The Astonishing Maybe

by Shaunta Grimes

  I waited, but she didn’t go on, so I said, “What really happened in the third grade?”

  She unfolded the papers, smoothed the creases, then folded them again. Hot dog. Hamburger. “I told you. She took too much medicine and I had to go live with my aunt Jane. I can’t go back there, Gideon.”

  Everything in me tightened, like a fist. There was something under what she was saying. Something I wasn’t sure I wanted to understand. “Roona.”

  Roona unfolded the tickets again. “She had to go to the hospital for a long time. Weeks and weeks. She can’t get that sick again, Gideon. I need her. If she gets sick again, they might make me stay in Boise for good this time. And she needs my dad.”

  “What happened in Boise?” I waited, but she didn’t answer. I looked at my house again and thought about my mom in there with Harper. “We’re going to be in so much trouble.”

  “We’ll leave notes.”

  Right. Dear Mom and Dad. I took a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas with Roona. Don’t wait up. “What time will we be back?”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  I lifted my shoulders. “Ah … yeah. I think I need to know.”

  “Midnight.”

  “Right. Of course.” Actually, coming home didn’t matter much. Mom would notice I was gone about the time the bus left Logandale. When I told my sixth-grade teacher we were moving to Nevada, she told me about the nuclear bombs that were tested here in the 1950s.

  The explosion when my mother realized I’d left the house at seven in the morning to take a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas would put those mushroom clouds to shame.

  I was in a state that still felt like a geography class footnote, thinking about doing this outrageous thing with a girl I barely knew who may or may not have marginal superpowers, whose mother may or may not have done something to herself that I couldn’t even think too hard about.

  I leaned back and looked up at the cobwebs in the rafters of the Mulroneys’ porch cover. “I just don’t think I can do this, Roona.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  I turned my head toward her. “Really? You’ll stay?”

  “I’m leaving at seven.”

  No matter what, she would probably never see me again after tomorrow, because I would definitely never be allowed out of my bedroom again once my parents learned that I let Roona use my birthday money to do this thing.

  I was going to be in trouble, one way or the other.

  Roona sat with her back straight, her chin lifted. She looked as unmovable as the mountains. She was going to Las Vegas—with or without me. I had to decide if I could live with letting her go alone.

  Mom, queen of natural consequences, would say I shouldn’t have given my friend my money to do something stupid in the first place. She’d list the choices I could have made. I could have told Roona’s mother or my own parents. I could have let Roona go and not doubled down on my own poor choices.

  But she couldn’t see Roona’s face. Even if I stopped her from going the next morning, she’d find a way and the next way might be even less safe.

  * * *

  “I have no idea,” Mom said to Dad during dinner. “No idea at all what in the world happened today. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Dad tried not to laugh. I could tell by the way he sucked in his cheeks and didn’t look directly at Mom when she talked.

  “This isn’t funny,” Mom said. She knew his trying-not-to-laugh face, too. “We’re supposed to send Harper to that school in a couple of months.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Dad said.

  It was a mistake to try to blow off something Mom thought was important, no matter how ridiculous the story sounded coming out of her mouth. Dad should have known better. Mom smoothed her hand over Harper’s hair and said, “We’ll talk about this later.”

  My stomach was in knots. We had Chinese food for dinner because Mom had a headache (she said from the gluten in the PTA cookies) and didn’t feel like cooking. Logandale had two restaurants. A diner called Pop Arnie’s and Happy Mountain Chinese.

  The moo shu pork wasn’t bad, but it sat in my stomach like a brick. Harper didn’t look like she was feeling very well, either, and I had a flash of inspiration. “Want to watch Finding Nemo with me?”

  Harper and I both have blue eyes, like our mom. We turned them to her in unison and she lifted her eyebrows, like she suspected I was trying to pull something over on her.

  “All right then,” she said. “You may be excused after you take your dishes to the sink.”

  Doing something nice for Harper helped to loosen up the guilt squeezing my guts. We took the cushions off the sofa and set them up like a nest on the living room floor, then I popped the DVD into the player.

  As the movie started, Harper curled close to me. She really wasn’t herself. I heard Mom and Dad talking in the kitchen and I was sure Harper heard, too. They weren’t yelling or anything, so I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their tone was tense.

  “Am I in trouble for being bad at school?” Harper whispered.

  “If you are, it won’t last long.” It never did. Harper was too cute to be mad at for very long. Even for me.

  “I still get to go to kindergarten, don’t I?”

  “Definitely. Trust me.”

  “Will I be able to play with Isabella?”

  “Just watch the movie, Harper.”

  * * *

  I wasn’t going to Las Vegas on a bus. There was no way.

  When I set my alarm clock to wake me up at six thirty in the morning, it was so that I could try one more time to talk Roona out of going.

  But I didn’t really need the alarm. My eyes popped open at 5:42 and I couldn’t go back to sleep.

  Even as I stood in the middle of my bedroom, trying to decide between jeans and a T-shirt or my church clothes—because how was I supposed to know what to wear on a Greyhound bus or to an air force base—I was certain I wasn’t going with her.

