All the Impossible Things

by Lindsay Lackey

  Chapter

  57

  “I found your phone.”

  Wanda was lifting the pillows off her bed, searching. Dropping them, she snatched the phone from Red’s hand, eyes glued to the screen as she walked back into the kitchen.

  “Mom?”

  Wanda didn’t look at her. “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What for?” she asked, her tone impatient.

  “I’m sorry for making you mad. About court and stuff.”

  Wanda sighed and leaned against the counter, pulling her tangled hair around one side of her head. “Whatever. It’s fine.” She bit her lip, then continued. “I’m sorry, too. For what it’s worth. I know you expect a lot from me. It just—sometimes, you expect too much.”

  The branches of the giant spruce outside the window began to tap on the glass. Snow streaked sideways under the light across the street as the sky continued to darken with thick, ash-gray clouds.

  “No, I don’t,” Red said.

  Wanda huffed a humorless laugh. “News flash, Red. Everybody expects too much. That’s how the world works! We go around expecting things from each other, and when we don’t get them, we whine about it.”

  Something metallic banged outside, and they both jumped. Wanda peered out the window, frowning. A trash can had fallen over and been pushed into the street by the wind. As she turned back to Red, Wanda’s frown deepened. She examined Red’s face, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Red began to shake. Wanda came forward a few steps, her head cocked slightly to one side.

  “Red? Did you do something?”

  Red said nothing.

  “You’re hiding something, aren’t you?” She pointed out the window, toward the whipping branches of the blue spruce, like that told her everything she needed to know.

  Nervous whispers lighted from Red’s skin, dancing in her hair and around her ankles. Red pulled in a slow breath and set an empty pill bottle on the counter.

  “I called Ms. Anders,” she said.

  Wanda’s eyes locked on the bottle. The air suddenly went thick and dangerously still, pressing down on Red so heavily her knees almost buckled.

  “You what?”

  Red’s mouth gaped. Her own storm, the one she’d been struggling to keep inside, pulsed and throbbed against her ribs.

  “I called Ms. Anders.”

  Wanda’s mass of solid air lifted, and Red’s own wind came rushing out of her as she coughed. It scooped up bits of trash like dead leaves. Dishes vibrated in the sink. Lights flickered.

  Wanda looked around wildly. “Are you insane? I didn’t invite you over here, Red! You just showed up! And now you called your social worker? Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  She stormed past Red into the living room and yanked back the thrashing curtains. The street outside was deserted and quickly being buried in drifting snow.

  Wanda turned to face her again. “Do you want me to get busted? You realize they’ll never consider giving me custody now, right? I could go to jail again! Is that what you wanted?”

  Red shook her head. Her eyes burned and her whole body ached with the effort of keeping her tornado inside. “No! I don’t want you to get in trouble!”

  “Well, that’s what’s gonna happen. I hope you’re happy!”

  “I’m not!” Red sobbed.

  Her mother crossed to her again, her face inches from Red’s. “Congratulations, Red. You’re officially gonna be a foster kid forever.”

  Wanda stepped back, her fingers gripping her dirty hair. A chair squealed dully across the kitchen floor and paper flew like confetti through the air. The television rocked on top of its table, threatening to topple forward. A clap of thunder shook the entire apartment building. The tornado pounded against Red’s ribs. She whimpered.

  Wanda looked at the angry, churning room, then back at Red. “I don’t have to stay here for this.”

  “Wait!” Red chased her toward the door, but her mom shook her off.

  Red stood for a moment, paralyzed by the mess she’d made of things. This wasn’t what she wanted! She didn’t want her mom to go to jail again, or to get in trouble at all. The only thing she wanted was for her mom to be okay, for them both to be okay.

  Red spun around and dashed across the room, picking up her backpack. The notebook. If she could show it to her, get her to understand …

  Slinging her backpack over her shoulder, she followed her mother, running out into the storm. But when she got down into the parking lot, her mother charged back toward her.

  “Look what you did!” she screamed, gesturing behind her.

