, we turned into ice statues together, except for her shaking.
Don’t ask me anything else, her green eyes pleaded.
“A woman called,” I told her, my lips numb. “She sounded pretty out of it, and she said to tell you she couldn’t do it. Was that Cissy and Doc’s mother?”
Slowly, slowly, Mom nodded.
“I read the letters from their dad, the ones in your desk drawer. I’m sorry I went into your room. I just missed you so bad. I didn’t even mean to be snooping, but now I really have to know—I need to know—if I’m starting to get sick. If none of this stuff in my head that I’m remembering actually happened, if I’m making it all up, then I need to see a doctor and get medicine.”
This made Mom look confused, and not in a sick way—more normal, everyday perplexed. “You’re not getting sick.”
My muscles went suddenly loose, and I realized just how tight they had been the second before. And then Mom was looking at me again, really looking at me, and we both knew I had to ask. I saw it in the way her expression started to melt to sadness and fear, and the way her mind seemed to be trying to run away from me again, before I could get out the words.
“Did Doc and Cissy die in the fire, Mom?”
Mom’s mouth quivered. Then her whole body shook.
I wanted to smack my head with my hands. I sort of wanted to smack her, too, but I felt awful about that. “Please. You have to tell me the rest of what happened.”
“No!” she yelled, and let go of me and pounded her hands on the couch, her eyes flipping from unfocused to terrified so fast that I didn’t see it coming. I shoved my chair backward, even though I knew she wouldn’t hurt me. I hadn’t ever seen her so upset, and it was my fault. I did it. I knew something like this would happen—but I did it anyway.
I had to. No, I didn’t. “Mom!”
Dad and the nurse burst into the visiting room.
Mom sobbed, hitting the couch over and over again. “Leave it alone, leave it alone, leave it alone!”
Tears washed down my face as I got out of my chair, and I started apologizing and telling her over and over that I would leave everything alone, because I didn’t know what else to do.
“Sorry,” Dad said to the nurse, or maybe to Mom or to me—I couldn’t tell. “Adele, take it easy.” He picked me up like I was five, holding me to him as he backed out of the room, keeping me faced away from Mom.
The nurse spoke to her in low tones as we moved into the hall. “That’s it. Let it out. Let it all out of you. Just hit the couch.”
Dad turned to walk down the hospital corridor, and I could see Mom over his shoulder. She stared at me and stopped hitting the furniture, and her face focused again, and she cried harder. Then she leaned forward, put her face in her hands, and started rocking.
My stomach tied itself into a hundred knots. I squirmed in Dad’s grip as he hurried away. “Wait. Let me talk to her. I shouldn’t have asked her anything. It’s my fault. Let me go! Please, Dad, it’s all my fault. We can’t leave her like this. It’s my fault!”
Dad kept walking, holding tighter to me. “Your mom isn’t anybody’s fault,” he said into my ear. “She’s just not ready yet.”
She’ll never be ready, will she? Because she probably set that fire and accidentally killed those kids. This time, she’s never coming home.
And it was my fault. Dad didn’t understand. I balled up my fists and hit his shoulders like Mom had hit the couch. He didn’t stop walking.
Mom receded, getting smaller and smaller, until the visiting-room door closed and Dad turned a corner and I couldn’t see my mother anymore.
From the Notebook of Astronaut Angel Jones
Because When I Am an Astronaut, Journalists Will Need Notes for My Biography
My Notebook Will Be a Lot Better Than My Brother’s Notebook.
I Don’t Remember When the Fire Was Exactly. Sorry.
All Me: My brother’s sweet on Footer Davis.
They’ll probably get married when they’re old and ugly.
I grabbed Footer’s list off my brother’s printer.
I gave the list and the barrette to Mom.
Mom is taking the list and the barrette to Mr. Davis.
The police need to talk to Ms. Davis again.
Everybody needs to stop pretending.
Pretending should only be in books with dragons and knights and wizards.
If I was a wizard, I’d make it so people never got hit or murdered or burned.
I am not going to be a wizard. I am going to be an astronaut.
CHAPTER
17
Fifteen Long,
Endless Days After the Fire
Dad: I don’t even know what to say to you about this list.
Me: Am I in trouble?
Dad: I think we’re all in trouble now.
