Celine read a few more entries. She especially liked the parts about women who’d done amazing things that weren’t recognized in history books.
“I think I would have liked your grandma very much,” Celine said. She put an arm around Red’s shoulders. Red didn’t pull away.
“Thank you for sharing this with me, Red. It’s really special. You’re—” She shook her head, like she couldn’t find the right words. “I’m really proud of you.”
Red didn’t know what to say. She took the notebook from Celine and focused on petting Gandalf. Celine stood and stretched.
“It’s been a long day,” she said.
“Celine?” Red thought she could still hear the distant sound of Celine’s singing stars. She smiled. “I think Gamma would have liked you, too.”
Chapter
23
The next day—after video-calling Jackson’s daughter, Nicole, and her family; after spending a few more hours searching for Tuck; after playing a game of Scrabble against Jackson, with Celine on her team; after helping Jackson fetch big plastic bins of Christmas decorations out of the attic—after all of that, Red went into her bedroom and unpacked her smelly orange backpack.
She no longer believed the Grooves would send her away.
And she was right. Ms. Anders never came.
Marvin and his family visited on Friday evening, too. They brought food, and Marvin even talked Red into filming another episode of Kitchen Kahuna. He told her the episode she’d been in with him had gotten more views than any of his other ones.
They spent Saturday morning looking for Tuck. Red and Marvin made flyers Friday night that they printed and handed out around the neighborhood Saturday. People promised to keep an eye out for him. Jackson even reported Tuck’s disappearance to the police, just in case.
“I seriously doubt anyone took him,” he said. “But I want to explore every option.”
The longer Tuck was gone, the more impossible finding him felt. But Red couldn’t stop thinking about impossible things. She explored Celine’s library, looking for books about big things that had been lost. She found a book about a city called Pompeii and another about the Titanic.
Celine took her to the library in Bramble that afternoon, too, and Red discovered all kinds of amazing books. Books that brought a familiar tickle to her skin. She learned about frogs that froze to death in winter, only to come back to life in summer. Jellyfish that never died. Doctors that were learning how to grow human body parts—like hearts and even brains—in laboratories so that someday they could use them to save peoples’ lives.
The idea of so many impossible things in the world made Red light-headed with wonder.
And so, Sunday evening she pulled out the impossible notebook. She hadn’t added anything to it in years, except for the picture of Tuck from the newspaper, which she’d cut out and carefully taped into its pages. But now she couldn’t help herself. She’d learned so many amazing things in the last few days, she had to write some of them down.
Red sat in Tuck’s empty stall, books open in front of her and the notebook in her lap. But she couldn’t concentrate. She kept staring at the Tuck-shaped holes all around her. A few days ago, Celine had scrubbed the stall clean, scouring tortoise pee out of the wooden floorboards and tossing out the old straw and food. She said she was getting it ready for him, so he’d have somewhere nice to come home to.
Red wished he’d hurry.
“Red?”
She jumped. Celine stood by the gate. Red hadn’t heard her come into the barn.
“How’s it going in here?”
“Fine.” Red snapped the notebook shut. She’d been too distracted to write anything anyway.
Celine stepped into the stall and looked around, her fingers massaging the slope of her shoulder. Her eyes were full of missing Tuck, too. After a moment, she sat down on the hay bale with Red. Red pulled her knees up under her chin.
“We need to talk.”
Something in Celine’s tone sent a nervous shiver through Red. The fresh straw on the floor beneath them skittered back, away from Red, away from whatever Celine wanted to say. Red clenched her fists, pressed them into the tops of her shoes.
Celine watched the straw for a moment. “I spoke with Ms. Anders.”
Icy tingles started in the tips of Red’s fingers, zinging up her arms, straight toward her heart. Had she been wrong to unpack her backpack? Were they sending her away after all?
She closed her eyes. Three hundred sixty-six days, she reminded herself. Even if Celine and Jackson didn’t want her, she only had 366 days left in the system. Her mom would be out then, and things would go back to normal.
Next to her, Celine brushed a piece of hay off her pant leg. “I told her about your mom’s letter. The one that was returned,” she said. “I found it when I was changing your sheets yesterday.” Celine looked at her sadly.
Surprise jolted through Red’s body. Hadn’t she torn them all up?
“Was there more than one?” Celine asked, watching Red’s expression.
Red bit her lip, tears stinging her eyes.
“Oh, Red. Why didn’t you tell me? We could have faced it together.”
Red blinked. Shrugged. She’d wanted to tell Celine, but was afraid that would be betraying her mom. The letters were private. They were their thing. She shifted on the hay, adding to the space between them.
Celine ran a hand over her face. “Ms. Anders talked to your mom’s lawyer. I guess he was able to petition for early release. She completed her rehab, and the judge decided to grant the petition.” Celine stopped and shook her head in a small, tight movement.
The tingles in Red’s arms became bolts of lightning, white-hot. Red looked at Celine, at the way her lips pulled into a frown. Celine’s fingers were balled into fists in her lap. She looked … angry.
“So…” Red tried to make the words fit together. “Does that mean my mom is getting out of jail early?” Her skin suddenly felt too tight, like it was holding her down when everything in her wanted to fly.