  But, she was going, with or without me. I decided I’d better get dressed. In case.

  I went with something Mom would make me wear to Grandma Ellen’s for dinner: khaki pants and a button-down plaid shirt with short sleeves. I had a tie, but I decided that would be too much.

  If I was going to get dressed, then I had to at least write a note. In case.

  The note was a problem. I needed to write something that would keep my parents from calling the police. I couldn’t tell them where we were going, or they’d be there at the bus station in Las Vegas when we stepped off the Greyhound. We’d be dragged right back to Logandale before we got anywhere near Roona’s dad.

  I bit my bottom lip and sat with a pen hovering over a piece of paper. Start at the beginning, I decided.

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  That was easy enough. But now what? Stick as close to the truth as I could. I wasn’t a good liar anyway.

  I’m with Roona. Please don’t worry. I’ll be home tonight.

  By “tonight” I meant midnight. Which was technically tomorrow morning. I groaned as I read back those three little sentences. At least they’d know I wasn’t kidnapped. Mom always worried about me or Harper being kidnapped. As if there were bad guys across every street just waiting to snap one of us up if we used the crosswalk.

  I know you’re mad, but I promise I’m fine. Roona just needed my help.

  How bad could it be, to be a good, helpful friend? Before I could change my mind, I wrote Love, Gideon (your son). Maybe the reminder would keep them from killing me before they could ground me.

  I left the note on my pillow. If I actually went through with getting on a bus headed for Las Vegas, alone with Roona, Mom would eventually come in to make sure I was up, and she’d find it.

  I put on my tennis shoes, found my bike lock (in case), and tiptoed out of the kitchen door into our backyard.

  * * *

  I half expected to find Roona in her Wonder Roo getup. In fact, I was prepared to try to make he
r leave the swimsuit and striped socks behind if she insisted on doing this stupid thing.

  It was going to be hard enough for two twelve-year-old kids to get on a bus to Las Vegas alone without one of them wearing a baby blanket tied around her neck.

  Or one. One twelve-year-old kid. Because I was definitely not doing this. When I came around the corner of my house to the front, though, I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Roona was dressed up, all right. But not like Wonder Roo.

  Her long, wild hair was wrapped in a twist at the back of her head, like her mother’s usually was. She wore a blue dress and a pair of flat black shoes, a little like Harper’s ballet slippers. She wore gold hoop earrings through her ears, and lip gloss.

  And her blanket was wrapped around her neck, like a scarf.

  “Whoa.”

  She fiddled with one of her earrings. “What?”

  “You look—”

  “Stupid, I know. But I didn’t think—”

  “Old,” I said. “Older, anyway.”

  Roona was three or four inches taller than me and, dressed up, she could have been my older sister. If you didn’t look too close, and didn’t notice that her scarf was really a ratty baby blanket, you might think she was fourteen or fifteen at least.

  “I think it’ll help us get on the bus,” she said.

  “You mean you.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll help you get on the bus.” She looked me up and down, slowly. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Aren’t you coming with me?”

  “I can’t. I told you.”

  “But you’re all dressed.”

  I looked down and was actually startled by my dress clothes, even though I was the one who put them on. “I can’t go to Las Vegas, Roona. And you shouldn’t, either.”

  “I have to.” She shrugged. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “Yes you do. You can just choose not to do this.”

  “You’d do it,” she said. “You’d do it for your mom.”

  I tried to say that I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t. I would do it for my mom. The question was whether I’d do it for hers. Or maybe: whether I’d do it for Roona. Her mouth was set in a determined line that reminded me of Harper when she gets stubborn.

  Roona would go without me.

  The real question wasn’t whether I could let her.

  I thought of all the things my mother was afraid would happen to me if I crossed a street or went to the mall or stayed out after dark without her. How I would feel if Roona got lost or kidnapped or …

  I let out a breath with a sigh. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  “Okay.” She walked to her bike. “We better go then.”

  I looked one last time at my house. How long would it be till Mom found my note? “We better.”

  * * *

  The Greyhound station was on the same long, winding country road as the grocery store and the old folks’ home.

  Logandale wasn’t anything at all like Wildwood. It wasn’t anything like what I imagined Hobbiton to look like, either. It wasn’t green at all. But the mountains were the biggest that I’d ever seen and the cows and fields lining the road made me feel like there might be hobbit-holes just around the corner.

  We rode farther than I’d ever ridden my bicycle before. Definitely farther than I’d ever been without an adult knowing where I was.

  * * *

  It took almost an hour to get there. So long that I was worried we hadn’t left early enough. We locked our bikes to the rack outside and Roona brushed her hands over her dress, then looked at me. “Ready?”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked one more time. “You should call him first, at least.”

  She shook her head. “I have to do this, Gideon. If you’re too scared, it’s okay. I’ll go by myself.”

  She wasn’t making fun of me. Riding a bus to Las Vegas without telling anyone where we were going was scary. Mom had drilled every possible bad thing that could happen to a kid alone into my head for my whole life. If Roona went alone and something happened to her, I’d never forgive myself.