I thought it had been awful making Mom so upset like that, then having to leave her.
It was five hundred times more awful seeing Dad upset.
He didn’t believe me. Not about any of it. He thought I was exaggerating. And the sad painted all over his face—he thought I was imagining things like Mom does, and that I just didn’t understand what kind of disaster I was creating.
After Ms. Jones came over and gave him my list and the barrette, then left, Dad called the station where he worked. I sat on the kitchen floor hugging my knees and thinking about how I never wanted to talk to Peavine or Angel ever again, how Dad didn’t want to talk to me anymore, and how Mom didn’t want to talk to anybody.
How could Peavine have let Angel get her hands on that list? He knew how she was. He knew she wouldn’t keep it private. Why didn’t he get it back from her? He was my friend. My best friend. I should have been able to tell him anything and trust that he’d keep it safe from Angel.
The thought of not talking to him made my insides hurt from loneliness.
Peavine let Angel snatch my list, and when she gave it to their mom, he didn’t try to talk her out of worrying about it. He told our secrets. And now those secrets were right here, surrounding Dad and me like shadows with fangs, waiting to bite us to death.
Dad hung up the phone. He didn’t look at me when he wiped his cheeks with a hanky, or when he tucked the hanky back in his jeans pocket. For a few moments he stood staring at the sink, both hands on his orange T-shirt, the one from Tennessee’s national championship year.
I would have given anything for it to be fall, with a football game coming on. We could watch it together and yell at referees and eat popcorn, and maybe, somehow, all of this would go away, or at least get better.
Would he ever watch football with me again?
“They’ll be here in a while,” Dad said. “I’m going out to mow.”
“But it’s almost dark,” I whispered.
Dad walked out of the kitchen like he hadn’t heard me. I knew “they” meant other police officers from where he worked. As for the mowing, it was Saturday in Mississippi, and it was summertime. Everybody had to mow if they didn’t want to live in a jungle. He might could get a little done before it got pitch black. Besides, Dad liked to mow when he needed to relax or work something out in his head—like where he was going to lock his wife up forever after she got charged with murdering two kids, so she couldn’t hurt anybody else, or maybe where he’d send his daughter, too, since she wasn’t much better off, bless her heart.
I didn’t have any tears left, so I didn’t cry. Instead I thought about my mother rocking and rocking and rocking. I rocked too, back and forth, to see if it made me feel any better.
It didn’t.
I kept laying out the mystery pieces in my mind and rearranging them to see if they’d turn out differently.
They didn’t.
My eyes moved to the pantry. I could try stuffing myself silly, but I didn’t think that would help either. All those shelves full of food, sitting just in front of me, behind the closed door. No light got in there. It would be dark. Whatever lived in the dark and wanted to eat me, it could be in that pantry.
But that was stupid. I didn’t even get a little bit scared. If I opened that door, I’d just find the food. There wouldn’t be anything right in front of me that I couldn’t see.
Right?
My hands moved to my belly, which hadn’t gotten as big as a beach ball.
I looked at my hands and thought about my memories from the fire, how they hadn’t been there, and then they were. They had been inside my mind the whole time, but I hadn’t let myself see them. I wasn’t any better than Dad, refusing to see what I couldn’t handle.
Great.
Mom’s craziness and Dad’s stubbornness. I really got the best of both parents in my genetic structure, didn’t I?
What else was I refusing to see?
Something clattered in the basement.
Fear hit me like a cold wave, and my whole body froze solid. I listened to the sound of my breathing, and it sounded so, so loud in the quiet house.
Way out in the distance, a thousand miles away, the riding mower started, nothing but a distant growl. Shadows grew in the room as the day went away, and my heart went stutter-stutter-stutter and I took my really loud breaths and I listened. I listened so hard, my ears ached.
Nothing but the mower.
I looked from my stomach to the pantry to the basement door.
Was there something down there?
Right. Dinosaur mice. Of course there was nothing in the basement. I really did make stuff up. I was getting just like Mom, worrying about things that didn’t even exist.
The Abrams kids existed. They had real problems, and she tried to help. I thought about the creep at the school. Like Mom, I wasn’t wrong all the time. No. In fact, I was right a lot of the time. Maybe I didn’t have brain tumors or chest tumors or stalking walruses, but that guy at the school—he really had been a bad guy.