Celine’s green eyes glistened with tears that Red didn’t understand.
“Red.” Celine paused, barely shook her head again. “Your mom is already out. She was released three months ago.”
Chapter
24
48 MONTHS AGO
After Gamma died, Red and her mother started over.
“No more pills,” her mother promised. Red watched her mother pour two bottles of little white pills into the toilet. Splook splook splook.
“I don’t need them anymore,” she said, and squeezed Red against her. “I’ve got what I need.”
They spent the day at the Denver Zoo, holding their noses in the monkey house and hanging out at the polar bear exhibit, hoping the sleepy bear would wake up and do something exciting.
The sun illuminated the copper and blond highlights in her mother’s dark hair as she said, “What would Gamma do?”
Red scrunched up her nose in thought. Her mother started shaking her hips slowly, her arms crooked at the elbows.
Red laughed. “Dance him into life!”
“Right!”
So they did. They twirled and jumped, spun and clapped, bobbed and twisted. When they leaped like gazelles, the wind lifted them higher. When they fluttered together in their own fairy circle, the breeze brushed through their matching dark hair, swirled it around their faces, and tangled it up with their laughter. People stopped to watch them, even filmed them on their phones.
“It’s working!” cried Red.
The crowd gasped and cheered. The polar bear was on his feet, bobbing his big head to their rhythm. He chuffed and turned his whole body around as Red and her mother did the same.
“We did it!” Red laughed. “We danced him into life!”
They grasped hands and spun so fast that all Red could see was her mother’s laughing face, her flowing hair and bright brown eyes, clear and sharp against the blur of the world.
36 MONTHS
AGO
Red heated a frozen dinner of macaroni and cheese in the microwave. It was the last meal in the freezer.
It was the last meal in the whole house.
As she pulled the plastic wrapper off the top, carefully avoiding the steam, she thought of a story Gamma used to tell her about Jesus. How one time he only had a little bit of food, but he did an impossible thing, and the food became enough to feed five thousand people.
Red wished for her own miracle. She didn’t need enough for five thousand people. But she did need her mother to remember to get groceries. Soon.
When someone pounded on the door around midnight, Red hoped it was her mother coming home at last. Her stomach was rumbling again.
But it wasn’t her mother.
Red screamed when the door burst open. She ran to the bedroom and scrambled under the bed she and her mom shared. From the front room, several loud male voices boomed, and then the husky voice of a woman quieted them. A few minutes later, Red saw a pair of scuffed black shoes in the doorway.
“Ruby?”
It was the husky female voice she’d just heard. Red curled tighter, tried to hold all of herself in.
But the wind gave her away.
A terrified current rippled from her skin, sent dust bunnies and balled-up receipts and cigarette butts fluttering out from under the bed. Red flattened her hand against papers by her head to keep them from rustling.
Too late.
The shoes stepped closer. Ankles bent. Knees appeared, pressed into the carpet. Hands. Then a face—oval, with brown skin and high cheekbones and full, black-cherry lips. Thick natural hair, cut short.
“There you are,” she said. “Ruby, honey. My name is Ms. Anders. I’m afraid I have some bad news about your mom.”
11 MONTHS AGO
“What’s this?”
Oldest Boy appeared out of nowhere and snatched the letter out of Red’s hands. His eyes scanned it, grew wide with glee.
“Did your mommy finally write to you?” His sharp, flat laughter drew Middle Boy and Youngest Boy to him like moths to a light. They laughed as Oldest Boy held the paper above his head to keep it away from Red.
“Give it back!” Red jumped, swiped for it, missed.
“What’s it say?” Oldest Boy asked. “Did she finally remember who you are?”
Red jumped again, missed. She clenched her fists and glared at him. “Give it back.”
“I’m surprised your mom even knows how to write!”
Dried leaves skipped over the grass and wrapped themselves around the ankles of the three boys. Wind chimes on The Mom’s back porch started dinging, then clanging.
“It’s not yours,” Red said. Her voice shook.
The younger boys didn’t notice the shiver in the air, but Oldest Boy did. He sneered, stepped closer. His zip-up hoodie ballooned open.
“I don’t think you should read this,” he said. “Every time you get one of these, you just cry yourself to sleep for the next week, like a baby.”
He held the letter out, let the paper crinkle in the wind. Red snatched at it.
“Give it back!”
He dodged her hands and laughed again.
“What’s going on out here?” The Mom appeared at the back door. She narrowed her eyes. “Adrian, what is that?”
Oldest Boy dropped his arm and his face transformed into innocence. “I was just helping Red out. Wasn’t I, Red?”
She glared at him, but he spoke again before she could.
“She dropped her letter and it almost blew away.” He shoved it into her hands. “Here. You’re welcome.”
The Mom sighed and told them to come inside, wash up for dinner. Red folded her mother’s letter carefully and tucked it into her pocket. Oldest Boy was right—she did cry at night. But not because of what the letters said.
She cried because she’d gotten a letter at all.
6 MONTHS AGO
Mom,
I hope you got my last letter. I miss you a lot.
