Just Fly Away Read online

  Up in my room I paced around—I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to break everything. I felt like a complete fool for some reason. What else didn’t I know? Were we adopted, too? Were we aliens from Mars? If I hadn’t walked in on them at that instant, when exactly would my parents have gotten around to sharing this little bit of minor information? Who even were those people at my dinner table?

  I caught a look at my less than satisfying image in the mirror above the dresser, which made me feel even worse. You hear all this talk about how great curly hair is, but I’d give anything to have my brown mop be straight and silky. That Thomas kid probably had shiny, wavy hair. He probably didn’t have my puffy cheeks, either. And he certainly didn’t inherit my mother’s brown eyes, now did he?

  When I flopped down on my bed, something in my pocket jabbed me. I jumped back up. It was the lucky rabbit’s foot my dad had given me down the shore the day before. It had been bulky in my pants all day long but I kept it in there because my dad had said it was good luck, and up until now I’d always given my father the benefit of the doubt.

  When I yanked it out of my pocket, I saw what had stabbed me. Beneath the fur near the tip there were four claws. How had I not noticed this before? How could I not have known?

  I opened my window that looked out over the front lawn and flung the thing as hard as I could.

  Some luck.

  3

  There are just so many unsettling possibilities about life that you can’t be on guard for them all. Things will be going along fine—not extraordinary or fantastic, just normal, regular—and then something like this happens and nothing is normal anymore, and it won’t ever be normal again. There is nothing you can do about it. Absolutely nothing. And even though this kind of thing might happen to anyone, it’s still a big deal when it happens to you.

  After I chucked the rabbit’s foot, I stood at the window, staring out. I couldn’t see where it had landed. By this time the streetlamp by the curb had come on. My mother’s voice came from downstairs, moving through the house in my direction. That’s all I needed. The wind blew in against my face. I climbed out onto the narrow catwalk that wraps around the second-story windows. I had never been out there before, or even thought about it. My sister’s window was about fifteen feet away. To get there I had to crouch under some branches of a big tree with red leaves. As I was ducking under them, I grabbed the largest branch and swung myself up over the catwalk’s railing, and suddenly I was out above the yard.

  The branch bent hard and fast under my full weight, and I went swooping down toward the ground, about twenty feet below. Before I landed, the branch stripped through my hand and went flying back up. Leaves rained down; my palm and fingers got scraped pretty badly. I hit the ground hard. A sharp pain shot through my ankle and up my leg as I tried to stand. I didn’t care. I got to my feet and tore out of the yard.

  For no good reason I was headed toward the 7-Eleven, the generic haven for aimless teenagers throughout America. Luckily, it was only three blocks from my house. The sky was almost completely dark by the time I got there. Inside things were very bright, no shadows anywhere. Not in a 7-Eleven. My ankle was getting worse by the second. I looked down to see if it was bleeding or if the bone might be sticking out of my skin, but it was just swollen like a grapefruit, and really red. When I touched it, it was as if my finger were a hot knife. I grabbed a can of Coke and hobbled to the counter. Only after I placed it in front of the really overweight guy behind the register did I realize that I had no money. I didn’t even bother to explain—I just left it there and limped out of the store.

  As I staggered back across the parking lot toward home, my ankle was hurting so much that I had to sit down on one of those cement bumps meant to stop cars from overshooting parking spaces.

  I didn’t have anything with me, no cash, no phone, nothing. I was helpless, useless. Then I was bawling my eyes out. My chest was heaving and my shoulders were shaking, and I couldn’t catch my breath. My ankle hurt, I couldn’t get a simple Coke, and my dad apparently had some secret kid stashed across town.

  It was like this bad movie where the poor main character discovered she had been switched at birth and wasn’t supposed to be a pauper after all, but was really the child of a rich family. Then, after living at the fancy home for a little while, she realized that the destitute family loved her and that’s what was more important. Except in my case the big surprise turned out to be that my father was someone I didn’t know at all. And was a total liar.

  I cried for a long time in that parking lot. I might still be crying if someone hadn’t eventually tapped my shoulder. It was the guy from the 7-Eleven, standing behind me with the can of Coke in his hand.

  “You can pay tomorrow,” he said, reaching the Coke out toward me. “It’s no big deal. I won’t tell my boss. It’s nothing to cry about. It’s just a Coke.”

  I felt really bad that I’d thought about how fat he was when I was inside.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He put the can on the cement thing next to me, then turned and went back to his life.

  I pressed the icy cold can against my ankle for a few seconds, then I cracked the lid and took a sip. It tasted super sweet, perhaps one of the top three Cokes I’ve ever had. Good old reliable Coke, you could always count on it to do the job.

  Cars were going by and I watched their lights zip past as I drank. It must be nice to be going somewhere, I thought.

  I’d almost forgotten about my ankle, but now it started to throb again. When my Coke was done, I crunched the can and managed to stand. I had to put all my weight on my left leg. My right ankle couldn’t take any pressure at all. I tossed the can toward the garbage dumpster a few feet away and missed, naturally. I started to go toward it but my ankle was so bad that I couldn’t even bend to get it. I hate littering; it pisses me off. But what could I do, I was helpless in the situation. I left it there.