Downstairs in the basement, something went thump.
I shut my eyes.
“Not real,” I told myself out loud, like that would help. “Not real, not real, not real.”
Thump.
I breathed faster and faster. Mice? Dead squirrel ghosts? Serial killers? Walking tumors? Homicidal walruses? I smacked myself in the side of the head, and the sting made me open my eyes wide. And a little wider.
I thought about Dad, outside mowing. He wasn’t far. I could go get him, but he’d totally think I was being crazy. Calling 9-1-1 was out of the question unless a walrus exploded out the basement door and tried to stick its white straw tusks through my heart. If I called Captain Armstrong, Dad would have a fit.
Peavine . . .
No.
I swallowed down a lump in my throat, feeling more alone than I had ever felt in my whole entire life.
After a few more seconds I slid my phone out of my pocket, found Stephanie Bridges on my contact list, and called her.
“Hey,” I muttered when she answered.
“Footer?” She sounded shocked, but also happy, like she actually wanted to hear from me. “What’s going on?”
“I—” What? I’m sure there’s a monster in my basement? I can’t handle being this scared? I’m a total baby?
From way down in the basement came a very definite thump. Dad’s mower sounded farther away than ever. I felt like a concrete statue, set right into the floor.
“Talk to me, Footer,” Steph said.
“I miss my mom,” I said. And I started to cry.
Steph took a breath, very slowly, in and then out, while I stared at the basement door and waited for it to open.
“I know you do.” Steph sounded sympathetic and not fake.
“I’m scared she’ll never come home,” I told Steph, staring at that door. “I’m scared my dad thinks I’m crazy. I’m scared he’ll never listen to me about anything ever again, but there really is something in the basement.”
This time she breathed fast and sharp, like me. “Where is he?”
“Way in the back, out mowing.”
“Go get him.”
“No.”
“Footer—”
“No!”
I babbled out why—about the list I sent Peavine and how he let Angel steal it, and how the police were coming soon, and how Mom would probably go to prison forever for accidentally killing Cissy and Doc Abrams, and how Dad looked at me before he went outside, and how I was hearing the noises.
I worried Steph would blow me off like Dad did, but she said, “You’re kidding.” Then, “No, you’re not kidding, because nobody could make all that up.” And then, “Go to your room and lock your door. I’m on my way.”
I hung up from her, and then,
just in case I was about to die, I called Captain Armstrong and thanked him for helping me understand about flashbacks and for talking to me when I got scared waiting for Peavine’s mom, and I apologized to him one more time for the whole MBI shoe thing and how I was stupid for a while and almost treated him like people who don’t understand about war problems do. He sounded confused, but finally he said, “You’re welcome, kid. Any time.”
Thump.
I jumped as I hung up the phone and put it back in my pocket.
It’s just Mom’s mice, I tried to tell myself. They’re hungry, and—
And I froze solid again, this time because I suddenly saw a picture that had been in my mind the whole time, hidden away, like the memories of the night of the fire. The items on my list rearranged themselves and changed, and the mystery—
No way.
But . . .
My eyes slid away from the basement door and went to the pantry. I touched my belly, which wasn’t as fat as it should have been, since I’d been packing away all that food. Then I looked at the phone on the charger on the counter and thought about how Cissy and Doc’s mom had called my mother.
My hands pressed into my stomach.
Couldn’t be. I was 1,000 percent insane.
But . . .
But nothing. Either I had gone crazy or I hadn’t. It was time to find out.
I got up, feeling a whole lot less afraid than I should have, but my hands still shook as I took two frozen meals out of the freezer. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, my favorite. The delicious smell of gravy and meat (not fish sticks—hallelujah) seemed to fill the whole house as I cooked the meals one at a time, without letting myself think too hard about what I was doing.
What’s the truth, Footer? Do you even know anymore?
No. I didn’t know. Mom wouldn’t tell me, and Dad couldn’t tell me. So I’d just have to tell myself.
I finished cooking the meals, used some salt and pepper on the potatoes, and added a little butter. Then I dug around in the fridge until I found two containers of applesauce. I loaded the applesauce, some napkins, two drink boxes, and silverware into a grocery bag, picked up the meals, and carried them to the basement door.