  A tree branch as long as a dining table had fallen onto Wanda’s car. The windshield was a spiderweb of glass. “How could you do this to me?” Wanda shrieked. “Do you hate me? Is that it?”

  Red scrabbled for the notebook in her backpack. She held it out for her mother. “I don’t hate you! Look, I proved almost everything!”

  Wanda barely glanced at the notebook. “What are you talking about?”

  “All the impossible things, Mom! I proved everything Gamma wrote. And—” Red turned to the page where she’d taped in the pieces of her mother’s letter. “I tried to prove everything you wrote, too.”

  Red held out the notebook. If only her mom could believe, then together they could prove the last three impossible things: Being a good daughter. Staying sober. Being a mom.

  Wanda pushed the notebook aside and started to turn away. Red grabbed her arm.

  “Look! You wrote to Gamma. You said you didn’t believe in impossible things. See?” She held the notebook out, but Wanda took half a step back. Red pointed to the words Wanda had written.

  “You said it was impossible to live without something you really needed. You said you couldn’t be two things at once.” She gripped the notebook in both hands, holding it up to her mom’s face. “You said you couldn’t get back the things you lost. Look, Mom! Look!”

  Wanda was staring at the notebook now, at the tatters of her own words.

  Red came closer, shouting over the storm. “I know you think you’re alone. I saw you tear up that letter and blow it away. But you aren’t alone, Mom. You have me! I found the pieces of your letter. And I put them here.”

  She turned the pages, holding them down in the wind. Snow bit into her cheeks like needles, but she ignored it. Her mother stared at the notebook, her face expressionless.

  “Gamma wrote down a bunch of things people thought were impossible,” Red continued. “She wrote them all down, and then we started finding out how they weren’t impossible. She said there’s a difference between hard and impossible, and she wanted me to know it. She wanted me to remind you!”

  Wanda touched the notebook. Her fingers were trembling.

  “There wasn’t time to finish them all. Not with Gamma. But I did it, Mom. I found answers to everything she wrote. For you.”

  Her mom’s eyes narrowed.

  “You’ve just gotta believe, Mom. If you believe it, then the things you wrote won’t be impossible anymore.” She turned back to the taped bits of paper and pointed.

  “See these last three? These are the ones you have to help me prove. I can’t do it without you.” Red stepped closer, pointing to the largest scrap on the page. “You said being a mom is impossible. But it’s not. It’s hard, maybe. But I’ll be good, Mom. I swear. I’ll be so good and easy! I’ll be the best kid ever!”

  There were tears on Red’s cheeks, cold and stinging. “We can do it! We can prove all of your impossible things, too. I know it!”

  For a long moment, Wanda stared at the page. The wind was tearing at the edges of the taped papers. But Red wasn’t looking at the notebook. Her eyes were locked on her mother’s face. Silently, she begged her mom to look at her, to see her.

  Wanda swatted the notebook aside and it sailed into the snow.

  “No!” Red lunged after it, but her mom yanked her back.<
br />
  “You’re just like your grandmother!” Wanda shouted, her face too close to Red’s. “But she was wrong about a lot of things, Red. She was wrong about me. And you are, too.”

  Red shook her head. “No…”

  She released Red’s arm. “You are. It doesn’t matter how many things you write down in your stupid notebook. It’s time to grow up, Red. It’s time to learn that sometimes hard and impossible are the same.”

  She turned, shoulders bowed into the wind, and walked away.

  “Mom!”

  Red screamed and screamed, but Wanda never looked back. Red watched her disappear into the storm.

  Then she opened

  her heart and let

  the tornado

  out.

  Chapter

  58

  It was as if the sun had set, even though it was still midafternoon. The darkness of the tornado was somehow absolute, a sponge soaking up every glint of daylight. It snaked down from the clouds, winding through a wall of snowflakes until its hungry lips kissed the pavement.

  Movement and chaos.

  Roar and rush.

  Anger and fury and heartbreak.