  The walk back took forever. A half block from home I saw Mr. Schmitz across the street in the dark, walking Josie. All I needed was to have that yappy little mongrel spot me and go crazy like she always does. I hid behind a large tree and waited for them to pass.

  When I finally staggered in the front door my mother came racing down the stairs to me.

  “Lucy!” she nearly screamed. When she saw me limping she froze. “What happened?”

  “I was at the 7-Eleven and I slipped off the curb.”

  “Come into the kitchen. Let’s get some ice on that right away.”

  She sat me at the kitchen table and went to the freezer. When she came back she was holding a bag of frozen peas.

  “Let me see that.” She lifted my ankle onto the table to get a better look. “That must have been quite a curb,” she said. I could feel she was looking at me—I didn’t look back.

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to have my feet on the table,” I tried to joke. It wasn’t very funny.

  She pressed the bag down around my ankle. “Just hold that on it.” She went over to grab the landline and started to press the buttons. “Your father went out looking for you.”

  That harmless-looking bag of peas was so cold it burned, but I didn’t say anything. My mother read my mind and gave me a kitchen towel to wrap around them as she pressed the phone to her ear.

  “She’s home,” she said into the receiver. Then she listened for a few seconds. “All right, don’t race.” She hung up. “Your father will be home in a few minutes.”

  I wished I hadn’t come back.

  My mother went to put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster. I wasn’t sure, but when she came back over to the table and picked up the sugar bowl, and I saw that the coffeemaker on the counter was still on, I knew what she was doing. In case you have never had it, sugar toast is a very guilty pleasure. White toast, lots of butter, a sprinkling of sugar, and a teaspoon of coffee dripped over the top. It was something my mom used to make me when I was sick—I hadn’t eaten it in ages. Over the years, my mother has be
come much more health conscious about what she feeds us. We were even gluten free for a while last year, which was a long way from super tasty sugar toast.

  As she was dripping the last bit of coffee onto the toast, my father came through the back door. He stopped when he saw my foot up on the table.

  “Are you okay?” he said. The crease between his eyes was very deep. He came over to see my ankle and lifted the bag of peas. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I fell off the curb.”

  I was staring at my fingernails, giving them my full attention, but I could feel him look at my mother as she placed the toast in front of me.

  “Keep the ice on it,” he said.

  I looked up for a second. His blue eyes were shimmering. He was trying very hard not to be upset, and it wasn’t working. But there were so many things to be upset about at the moment, I wasn’t sure exactly which one was bothering him the most.

  “Why don’t you go up and have a shower,” my mother said to him. “Let Lucy and me talk.”

  My dad sighed loudly. He was still standing over me, and he reached out to touch my hair. I didn’t like him touching me at that instant, but it meant he wasn’t going to yell at me.

  “You eat your toast with your mother, and then get on up to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  When I was on the second slice my mom came and sat down next to me. She shook her head a bit.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Sometimes you remind me so much of Grandma Lucy. You’re well named, my darling.”

  My foot was still up on the table, and I could feel my pulse throbbing in my ankle. “Tell me that story again,” I said.

  My mom laughed. “I haven’t told you that in a long time, have I?”

  My great-grandmother and namesake was Lucy Van Buskirk. She grew up in Traverse City, Michigan. Apparently she led a wild and impulsive life, especially for someone at that time.

  “When she was seventeen,” my mother began, “Grandma Lucy met a traveling vacuum cleaner salesman who happened to knock on the door—they did stuff like that back then. He talked her parents into buying a vacuum that afternoon, and no one thought any more about it, until—” And here my mother leaned forward and her voice got kind of low. “Without her parents knowing, my grandmother kept in touch with the salesman by writing letters. No one even knew she got his address.

  “Then, the moment she turned eighteen, against her parents’ wishes, Grandma Lucy followed after the salesman to Denver. They had three girls together, the youngest of which was my mother. One day she left him and took the girls back to Michigan and raised them there on her own. She earned money by making denim overalls and selling them from the back of her car to the men who worked in the cherry orchards around Traverse City.”

  That story always makes me feel proud to have the name that I do.

  My mother usually ends the tale there, but tonight she went on. “But maybe the most interesting thing about it all,” she whispered, “was that Grandma Lucy may have had a dark secret. No one is certain, but she might never have actually been married to the salesman in the first place. Everyone just naturally assumed they were married, but no one ever saw any record of it or went to their wedding, and years later she let slip how glad she was that she had never married—but then another time she denied saying such a thing. So no one really knows.”

  My mom was silent for a minute.

  “How come you never told me that last part before?” I asked her.

  She just smiled at me and shrugged.

  “How old were you when you learned that?”

  “I suppose I was about your age, maybe a little older. She was an absolutely fantastic lady though, that’s for certain. She was a wonderful grandmother and she adored her children until the day she died.”

  My mother didn’t have her ever-present evening glass of wine in her hand. I wondered if it was because of what I’d said to her earlier about always having a Chablis. I felt bad about the remark, but not really.