  Her teenage-Roona outfit worked. She handed the bus driver both of the tickets she’d printed at her house and he didn’t even look up. No one looked at us twice when we got on the bus and found seats.

  Roona sat straight as an arrow beside me, her backpack on her lap. She’d given me the window seat. I watched through it, expecting my parents or maybe police officers to show up any minute.

  “Calm down,” she said. “You’re going to get us in trouble.”

  “I’m going to get us in trouble?” I turned away from the window. “We’re already in trouble, Roona. It just hasn’t caught up with us yet.”

  She leaned back in her seat. “Thank you for coming with me, Gideon.”

  I blew out a breath and sat back in my seat, too. “How much money do we have left?”

  “Twenty dollars.”

  I exhaled again. “At least we’ll be able to eat.”

  “We’ll need that for a cab ride to the base.” Roona opened her backpack and pulled out the corner of a brown paper bag. “I made sandwiches.”

  “I hope you didn’t bring anything your mom baked.”

  “Don’t worry.” She pushed our lunch back in and zipped her pack. “I used Wonder bread.”

  “Did you leave her a note?”

  She looked at me like I was crazy.

  “You left without even leaving a note?”

  “She won’t worry about me.”

  “Roona.”

  “What? She won’t. She won’t even notice I’m gone until tonight. Your mom will tell her before then.”

  “Really?” A bubble of anger pushed against my ribs. “How did you even know I was coming with you? I told you that I wasn’t.”

  She shrugged. “I knew. But even if I was wrong, then you’d tell her.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and sat straight in my seat, trying to deflate that bubble.

  The bus was full. I expected the people who took this trip with us to be sketchy, scary people who a couple of sixth graders shouldn’t be alone with. It was a nice surprise to see how normal everyone else was.

  An old man sat in front of us. A woman and her two kids took up two seats across the aisle. A man with a service dog walked all the way to the back of the bus and sat by the bathroom.

  “I’m not using the bathroom on a bus,” I said.

  And of course, I had to go right that minute. I thought about getting off and going back into the station, but the driver closed the doors and it was too late.

  The bus started to move. I sat back, clutching the edges of my seat like we were on a rocket ship instead.

  “Gideon,” Roona said. “Seriously, calm down.”

  I tried. And it worked. The farther we went without sirens or my parents flagging us down, the more I relaxed. I was going to be in trouble, but I wasn’t in trouble yet. For now, even though I’d fought it, I was on an adventure with Roona.

  This was by far the most Tookish thing I’d ever done. Maybe the most Tookish thing I’d ever do. Roona pulled her blanket from around her neck and held on to it, working at the edge with her fingers.

  I waited for her to say something. Anything. But she kept picking at the edge of her blanket and I couldn’t take it. “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head and suddenly she didn’t look older anymore. She looked like a twelve-year-old girl playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes.

  Which was exactly what she was.

  “Your mom?” I whispered.

  “I should have left a note.” She looked at me. “I’m scared, Gideon. What if she gets worse?”

  “We’ll find your dad.”

  “I’m scared we’ll be too late.”

  “We won’t be.”

  She turned to look at me. “How do you know?”

  I didn’t know. I was guessing. Or maybe, hoping. I said the thing my dad always s
aid to me when I got extra worried. “Things are almost never as bad as they seem.”

  “Sometimes they’re worse.”

  “Boise was worse?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. I wanted to make her tell me. Just push and push until it all came spilling out and I could finally understand what was going on here.

  She didn’t look sad when I mentioned Boise, though. She didn’t look worried. She looked afraid. She shifted in her seat and held her blanket closer.

  I’d never held a non-relative girl’s hand before. I’d never even thought about it. But I reached for hers, because I couldn’t stand how alone she looked. We sat there like that while the bus left Logandale behind.

  Seven

  We stopped at what felt like every single gas station between Logandale and Las Vegas to pick people up or drop them off. For such an empty-looking place, there are a lot of pockets of people in Nevada.

  It didn’t take too long for someone to wonder why a couple of kids were traveling alone to a place my dad called Sin City.

  The old man in front of us walked past us toward the bathroom, then stopped in the aisle on his way back and said, “Headed to the city?”

  I averted my eyes. The man wasn’t looking at me, though. He was focused on Roona. She lifted her chin and said, “Yes.”

  “Long way.”

  She gave him a half smile and nodded, then reached into her backpack for the brown bag. “Hungry?” she asked me.

  The man watched us a little while longer, while Roona took out a couple of ham-and-cheese sandwiches. It was way too early for lunch, but I took one. I was happy to see they really were made on plain old store-bought white bread.

  The man’s fingers tightened on the back of his seat. “Got another one of those?”

  The woman across the aisle from us must have had her mom antennae up, because she pulled her kids into the window seat and moved over to the aisle. “Why don’t you just sit down and leave them alone?”

  The man looked at her, his face clouding. “Why don’t you mind your own business.”

  The woman looked like she might stand up and really start something, but her smallest child, a little boy, climbed into her lap and she just hugged him to her instead.