  Red stood in the middle of the street, looking east, watching her tornado gobble up brick and pavement. Bare trees were pulled from the ground, roots and all, and swept up into the sky. Streetlamps, too, their bulbs flickering, then popping into darkness, tiny fireworks against churning clouds. Sirens wailed as asphalt peeled from the ground. And everywhere, snow—swirling, shifting, slicing.

  Around her, the world quaked in the face of her tornado. She’d thought it would hurt to let it out. She’d been afraid of it, of the damage it could do, of its power. But now she stood before it and felt nothing at all.

  All the pain inside Red was poured into the wind, leaving her numb.

  Gamma dying. Oldest Boy pinching her arm, the hiss of his voice in her ear. The fosters before The Mom, whose names she couldn’t even remember, faces she couldn’t see.

  The tornado was so hungry that it sucked it all up, everything she feared and hated, everything she had never even realized she felt.

  Tuck disappearing into the night. The cancer chewing through Celine’s belly. Celine sitting limply on the bathroom floor.

  Celine.

  The image of her foster mother’s face broke through the numbness, and she stumbled back. She saw her tornado tearing down the street, away from her.

  Straight toward the hospital.

  Red lurched to her feet, then stumbled again. Broken asphalt tore the skin of her knees, even through her jeans. She looked up at the vortex. The twisting cloud had swollen. It gorged itself on the street and empty buildings before her, growing in fury and speed. The hospital was blocks away. There was so much fuel between here and there.

  It will kill them.

  The thought rocketed her forward. My tornado will kill them!

  Ignoring the pain in her knees, Red ran toward the funnel cloud. Debris from gnarled cars and buildings careened toward her head, but she ducked and dodged, chasing after the wind. She tried to lasso it in her mind, but it was out of her control now. She couldn’t pull it back no matter how hard she tried.

  A tree crashed in front of her, and she scrambled over it, the branches tearing at her face. There was no catching up! She screamed in desperation.

  A car horn bellowed, long and insistent. Red turned toward the sound. The horn pounded out a quick rhythm, and Red finally found the source. A black sedan was at the corner half a block behind her. She could see a tiny angel swinging wildly from the rearview mirror.

  She ran, leaping over the chewed remains of the street. Ms. Anders opened the passenger-side door from the driver’s seat. “Hurry!”

  Red climbed inside. Shutting the door was like turning down the volume on a too-loud TV. Ms. Anders yanked the wheel to the left, spinning the car in a tight circle.

  “Is this yours?” she asked Red.

  Red was too stunned by the question to form an answer.

  “Is it?” her caseworker asked, looking at her. The car bounced over a curb as she took a turn.

  “Y-yes. How did you know?”

  Ms. Anders looked grim. “I’ve wondered. Colorado is never so windy as when you’ve got trouble brewing.”

  “I have to go back! I have to stop it!” Panic overtook Red’s temporary shock. “It’s headed for the hospital!”

  The engine roared. “Red—”

  “CELINE AND JACKSON ARE THERE!”

  Ms. Anders shook her head, but it didn’t look like a no. Not really.

  “You can stop it?” she asked.

  “I have to!”

  Red’s elbow cracked against the car door as Ms. Anders took another sharp turn. They were heading back into the storm down another street, one that ran parallel to the road her tornado was eating up.

  The caseworker muttered as she floored the gas. “You better not be out of whatever magic you got in you, baby girl.”

  The tornado was carving its mark into the asphalt and abandoned businesses of Wanda’s neighborhood. Red couldn’t see it, but she could feel it. All she saw were the dark, vicious clouds above her, and the outlines of old brick houses along the street they were driving. Yellow light from streetlamps illuminated the car in quick flashes as Ms. Anders raced through the neighborhood. People stood outside their homes, looking up into the flurry of snowflakes. They could no doubt hear it, but who would possibly believe that a tornado had touched down in Denver on a February afternoon?

  Get back inside, Red thought. Her heart lurched and twisted, the tether between it and her tornado growing tighter the closer she got.