  “How’s that ankle doing? Let me see it.” She leaned over and lifted the peas. She touched the swollen skin, which was even redder now because of the ice. “How’s that feel?” she asked.

  I couldn’t really feel anything since it was so numb. “A little better, I think.”

  “If it still looks bad in the morning, we’ll go in for some X-rays.”

  Climbing the stairs, I had one arm over my mother’s shoulder and one hand pushing off the banister. My sister’s door was closed; she was probably oblivious to my whole disappearing act–smashed-up ankle drama. Her music was still playing softly. My mother didn’t tell her to shut it off, even though it was past lights-out.

  I somehow managed to brush my teeth and get to bed. If anyone knocked on my door wanting to come in and explain himself, it didn’t happen while I was awake. And I lay there in the dark for a long time.

  4

  The walls of the waiting room at the X-ray place were covered in cheery posters with really uplifting and stupid sayings: Don’t Quit Five Minutes Before the Miracle—as if you should know when that might be—and Tomorrow’s Coming, Hang On! There were a few other posters as well, which just had puffy clouds on them. Maybe they were intended to trick us into thinking we were soaring through life, instead of sitting there on these stained couches, waiting and waiting.

  I don’t mean to sound cynical, because I’m not. Not usually, anyway. I’m not one of those people who are all jaded and act as if they don’t care about anything and walk around as if they’re exhausted by life. But those posters were killing me.

  My mom had let me sleep late, so my dad was already at work by the time I hobbled into the kitchen, which was the only upside of the day so far.

  A young boy and his grandmother sat across the room, waiting, too. I couldn’t tell what might be wrong with them; they looked totally fine. The boy seemed to be about eight years old. He could have been this Thomas kid for all I knew.

  It was my first experience with X-rays—other than the dentist, which doesn’t count. The guy doing the X-rays was surprisingly young.

  “Are you the doctor?” I asked him as I followed him into the small room.

  He laughed. “Why, do I seem like one?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “No, I’m the technician. I’ll be taking your photos.” He was super gentle as he positioned my ankle in this weird way, and he had a southern accent that made everything he said sound like honey.

  “This looks like a beauty,” he drawled, as if he was talking about a particularly fine vegetable or something. “Must have hurt a lot.”

  “Not too bad.” I shrugged.

  That sweet-sounding technician then threw this heavy X-ray-proof blanket over my body and raced out of the room like I had a contagious disease. Maybe it was because up to that point he had been so nice, but when the door clicked behind him I never felt so alone in my entire life. Then he zapped me.

  The X-rays were negative. That’s exactly what the doctor in the white coat said after she looked at them for a grand total of thirty seconds: “They’re negative”—very medical sounding. Of course I was glad, but frankly, part of me was disappointed. It would have served my dad right if it was broken. Instead, I was just going to have to hobble around on crutches for several days with a bad sprain.

  My mom let me stay home for the rest of the day, and when my dad came in for lunch I was in the kitchen eating. He didn’t have much to say to me. What was there to say? The facts were the facts. He sat down beside me and gave me his sincere look. I wasn’t buying it.

  “I know you’re upset, Lucy,” he said. “I wish I could change things, but we’ll get through this. You’ll see.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. I took a bite out of my sandwich. I just wanted him to go away. “These things happen.”

  He just looked at me when I said that. “Well, I don’t know about that, Lucy, but in no way does this affect how much I love you or your sister.”

  Up in my room I lay
on my bed, staring at the map of the world on my wall. I plan to visit all seven continents and the North Pole, and cross the seven seas. I haven’t been anywhere yet—except for thirteen states, if you count driving through and airports. I’ve stuck pins in them all. I was just finishing the count again when my best friend Arianna texted: Where were you today?

  Jumped off the roof and nearly broke my ankle

  Insane

  Just bored

  Typical!

  For some reason that remark really bothered me, especially the exclamation point.

  Well, if your father had just told you that he had screwed some chick, got her pregnant, and had a kid that is running around in the world you might jump off the roof too!!

  I actually considered sending that, but I didn’t. I mean, how could I? I watched the cursor on my phone suck back up the words.

  My mom was going to let me stay home from school again the next day since I could still hardly walk, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being around the house.

  Then the second I walked into school, it seemed like everyone was looking at me. The crutches felt like this giant blinking neon sign that went on and off with each plunk on the ground, blaring, MY DAD . . . HAS ANOTHER . . . KID.

  Arianna had obviously been very busy spreading the news of my little roof jump—I caught a good deal of grief for it.

  “Hey, it’s Superwoman—NOT!” this computer geek named Zac said as he passed me in the hall. He thought that was very funny.

  At lunch I couldn’t carry my tray since I had the crutches. Ruby, this really big varsity volleyball star, was behind me in line, so she helped me out, mostly because it was the only way she was ever going to get through the line herself. The whole time she just kept shaking her head, as if she was trying to tell everyone that she didn’t approve of my existence and was only stuck helping me because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Eventually we made it to my usual table. Ruby almost dislocated her spine shaking her head again as she left.