I miss Gamma a lot, too. I’ve been thinking about her lately. About when she died. There was a bad storm that night. Do you remember? You never talked about it, and you weren’t even there, but I always thought maybe it was your storm.
I remember the nurse in the hospital room with me and Gamma. I liked her. She chewed cinnamon candy and always snuck Spanish words into her sentences.
I held Gamma’s hand. It was thin like paper and cold like snow. The nurse said, “You hang on now, Rose. She’ll be here any minute.” She kept saying it, even though Gamma wasn’t awake anymore, and her breathing was wet and thick sounding. Then the machine that beeped with her heart cried one long note, until the nurse turned it off.
When you finally got there, the weather was all rain and bright flashes of lightning, and I remember being so cold in the hospital room. You ran in, and you were soaking wet from the rain. You didn’t even look at me at first. You just stared at Gamma lying there, small and still. Then you sat in the chair by the bed and held Gamma’s hand and cried. Do you remember?
The wind howled and the lights flickered. You finally called me over, and hugged me so tight I thought my bones might crack. And you said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” just like that, over and over. “I promise I’ll do better,” you said.
And I hugged you back and told you, “It’s okay, Mommy.” Because it was. Because even though you hadn’t been there for Gamma, I knew you would be there for me.
I can’t wait for you to come back, Mom. I miss you.
3 MONTHS AGO
Red’s mother walked out of prison, and never even told her.
Chapter
25
“She’s already out?”
The whole world was spinning. Red dug her fingers into the hay bale beneath her.
Celine laid her hand over the back of Red’s. Red tried to jerk away, but Celine held on. “Red, look at me, please.”
Red realized she was gasping. There was not enough air or light or space.
Her mother was already out. But she hadn’t come for her. Hadn’t even told her. For three months.
“She could have … I could have gone with her.” She looked up at Celine. “I didn’t have to come here! I could have gone home with her instead!” Her voice was getting louder, higher with each word. “Ms. Anders brought me here! Why would she do that?”
Celine’s hands moved to Red’s shoulders, like she was trying to keep her from flying away. “Ms. Anders didn’t know, Red. She thought your mom was still in jail. She’s upset, too. There was some error in paperwork—I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
Red rocketed to her feet. “You lied to me. You all lied to me!”
“No.” Celine’s voice was so firm, it stopped Red’s accusations. “We did not lie to you, Red. Jackson and I do not want to keep you from your mom. We care about you.” She tilted her head, chasing eye contact when Red looked away. “Do you hear me? We want whatever is best for you. And if—if that’s your mom”—her voice hitched a little—“then we’ll work toward that. Do you understand me?”
Red crumpled to the floor of Tuck’s pen. Celine followed her down, sat next to her with an arm around Red’s shoulders. Red didn’t try to shrug her off.
“I don’t know why your mom didn’t tell you she was out,” Celine said. “But she wants to see you now. Her lawyer asked Ms. Anders to set up a visit.” Her eyes searched Red’s face. “Do you want to see her? Or would you like some more time?”
Just like that, Red’s anger evaporated and hope took its place. Of course she wanted to see her mom! And of course her mom wanted to see her. Maybe it had all been a mistake. Maybe her mom wanted to take her back right away.
A memory uncoiled in Red’s mind like a sleepy snake. She and her mother curled up in bed, their foreheads almost touching. Her mother’s breath hot on Red’s face when she spoke.
“Do you love me?”
Red spread her hands out wide.
“I love you times this much!”
Her mom poked her belly button. “I love you times infinity!”
“Infinity!” Red giggled. She took her mother’s cheeks in her palms, squeezed so that her lips pooched out. “I love you times infinity, plus one!”
Her mom tickled her, and Red squirmed, still shrieking, “Plus one! Plus one!”
Another memory-snake uncoiled, hissing at the heels of the first one.
Ms. Anders saying her mother wasn’t coming back. That Red had to live with someone else.
“Gamma?” she’d asked, even though she knew Gamma was dead.
“No, baby girl. Somebody else.”
Red wanted to say, But they’re strangers. She wanted to say, I can wait. I just need some more freezer dinners, that’s all. She wanted to say, She’ll be back. I know she will.
Round and round the memories went, each followed by twisting clouds of hope and fear in her heart. Ribbons of cold air rippled from her hands and arms, stirring the straw into a small cyclone. She watched it spin until Celine wrapped her fingers around Red’s hands and the wind stilled.
Red leaned in to Celine’s side, suddenly tired. Celine smelled like lavender and starlight, and was soft and warm and steady.
“Why didn’t she come for me?” Red asked.
“I don’t know.” Celine’s voice was as small as Red’s now. She smoothed Red’s hair, tucked it behind her ears.
Red laid her head in Celine’s lap and let her tears fall. Her foster mother held her tight.
For once, the wind was silent.
ld, but I know starting over is impossi
Once, a scientist caught a jellyfish and kept it in a jar in his kitchen.
Then he forgot about it.
When he came back later, the jellyfish was gone. Instead, there was a tiny little blob at the bottom of the jar.
But it wasn’t just a blob. It was a baby jellyfish.
All the Impossible Things Page 9