  “Go past it!” she said. “I can’t pull it back. I have to get in front!”

  Ms. Anders didn’t question her. She started praying out loud as her car barreled through another intersection.

  “Oh, please don’t let anyone be coming!” She scrunched her shoulders toward her ears until they were through the intersection, then blew out a string of, Thank you thank you thank you.

  The invisible line in Red’s heart snapped taut. “Here!” she screamed. “Turn here!”

  Ms. Anders—God bless her—didn’t hesitate. Tires squealed as they turned. The headlights of cars fleeing the twister blinded Red for a moment. But she knew they were close. The trees were frenzied. Ms. Anders braked hard, pulling to the side of the road at the north corner of the street.

  “Go on, Red! I’ll be right here if you need me!” Ms. Anders shouted. Red wanted to hug her. Instead, she got out and ran as fast as she could toward the storm.

  Chapter

  59

  She didn’t have a plan. She had no idea how to stop the sky from turning her world to dust. But she had to try.

  The wind almost lifted her off the ground as she ran. She skidded to a stop in the middle of Colfax Avenue, the hospital half a block behind her. Aside from Ms. Anders’s sedan, there were no other cars. Red didn’t see anything other than the churning mass of cloud and snow and wind.

  Her heart beat wildly. It felt like an invisible rope was squeezing it, prying it through her ribs toward the tornado. She knew the storm had come from inside of her, but now it felt like the storm was pulling her into it.

  “No!” she said, gritting her teeth. She dug her heels into the street. “You can’t have me or them!”

  She stared down the sky as it reached for her. In it, she could see and feel and taste her anger. It throbbed like a heartbeat. I’m yours, the tornado hissed.

  Snow blurred beneath the flickering streetlights.

  I’m yours. It sizzled and crackled.

  Red was puny compared to the vortex. What could she possibly do to stop it?

  “I don’t need you! I don’t want you anymore!”

  The wind seemed to laugh.

  Asphalt shuddered beneath her feet and darkness closed in around her, as thick and dangerous as the black lava of a volcano. You belong to me, the wind shrieked.

  “I
don’t.” She clenched her fists. “I don’t!”

  But the wind was hungry. It pulled her toward its dark mouth.

  “No! I’m not yours!”

  Her voice shattered. She wasn’t strong enough. How could she be? She was just one girl. A child. A child whose mother had walked away. Despair overcame her, flooding the open wound the tornado had left in her heart. The storm’s rage roared in her ears and she fell to her knees.

  Then, behind the howling, Red heard a faint, clear chime. Like the voice of a bell, soft and sweet. She looked up, ears straining. There it was again! A bright, warm ringing. The song of a violin. The trill of a flute.

  Red knew that sound.

  Standing, she searched the sky.

  And she saw them.

  Pleiades. The Seven Sisters shone down on her, their light cutting a near-perfect circle through the roiling black clouds. The air immediately around her warmed. She leaned in to listen. The stars spun their song around the wind. Their music was warm and rich and full. Fuller even than Beethoven’s symphonies.

  And Red understood.

  She had been wrong about Gamma. The notebook wasn’t Gamma’s way of reminding Red to take care of her mom. The notebook was Gamma’s way of reminding Red to take care of herself.

  Her mother was broken. She knew that. Red was broken, too. Everybody was. But Red believed something that her mother didn’t: being broken didn’t make happiness impossible. Harder, sometimes. But not impossible.

  Red knew something else now, too. Brokenness wasn’t the end.

  It could be the start of something better.

  “Love can do impossible things,” she whispered.

  The star-song crescendoed in response.

  Tears streaming down her face, Red lifted her arms above her head and started to dance.

  She twirled and hopped and glided. Dipped and waltzed and spun. She danced for Gamma, for Celine and Jackson and Ms. Anders and Marvin and Gandalf and Tuck. For her mother. The music of the stars ribboned around her, illuminating her as she danced the whole world—her whole world—into life.